Webcomic / AsteroidQuest

Asteroid Quest is a Forum Quest created and DM'ed by Lagotrope on Questden since December 2011.

Asteroid Quest is a somewhat episodic tale about the exploits of a cutthroat trade organization in a technologically advanced world, blending Noir crime drama with a Science Fiction background.

The titular asteroid exerts a powerful gravitational effect that sucks in nearby ships and prevents escape. Over time, many people have accumulated on the asteroid, many of them criminals and fugitives. Some prefer the seclusion and anarchic setting, while others are searching for a way off the rock. A Switching P.O.V. follows various members and employees of a trade hub on jobs around the asteroid. Complications always ensue.

Interspersed with Asteroid Quest is "Polo Quest", a story about a Humanoid Alien Super-Soldier who, on a routine hunting mission, ends up fighting for her life as she gets wrapped up in a colossal conspiracy involving the enemies of her species, long thought dead. Despite being considered an Asteroid Quest derivative, Polo Quest has more than double the number of threads and frequently outpaces its mother quest in popularity.

Read it here — although beware of NSFW things. The quest itself is tame, but fanart is less so.

Notable for making extensive use of "Inside the Quest", a thread on Questden where posters can have Q&A sessions with quest characters. Setting information and character minutiae abound, and Asteroid Quest characters eventually became so popular that separate threads had to be created to give other quest characters room. In late 2015, one character celebrated her 100th ITQ appearance.

Has also spawned two fan-quests:

• Polokoa Quest in April 2013 by Jukashi, of Keychain of Creation fame (who also appears to have participated in the worldbuilding, if some ITQ answers are any indication)
• Tobak Quest in December 2021 by Roaway "Lago's biggest fan", following a member of a recently-uplifted, underground-dwelling race on some planet within the Asteroidverse.

See also Fen Quest, a fantasy quest by the same author, and Unnatural Selection, which is confirmed to be in the same Verse since Polo Quest thread 6.

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Examples of tropes appearing in the Asteroidverse:

Asteroid Quest

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Compilation AIs, though not necessarily evil, have a tendency to be deranged, chaotic, and unreliable due to being Mind Hives. This is a commentary on the site's readers in general, as CAIs are a metaphor for them.
• All There in the Manual: There's a lot of character and setting information in the discussion thread and Inside the Quest. Most of it isn't relevant to the plot, but it does answer a lot of lingering questions many readers have.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Parts 3 and 4 center on a different organization than the trade hub, and follow a single protagonist for the entire ride, a departure from the prior Switching P.O.V. format.
• Arm Cannon: Among other implants, Sharpa has an explosive gel launcher in her arm.
• Audience Surrogate: The compilation AI is the audience in the first thread; however, it was Demoted to Extra in following chapters and now simply serves as an Affectionate Parody of Questden in general.
• The Berserker: Rokoa is on the edge of this. She is still capable of functioning on a normal level, but her empathy is "broken", causing her to feel constant battle-lust.
• Bizarre Alien Biology:
  • Neumono have a decentralized nervous system, multiple hearts, and abnormal diets and growth rates due to their Healing Factor.
  • Mikliks are just weird. They're plant-based, for starters, with a bizarre reproductive system involving seed-like eggs and genitals that can be grown and discarded at will. They have an incredible rate of mutation^*Not genetic mutation, that would lead to reproductive problems; they're "growth" mutations instead, where their body takes some liberties when building itself, resulting in a wide (and bizarre) variance of traits, such as multiple skin layers.
  • Discussed at some points, especially in the Inside the Quest posts. The variety of alien allergens and toxins has given the culinary and medicinal fields no end of grief. Some restaurants explicitly serve only certain species, others carefully prune their menus to accommodate everyone.
  • Yich eaters have three genders — males, females, and "carriers" that serve as incubators during pregnancy. Their genes are not passed on to the child they are incubating, so they gain no evolutionary benefit from this, a fact that was boggled at and discussed in Inside the Quest. They also seem to lack eyelids, which leads them to "blink" by using their long tongue to lick their own eye.
• Boom, Headshot!: Neumono are immune to this; many can even survive decapitations if treated immediately. This is frequently used on other, less resilient characters however.
• Born Lucky: Hok, possibly. He has an amazing tendency to both get in and get out of extremely dangerous situations.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Things take a turn to the dramatic at the end of thread 2, with threads 3 and 4 dedicated to preventing this from happening. Thread 5 switches back to a happier tone.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Neumono biology has shades of this: their empathy can actually cause physical mutations in others based on expectations or beliefs. This is why kings/queens are generally bigger and tougher than normal neumono; everyone expects them to be.
• Combat Medic: ITQ mentions "Sniper Q", a sniper/surgeon with more than two thousand confirmed kills and three thousand other enemy casualties. Rumor has it he's got about as much lifesaving medical interventions under his belt.
• Cool Shades: Lukratsa rozu Steelnaut,◊ the main actor of the Show Within a Show based on the events of Polo Quest, features them. However, she doesn't mind taking them off at request.
• Coup de Grâce:
  • In the first thread, a wounded Lakkat tells Hok he'll keep pursuing him until one of them is dead, prompting Hok to finish him off.
  • After Red is beaten within an inch of his life, Jessica delivers the killing blow.
• Damsel in Distress: Jessica in part 3 and 4. She does, however, take a somewhat active role in her "rescue" by creating an Engineered Public Confession for Red and performing the Coup de Grâce on him after Rokoa's attack.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The "needle trick", performed by impaling a certain nerve cluster in neumono. It temporarily shuts off empathy, allowing for stealth and combat advantages against other neumono, but is a fast track to insanity. Rokoa is fond of it.
• Deadly Upgrade: Even with the right species, bio-armor will kill you from the strain if you aren't resilient enough. However, a "30% mortality" bio-armor doesn't mean it kills 30% of those who try it on: it merely means that the weakest 30-40% of the population know better than try.
• Determinator: Rokoa. Even her name essentially means this.
• The Dreaded: Rokoa. Not only is she a nigh-unstoppable tank of a soldier, neumono say her empathy is "broken", radiating constant bloodlust and a desire for battle.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first thread has a lot of this going on.
  • The use of the CAI as a viewpoint character. This placed more of a focus on resource management of the base (as opposed to the characters' stories). This was scrapped in later threads for the more standard approach of following single protagonists.
  • The tone is darker and grittier (and bloodier) than later threads, which are somewhat more madcap and lighthearted.
  • Rokoa's statement that neumono Cyborgs are impossible due to their Healing Factor is explicitly Retconned four threads later. The in-story explanation is simply that technology has had nearly fifty years^note Or a little less, we don't know exactly when Sharpa crash-landed to improve since Rokoa's warhive crash-landed on the asteroid.
