"Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start!"
–Captain Retzorg[4]
Captain Zeeky Slotho Retzorg III, known in short as Retzorg or Captain Retzorg, is a slothogonian and the central character of Retzorg’s user canon.
Appearance[]
Being the holotypical slothogonian character, Captain Retzorg is yellow in colour and has stripes that are dark yellow, yellow-orange, or orange, depending on portrayal. While the stripes appear all over their skin in spaceship portrayals, they are usually shown as only being on their back and the back of their tail. They have two large, moose-like antlers atop their head, which usually appear as brown, but appear tan in creature portrayals due to the creature editor’s limitations, and are recognizable by two circular saws connected by appendages to their face. They have two light yellow inflatable wings on their back that have a shape superficially resembling feathered wings. Captain Retzorg has two feet representative of Spore’s Hoppity foot part, and five-fingered reptilian, claw-like hands, though they are often covered by shoes and gloves. They have a long, triangular, shark-like snout on their face. Captain Retzorg’s eyes are green, though early portrayals rendered them as blue, red, and then black.
Captain Retzorg dresses with more variety than the typical Spore role-playing character, though their outfits often consist of either some sort of armour, some uniform, or something involving some type of green shirt and red trousers. They are always shown wearing shoes as long as they are wearing any other item of clothing, which are either grey or beige, and, in portrayals from or after 2015, are almost always shown wearing white gloves on both hands.
Alternate Forms[]
Captain Retzorg's alternate forms include, but are not limited to:
Magic Chromium Armor[]
The Magic Chromium Armor is, as their name suggests, armor composed of enchanted chromium; the captain can apply this armor to almost any form. In its earlier iterations, it is painted with black-and-yellow-striped hazard pattern. It later appeared as "Magic Chromium Armor v2," which changes the colour to solid red and adds a visor, fireproof gloves, and armor for Captain Retzorg's wings. Outside of the fireproof gloves and nuanced area of protection, it is unknown if the Magic Chromium Armor v2 has any advantages over the first Magic Chromium Armor.
Desperation Mode Form[]
This form is activated when Captain Retzorg has taken a significant amount of damage. As far as appearance, it inverts the captain's colouration, turning them purple, as well as making their pupils move to the outer side, so they are as far away from each other as possible. It generally increases Captain Retzorg's power, allowing them to use their more dangerous attacks, such as Rush Cannon. Along with the Boum Form, it has so far only appeared in Captain Retzorg's first battle, against Tenguman.
Boum Form[]
Boum Form is essentialy an amplified version of Captain Retzorg's Desperation Mode Form, and can only be accessed if they were previously in Desperation Mode. It increases Captain Retzorg's power even more, allowing them to use even more dangerous techniques. However, it quickly drains out Captain Retzorg's sanity, and possibly life energy, to make them even more mentally unstable than the Charred Form; it caused Captain Retzorg to use a false suicidal attack the first (and, so far, only) time it was used. The only change of appearance from the Desperation Mode Form is that Captain Retzorg's eyes look like orbs of fire. The Spore user MilkyWayCrew once said that he thinks Captain Retzorg looks like "an angry drunk Bee datts on fire" while in this form. The name of the form originates from a French omanotopeia for "bang."
Shade Realm Form[]
Captain Retzorg's Shade Realm Form is how the captain appears in the Shade Realm, which is the inside of a Game Boy featured. It is featured in Captain Retzorg's battle with PandaWolf. It was originally revealed as 'Mystery Form', in which their description and tags (which are "fist" and "brutal", respectively), as well as their appearance, hinted at it being related to the White Hand. Captain Retzorg's colouration becomes desaturated in this form, and their left hand becomes the White Hand, enabling them to use the "fist" and "brutal" attacks.
Charred Form[]
Captain Retzorg enters this form upon defeat in a battle or otherwise significant damage. It looks entirely grayish-black, except for the eyes, which are the same. Captain Retzorg’s powers, flight included, are all disabled, and they become quite insane, talking in all capital letters, using grammar improperly, and failing to use anyone’'s correct name. Captain Retzorg can escape this form by being healed by someone else or by making toast.
