Chaos Emerald (Sonic the Comic)

The Chaos Emeralds are a group of seven fictional gemstones from the continuity of the British series Sonic the Comic. In this series, the history of the Emeralds was expanded considerably over that of the games, leading to some differences with the games storyline when the games began to introduce back-story for the Emeralds as well.

Characteristics
The Chaos Emeralds were originally Raw Emeralds from the Sacred Emerald Mine of the ancient Echidnas, but were infused with Chaos Energy by the Drakon Empire in the distant past. When brought together outside of certain stabilizing conditions (e.g. extreme cold), the Chaos Emeralds generate a chain reaction of Chaos Energy and warp to the Special Zone.

The Master Emerald, rather than being an gem separate from the Chaos Emeralds, is in this continuity the green emerald, which is larger and more powerful than the others. The role of the controller emerald is given to the Grey Emerald.

Although the colours of the Emeralds are variable in the games, in Sonic the Comic they are consistently depicted as blue, yellow, red, green, orange, grey and purple. (However, the six emeralds used on Mobius by Doctor Ovi Kintobor were drained of most of their energy and reverted to their natural green state until warping back to the Special Zone for the first time.)

Ancient History
The story of the Chaos Emeralds begins in Mobius' distant past, during the war between the Echidna race and the Drakon Empire. Seeking vessels for their unstable, newly developed Chaos Energy, the Drakons raided the Echidnas' sacred emerald mines, and infused seven emeralds with Chaos Energy. The Echidnas were able to steal the seven emeralds back and capture a Drakon prosecutor, but exposure to the emeralds mutated the captive into a monstrous creature known as Chaos. Draining away some of the Emeralds' power, the Echidna elder Pochacamac was able to weaken Chaos, who was defeated and sealed away by the Echidnas.

Events which followed remain lost to history - Knuckles, appointed guardian of the so-dubbed "Chaos Emeralds", was apparently sealed into some form of suspended animation for unknown reasons and the Echidna race mysteriously vanished. At an unspecified point, six of the Emeralds were divided into twelve, while the seventh, the Grey Emerald, was able to control the energies of the others. One set of six Chaos Emeralds (plus the Grey Emerald) remained in a temple on the Floating Island, keeping it airborne, and these Emeralds were the ones that Knuckles vigilantly guarded after his stasis ended. The other set of six were sent to Mobius and scattered. Over time, they lost their individual colours and turned uniformly green (although this may have been due to the tampering of Kintobor, see below).

The Emeralds on Mobius
When the kindly scientist Doctor Ovi Kintobor began his plan to rid Mobius of all evil, he sought out a vessel that could contain such power. He located the six Mobian emeralds, which were highly suited to containing such energy, and planned to transfer into them the negative energy he had collected using his Retro-Orbital Chaos Compressor (ROCC), a machine that utilized golden rings as a main component. Requiring the legendary Grey Emerald - the "control Emerald" - to stabilize the transfer, Kintobor and his friend, Sonic the Hedgehog, searched for one to no avail. Eventually, Kintobor believed that he had developed a way to transfer the energy without the seventh emerald using the ROCC - but just before he was about to do so, he became distracted by a rotten egg and tripped on a cable, slamming the ROCC's control panel with his egg-laden hand. The resulting explosion and Chaos Energy transformed him into Doctor Ivo Robotnik.

The explosion of the ROCC warped the Chaos Emeralds back to the other dimensional Special Zone and restored them to their original colours (although they were occasionally, incorrectly depicted as green even after this). Robotnik possessed no memory from his time as Kintobor, but nevertheless knew of the Chaos Emeralds and coveted their power for himself. Luckily, Sonic managed to recover them before Robotnik was able to get his hands on them. Sonic brought them to Kintobor's underground lab for his brainy friend Porker Lewis to monitor. However, it was discovered that when the Emeralds were brought together outside of certain stabilizing conditions (such as in extreme cold, the presence of Golden Rings, or in the temple on the Floating Island), they would generate and radiate energy, building to a chain reaction. They were once again warped back to the Special Zone, but this time Sonic was struck by the full blast of chaos energy and transformed into the berserk Super Sonic for the first time.

After reclaiming the Emeralds yet again from the Special Zone, Sonic hid them in the North Cave in the Frozen Zone where the sub-zero temperatures rendered them inactive and prevented the spatial warp. They were briefly stolen by Captain Plunder and his Sky Pirates, but before they could heat up they absorbed the pirates' negative energy and turned them into easily-beaten hippies.