• The Empath: All neumono broadcast their emotions and sense others', constantly. It's actually a biological signal that can be amplified, modified, and translated with various technologies, though it only applies to other neumono.
• Enemies List: A lot of people in the asteroid seem to have a hit list, physical or not. Hok is on most of them, to the point of having an enemies book.
• Engineered Public Confession: Jess starts playing a recording of what Red said about Rokoa as she approaches. In Red's defense, he doesn't lose his arrogance when facing her in-person, and is fully willing to fight her and turn his boast into truth. This turns out to be overconfidence on his part.
• Exact Words: Father Zozu doesn't kill his sons. But when they really cross the line, he can disown them first.
• Fragile Speedster: Mikliks are highly agile with quick reflexes, but can't take many hits.
• From a Single Cell: Averted with the neumono's Healing Factor; there are body mass requirements of at least 50% or so. Beyond that, even they can't recover.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Frequently, most notably for the effect of the bio-armor on the police officer in the prologue. The majority of Red's No-Holds-Barred Beatdown and death is also out of frame.
• Great Offscreen War: The Ultrahive Wars. It was mentioned in Unnatural Selection that they're mostly over and in ITQ that they lasted at least five years, which helps pin them down on the timeline.
• Groin Attack: Rokoa's final blow against Red is a full-body canonball centered on his pelvis.
• Healing Factor:
  • Neumono. They can suvive incredibly grevious injuries — including, if they're tough, lucky, and have access to immediate medical care, decapitations. There are body mass limitations, though — they can't survive being torn in half for instance.^note Well, in average they can't. According to ITQ, the most extreme recorded (or theoretical?) example of regeneration had 47% of body mass left.
  • Mikliks too can regenerate from any injury they survive, but since they lack the organ redundancy of neumono, they can survive much less.
• He Knows Too Much: After foiling Nulba's attempted kidnapping of ill-chosen targets, Hok executes him partly for pissing Mimi off with such a boneheaded move, and partly because he could tell Waska that "Pip" is really Hok. It later proves a bit of a waste, as Mimi soon brokers peace between Hok and Waska.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: Father Zozu, to the point where even Inside the Quest posts only show a picture of his clampers.
• Honor Among Thieves: Mimi cares for those who work for her, enough to call in a few favors to bail Hok and Miss out of jail.
• Humanoid Aliens: Every sapient except yich eaters and salikai, but even they mimic the body plans of Earth animals, keeping the spirit of the trope. Curiously, the author has said he has difficulty drawing actual humans (there's been a grand total of two so far, and one of them was wearing a helmet), and prefers these stylized alien races instead.
• I Have a Family: Itcher uses this as an excuse to get out of dangerous assignments from his Mafia bosses, claiming he has a wife and three kids. He's lying, unlike one of his colleagues.
• I Have No Son!: Father Zozu announcing to Maklata that he crossed the line.
  Father Zozu: Now.... as I have said, I do not kill my sons. But in light of your recent actions, you are no longer any son of mine. (Maklata gets dakka'd)
• I'm a Humanitarian:
  • A semi-common practice among neumono due to their religious beliefs. Pre-contact, this was a big problem for rogues, who were sometimes eaten alive to be forcibly reintegrated into the hive.
  • This is also done pragmatically; neumono ears are detachable precisely to provide an additional food source when resources are tight. Due to Healing Factor the ears can be regrown in times of plenty, allowing for a continuous cycle.
• Implacable Woman: Rokoa. This is partially due to her neumono resilience, and partially just her.
• Improvised Weapon: Hok tosses a neumono bioarmor at a heef police officer, killing him due to species incompatibility.
• Karmic Death: Red, after spending two threads being an amoral, womanizing psychopath, is beaten within an inch of his life by a Groin Attack issued by Rokoa, a woman he claimed he had humilated in battle before. He is then finished off by Jessica, a woman he abused since his first appearance.
• Kudzu Plot: Averted; the plot is fairly simple and straightforward. This is highly unusual for Lagotrope.
• Lighter and Softer: Later threads to thread 1, slightly. Thread 1 portrayed a gritty and cutthroat world with a lot of Grey-and-Grey Morality, and had an alarmingly high body count. Later threads are more madcap in tone, characters display more compassion and companionship, and there are far fewer bloodbaths.
• Lightspeed Leapfrog: The humans' first interstellar Sleeper Starship, in what is now known as "the galaxy's biggest practical joke". After discovering FTL they did send a fast ship to pick up the slow one, but couldn't find it because it had veered off-course from its initial flight plan. It reached its destination roughly on time anyway, finding a big human colony there.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Within Waska's gang, almost everyone but him knew "Pip" was actually Hok, against whom he had a grudge.
• Loveable Rogue:
  • Hok deviates a bit from the norm in that he's willing to kill, but all his victims so far were either trying to kill him, or kidnapping hostages. Regardless, he stays loyal to the trade hub and his friends though thick and thin.
  • Miss has many similarities to Hok, with the major difference of being extremely flirty.
• Mad Scientist: Downplayed by Ben, who, though eccentric and brusque, is sane enough to provide useful and practical services to the trade hub (and to provide a wealth of scientific information to curious readers in ITQ).
• Make Sure He's Dead: Red is chopped to pieces to make sure he can't regenerate enough to survive; he's just that dangerous a threat.
• Matriarchy: Neumono are slightly tilted towards this, with female rulers being more common than male ones and females being seen as slightly more dominant. They're largely egalitarian, however.
• Mighty Glacier: Neumono are strong and nigh-unkillable, but their decentralized nervous system means they have the poorest reaction time out of all the alien species.
• Mind Hive: Compilation AIs are conglomerations of countless sentient AIs. This gives them incredible processing power, but can also make them mentally unstable and unreliable.
• Named After Their Planet: Belenos/Belenosians (the terms are used interchangeably). Their dystopian society ended up bombing itself back to the stone age, so they had forgotten both their planet and their own species' names. When humans came, they named their star after a Celtic sun-god, numbered the planet after the star (as Belenos IV), and the sapient inhabitants after both.
• Non-Action Guy: Kappi, though that may change now that Rokoa has taken an interest in him.
• Not Good with Rejection: Neumono hives towards "rogues" (those who leave them), developing murderous hatred towards them because of reflected and amplified feelings of rejection. Pre-contact, it went to the point of holding an unlucky rogue down to eat them alive.
• Numbered Homeworld: Humans use the "star name and planet number" convention, at least on worlds that haven't been officially named by their inhabitants.
• Offing the Offspring: Father Zozu to Maklata at the end of the Zozu arc.
• Off with Her Head!:
  • Karri decapitates Jessica in the thread 2 Bad End.
  • Discussed in Inside the Quest by a neumono, as neumono are theoretically capable of surviving this if they're lucky.
• Older Than They Look: Neumono can live for over two centuries without visibly aging, so this is inevitable. Rokoa and Pilon, in particular, are well over a century old.
• Perpetual Frowner: Hok adds a resting "mildly annoyed" half-lid to his Pip persona, to set if further apart from his real self's perpetually cheerful expression.
• Perpetual Smiler: How always appears amused at the situation. Rokoa is another example, her resting expression being a Slasher Smile.
• Player Character: The compilation AI in thread 1. Later chapters follow other characters in a Switching P.O.V. format.
• Power Armor:
  • Bio-armor, especially for neumono, which augments their already-impressive physical capabilities even further. Don't try on one made for another species than yours, though.
  • Ordinary power armor also exists, though since they're heavier, they're mostly used by larger neumono and voklits.
• Prehensile Tail: Both mikliks and pomi can manipulate stuff with their tail, and it's noted pomi can be pretty strong with it.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Red is the only villain so far whose aggression is sexual in nature, and much of the drama of threads 3 and 4 involve him trying to rape Jessica. He's also by far the most monstrous villain in the main AQ story.
• Retcon:
  • The Bad End in part 2. Part 3 starts at an earlier point in time, and posters took different actions that led to a better result. The new ending became canon for the larger storyline.
  • In the Pilot, Rokoa says that mechanical augmentations for neumono are impossible due to their Healing Factor. Part 5 introduces a Cyborg neumono with little fanfare; the author says he simply changed his mind.
• Show Within a Show: Kappi and Rokoa watch one that's based on the events of Polo Quest. It contains a hidden message from Polo to Rokoa requesting a rematch. This will likely motivate Rokoa in the future, but the rematch plotline hasn't started yet.
• Slasher Smile: Rokoa. Her actress in the Show Within a Show, Tammi, has become quite good at portraying it.
• Stronger with Age: Neumono do not visibly age; they tend to only get bigger and stronger, if anything. It's later explained that sometime after their second century, they do start visibly aging and die within ten years. Doesn't happen much though, because it's been less than a neumono lifetime since the tribal days, in which few neumono lived long enough to die of old age.
• Switching P.O.V.: Usually in effect; protagonists tend to switch every thread at least. Averted in parts 3 and 4, which followed a single protagonist for the entire journey. The story returned to Switching P.O.V. in part 5, however.
• Was It All a Lie?: Asked by Itcher to the "obvious Honey Trap" whom he let seduce him anyway.
  Itcher: How much of it was a lie?
  Whiskers: Surprisingly little!
• You Have Failed Me: So far, it has taken truly colossal fuckups to trigger this on-screen.
  • Maklata was disowned and killed for his crimes of threads 2 to 4.
  • When Mimi learned that members of her gang had kidnapped members of militarily powerful families, she ordered Hok to "blow that idiot's brain out" for trying something that would have painted a huge target on the gang.
• You Wake Up in a Room: Hok begins the quest inside a sealed container.