Discorretzorg[]
Main article: Discorretzorg
Strawberry Times[]
Main article: Strawberry Times
DarkestNightOfAll[]
Main article: DarkestNightOfAll
DarkestNightOfAll is a disguise that was unsuccessfully used to challenge Tenguman to another battle.
Personality[]
Captain Retzorg is mercurial in persona, switching between being entirely level-headed and being flamboyant and carefree on a whim. For instance, during their battle with Tenguman, they held a mirthless goal-oriented attitude, but when later battling the Quake Golem and PandaWolf, they ceased to take either battle seriously after the passage of a single "turn." When displaying one of their flamboyant moods, Captain Retzorg has a tendency to frequently make obscure popular culture references. They also tend to be very indecisive and obsessive, but are generally friendly and well-meaning towards others when not engaged in combat with them.
Captain Retzorg acts rather immaturely at times in portrayals prior to their creator’s 2012-2015 Spore hiatus.
Retzorg Facepalming
History[]
This section is incomplete. You can help Spore Roleplayers Wiki by expanding it.
Zwietracht's Revenge[]
On the morning of July 3, 1972, Captain Retzorg awakens from a 3-year sleep (representing 3 years of not creating anything), the original cause of which is currently unknown. They then become ecstatic and overjoyed about "[conquering] Entropy Lord," an event that has currently not been further described, and then promptly runs off to "go tell everyone." The captain, however, eventually slows down before realizing that they are in the middle of a desert; this desert is later indirectly revealed to be the Mojave Desert. Captain Retzorg soon realizes that their "Magic Bag" (a currently unseen item) is missing, and then flies into the air to survey the landscape, but finds nothing but the empty desert. They then leave behind several of their possessions, fly low to the ground, and disable their endothermic properties to keep cool and save energy, looking for whatever had caused there to be oxygen in the desert.
"'Ohhhh noooooooo...' says Retzorg in a voice stolen from JonTron."
Four hours later, near the city of Primm, Nevada in the Mojave desert, Captain Retzorg monologues about the events that have conspired since finding their Magic Bag missing, but then realizes that they can escape the conundrum of being stranded in the desert by transforming into Discorretzorg. They promptly do so, and Discorretzorg then teleports out of the desert, intending to get to their home planet of Slothogonia; they fail, however, to complete this task, and instead teleports to an unknown location, where Discorretzorg splits into Captain Retzorg and Zwietracht.
OhBoyHereWeGo[]
Strawberry Times, the result of Denga's role in Discorretzorg being replaced by Tango.
In an alternate timeline, Tango time-travels into a story Zwietracht is telling to Captain Retzorg about the creation of Discorretzorg. Strangely, Zwietracht and the instance of Denga in the story are intepreted as the same being, who battles Tango. While the two do battle, Tango gets in the way of the copy-fusion beam that Captain Retzorg used first create Discorretzorg. This causes the instance of the captain in the story, taking place in 1969, to instead become Strawberry Times and Discorretzorg and Zwietracht to be prevented from existing in this timeline.
Meanwhile, the instance of Captain Retzorg in 1972, outside of the story, comments on the incoherent nature of the recent events. They are then suddenly run over and killed by what appears to be a DeLorean time machine. A grey figure resembling Captain Retzorg exits and the car and, after admiring one, two, or all of the characters who are in 1969, remarks, "This makes no sense. The timeline has been ruined."
Gender[]
Captain Retzorg is unique among characters in the Spore role-playing community in that their gender has been shown to be non-binary since two days before the first time their creator described them with pronouns in January 2012.[5][6]
Retzorg’s species, slothogonians, do not have a native concept of gender in their culture. Additionally, the species is entirely unisex, with individuals having fungus-like reproductive systems bearing no resemblance to the reproductive systems of real-world vertebrates; thus, the non-gendered nature of Slothogonian society can be assumed to have come naturally without the need to differentiate between gender and sex to be achieved. Other slothogonian characters, such as Zeeky Retzorg's cousin Mimi, are described just as gender-neutrally as Captain Retzorg as a result of this.