In order to keep a closer eye on the gems, Sonic kept them in a refrigerated box at his Emerald Hill Zone headquarters. Robotnik, meanwhile, had encountered the awakened Knuckles and brought the echidna into his service by claiming that Sonic had stolen the emeralds from him. Allowing himself to be captured by Sonic's Freedom Fighters, Robotnik was able to lead Knuckles straight to their headquarters and steal the Emeralds. Knuckles reintegrated the two sets of six into one, with the help of one of Robotnik's devices that took the place of the Grey Emerald. Robotnik then turned on Knuckles, using the device to absorb the Chaos Energy into himself, but Knuckles revealed that he'd secretly had the Grey Emerald all along and he used it to stop Robotnik.

Restored to the Floating Island
The seven Emeralds were returned to the Emerald Chamber in the Hidden Palace Zone on the Floating Island, where they steadily regenerated into their original size. The green Emerald was restored to its status as the Master Emerald, which Robotnik then stole to use as the power core for his new Death Egg; Sonic managed to get it back. The emeralds were able to subsequently remain safe on the Floating Island and allowed Knuckles to generate a protective force field around it, although they were still the cause of some trouble when Sonic was accidentally exposed to them and transformed into an even more deranged, demonic version of Super Sonic.

When the Drakon Empire made contact with Mobius once more, Emperor Ko-Dorr, head of the House of War, secretly entered into a partnership with Robotnik in order to reclaim the Chaos Emeralds and use it to fuel a coup against the other Houses (the House of Magic and the House of Knowledge). As part of a double-cross, Robotnik had his assistant, Grimer, apparently defect to the Drakons and inform them of the Emeralds' whereabouts; the Drakons disabled all of the Floating Island's defenses and Guardian Robots, allowing Robotnik (after Grimer had the Drakon's suddenly teleported away) to teleport in and finally seize control of all the power of the Emeralds. At first, the power seemed too much for his body to contain and he was transformed into a crystalline statue, but this soon proved to be merely a chrysalis stage as his form adapted to the energies it now contained. With the power of the reality-warping chaos energy in his control, Robotnik altered history and subjected Sonic to a series of challenges, until the hero baited him into restoring Knuckles to help him. With the echidna's aid, Robotnik was defeated and the chaos energy drained from his body - but it appeared that he could now no longer exist substantially without it, as its removal caused him to shrink into a sub-atomic state.

The Emeralds were consequently left largely unmolested. The Doctor Robotnik Appreciation Tribe attempted to infiltrate the Island to steal them, but they were betrayed by a group of four thieves. The thieves, led by Ms Alpha, had no intention of stealing the Chaos Emeralds since they knew the Emerald's were too dangerous to mess around with. Rather, they intended to loot the Floating Island's other priceless treasures.

Robotnik himself, restored to normal, subsequently suffered a string of defeats which plunged him into a suicidal depression. Desperate to break his master out of this dark state, Grimer unleashed the Chaos creature (which had formerly been discovered by Robotnik). Raging out of Grimer's control, Chaos headed for the Floating Island, intended to absorb the Chaos Emeralds into itself, but before it could get further than the blue emerald Knuckles jettisoned the remaining Emeralds to the four corners of Mobius. Without the emeralds' power, the Floating Island crashed to Mobius and sank into the ocean. Doctor Robotnik gathered the emeralds to draw Chaos and the Freedom Fighters to his fortress, that they might all die together along with Mobius; Sonic returned to the present just in time to witness Chaos absorbing the remaining emeralds and becoming the monstrous "Perfect Chaos". Following the creature's defeat, the Emerald's were once again in the Freedom Fighter's hands.

Additionally, at one point, a black emerald was shown to be used by a group of shadow creatures in another dimension as a means of gaining access to Mobius. Its relationship to the Chaos Emeralds, if any, went unexplained.

Sonic the Comic - Online!
The online fan-made continuation of Sonic the Comic (viewed by some as an "unofficially official" continuation due to its endorsement by some of the creators of STC) has added a little more to the history of the Chaos Emeralds. Although not explaining how the emeralds were divided into two sets or how the second set came to be on Mobius, the comic has shown them to have been found by Kintobor amongst a cache of abandoned technology left over from the Drakon-Echidna war in the Emerald Hill Zone. It also revealed Chaos Energy could be used for storing computer data and splicing genetics. The Emeralds were briefly stolen by the evil Syndicate, and destroyed the entire Special Zone by absorbing the Chaos Energy that it was made of.