Retzorg apparently does have some understanding of gender, though a limited one making it clear that human notions of gender are still somewhat foreign and novel concepts to them; for instance, it is not until the space voyage preceding the Battle of Space Burger King that Retzorg learns that “cow” is not an appropriate term for all female mammals. Notably, though Retzorg is occasionally described by other characters in terms typical of a binary gender (in all cases, being described in male terms by characters with different authors), they neither make any effort to correct them nor seem to take notice at all; it is implied that while Retzorg is aware of gender, they just don’t care about it.
Zeeky and Mimi were originally described by their creator with the pronoun "it" (a habit inspired by how Pokémon video games describe genderless Pokémon), though their creator switched to the singular "they" pronoun after April 2018 in an effort to make the characters more relatable to and normalizing of real-world non-binary individuals.
Trivia[]
- Captain Retzorg is among the shortest adult main RP characters, if not the shortest.
- According to their creator, Retzorg is distressed by not having "fabulous hair."[7]
- Captain Retzorg's Desperation Mode Form and Boum Form are functionally similar to Girt's Dark Form and Dark Void Form, respectively; this is coincidental and the characters’ creators introduced these forms to their characters independently of each other.
- Zeeky and their cousin Mimi both have first names ending in the same vowel.
- Unlike possibly every other central character, who each possess the ability to easily overpower an ordinary human, it has been stated that Diana Ross would defeat Captain Retzorg in combat due to the fact that the captain cannot attack anyone who sings music from the future, and Diana Ross has released songs decades after Captain Retzorg's lifespan.[8]
- Tenguman shuts down in a desert; Captain Retzorg wakes up in one.
- Captain Retzorg and Stormer are or were both generally referred to using seven-letter names (Captain Retzorg specifically usually being called by surname only,) of which they share five letters, including the presence of two instances of the letter "R" in both names, have both been the central protagonist of their respective user canons, and both have non-binary sexual physiology.
- The saws that Captain Retzorg sports on the side of their face seem to be an anatomical impossibility, at least for Earth life. If the saws were living issue, they would need to be connected to Captain Retzorg’s body somehow, thus not allowing free rotation. If they were disconnected, and thus, allowed to freely rotate, the saws would die very quickly from a lack of nutrients being supplied to them, and Captain Retzorg would be stuck with 2 dead lumps of chitin on the ends of their horns, and any damage to these saws would not be self-repairing, as nutrients do not travel in between the core body of Captain Retzorg and the buzzsaws.[9]
- An alternate take on these saws is that they act almost like a living version of a clockwork toy, with a tendon acting as the "spring" in the organic mechanism, allowing the outer saw-like shell to spin with power behind it, cutting through whatever the saws need to at the time.
Gallery of Images[]
Names in Other Languages[]
| Language | Name | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| English | Captain Retzorg | Original name; created by Spore user Phaztonian by "mashing together sounds."[10] |
| Deutsch | Kapitän Rotestein | Literally "Captain Red Stone." |
| Italiano | Capitano Zicchi Brade Rezzorghe | Middle name and last name have a gender non-exclusive "e" inflection. "Zichi" is "Zeeky" transcribed into Italian orthography, as is "Rezzorghe," but with an added "e" inflection. "Brade" is derived from "bradipo," meaning "sloth," mirroring the origin of "Slotho." "Capitano" means "captain." |
| Русский | Капитан Рецорг | Romanized as "Kapitan Ryetsorg;" simplified Cyrillic reading of "Captain Retzorg." |
| 日本語 | キャプテンレトゾ | Romanized as "Kyaputen Retozo;" katakana reading of "Captain Retzorg" with the last two letters of "Retzorg" omitted. |
References[]
- ↑ Retzorg's user blog on Slothogonian physiology
- ↑ A creator comment on Spore creation "Rule 63 Counterpart" by Retzorg
- ↑ Spore creation "OMG! Message" by user Retzorg
- ↑ Spore creation "Retzorg @ Tenguman" by user Retzorg
- ↑ Spore creation "Rule 63 Counterpart" by user Retzorg
- ↑ Spore creation "Fun-Fact" by user Retzorg
- ↑ A creator comment on Spore creation "Retzorg Cosplays DIO"
- ↑ File:RossvsRetzorg.jpg
- ↑ Wikipedia on rotating locomotion in living systems
- ↑ Spore creation "Name Origins" by user Retzorg