Polo Quest

This includes both the "AsteroidQuest Intermission" and Polo Quest proper.

• Action Hero: Polo may be a deconstruction. She is incredibly good at what she does, but it's all she can do; she has no hobbies and finds the concept of functioning in peacetime difficult to contemplate. The fact that her personality has little description outside of "soldier" is discussed, and the resident psychologist character even points out how subsuming her personality into her role is a dangerous psychological risk.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different:
  • The Three Stripes intermission, a lighthearted interlude involving Three Stripes' training to become a neumono therapist.
  • Polo Quest 4 is also from the perspective of Biles instead of Polo.
  • Polo Quest threads 6 and 7 switch perspective to Penn, a completely new character who becomes involved in the salikai's machinations.
• Art Shift: When things get serious, pictures are shaded using hard shadows,◊ producing Chiaroscuro-like images.
• Badass Adorable: Pilon has giant puppy eyes and enormous fluffy ears. He's also an elite soldier.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Polo has one with a Rokoa clone after being injected with a brain dart in Polo Quest. The actual battle takes place during parts 3 and 5.
• Big Bad: Vanski the salikai. Though Unnatural Selection later reveals he's part of a bigger criminal organization called OPA, which sells its services to other organizations like the Alliance of the Silhouette Empire.
• Blood Knight: Rokoa is obsessed with fighting Polo. She cooperates with Polo towards a greater goal only on the condition that they fight a rematch at a later date.
• Cavalry Betrayal: The hive sent by the Coalition as reinforcements turn out to be entirely compromised by mind-control bugs. Fortunately, Polo anticipated it enough to escape.
• Chest of Medals: Polo was awarded a bunch of medals between the end of the Intermission and the start of Polo Quest. They add up to five full rows of service ribbons◊.
• Cold Sniper: Played with. Polo is extremely stoic and goal-oriented, but she frequently displays compassion and sympathy for her friends when they need her.
• The Comically Serious: Polo in Inside the Quest, when posters try to bait her with silly questions.
• Crapsaccharine World: The farm Penn visits in part 6. There are far more kids than adults, and everyone is exceptionally hospitable and accommodating... except for some visiting neumono, who are extremely aggressive and even abusive towards their own hivemates. Penn discovers that some scientists are using a predator to forcefully rewrite every neumono's personality to suit their needs, usually making them extremely subservient to the crime bosses and visiting hivemates. This includes forcing them to feel happy even if their aggressive hivemates decide to abuse them.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • To mainstream Asteroid Quest. While things can get serious in Asteroid Quest, overall the tone is more lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek. Polo Quest has a tighter and more serious plot with higher stakes, and doesn't shy away from the more disturbing aspects of the Verse such as Body Horror and Mind Control.
  • Polo Quest 6 is particularly dark even by the rest of the quest's standards, thanks to having a squishy civilian for a protagonist and a plot that focuses on incredibly disturbing and unethical experiments. The prologue involves the protagonist helping a criminal bury the bodies from a twisted experiment gone wrong, and only goes downhill from there.
• Deuteragonist: Biles in Polo Quest, who is possibly the only soldier in Polo's group who is anywhere near her level of competency. Thread 4 even centers around him.
• Doomed Hometown: Rokoa and Ohidi claim that Polo's hive was nuked. Subverted in that the inhabitants were later revealed to have escaped, so the location may be gone but Polo's family and friends are still alive.
• The Dreaded: Polo gains a reputation as "The Ghost" for her empathy invisibility, an unusual power that makes her strange and dangerous. Taking down a group of maniacal salikai and a powerful warhive almost single-handedly probably earned her some points too.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Some of the setting information provided in the intermission (especially about neumono empathy) is at odds with later chapters and supplemental materials.
• Emotion Control: Creatures known only as "neumono predators" are capable of this by broadcasting false empathy that overwrites a victim's and turns them into a mindless slave. Rikek briefly falls under the sway of one early on.
• Enemy Mine:
  • In the intermission, many of the salikai, normally feared as an enemy of the neumono species, are willing to ally with Polo to take out Rokoa. Subverted in that most of them at least were planning to backstab her, as they were pulling the strings in Rokoa's hive to begin with.
  • Also in the intermission, Rokoa and Polo join forces to assault the salikai-controlled warhive.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Well, not really "evil", but Rokoa had numerous children she cared about very much, even in her Blood Knight state.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Rokoa's sniper clone whenever she appears on ITQ. Same goes for the NCO Arkot or the Smartest Fufa.
• Faking the Dead: After the intermission, Polo is officially stated to be dead by the authorities.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • Rokoa's sniper "clone" documents her transformation, mind-control and slavery to the Salikai as this.
  • Averted for wild predators, whose victims merely suffer mental death over about a month of oblivious bliss. As a soldier from Rokoa's warhive points out, there are some much worse ways to die (or live through) out there.
• Foil: Rokoa to Polo. Rokoa is a giant, emotional Proud Warrior Race Guy obsessed with battle who grew up pre-contact; she is also disillusioned with her hive and in danger of going rogue. Polo is a dwarfish stoic who uses stealth, knowledge, and sniping to win her battles; she also grew up post-contact and has an obsessive sense of duty to her role and hive. Both are skilled warriors with a strong sense of honor and duty.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: It's difficult to be certain, but Polo Quest mostly fits this. All of the villains being male does tip the scales a bit, however.
• Gentle Giant: Three Stripes, like all Predators, is huge compared to neumono, but he's one of the most compassionate creatures around. Katzati is comparable in size to Rokoa but is her polar opposite.
• Guilt-Free Extermination War: Between neumono and salikai. The latter's actions tend to protect anyone killing them from guilt, and themselves seem incapable of feeling it.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Likol blowing himself up in the salikai's faces, right before they could nuke everyone, saving countless neumono lives. Given his involvement in Unnatural Selection, it's possible he was also looking for redemption.
• The High King: The title of ultraking/ultraqueen is pretty much this for ultrahives, which are alliances of neumono hives.
• In Medias Res: The intermission starts during the training mission, "scale the mountain and bring back a moton egg".
• Ironic Echo Cut: The second variant is exhibited during a set of answers in Inside the Quest:
  Poirin: [The Coalition is] far from perfect, even we must admit that, but it's working out well and it's improving every day. It's far better I think than the insanity of the Tree.
  Az: The Tree is awesome and I'm going to tell you why.
• I Want Them Alive!: When Polo learns just how widespread the salikai's mind-control conspiracy is, she notes that they had lots of opportunities to give her an "accident"; an escaped science hiver tells her the salikai are obsessed with capturing her alive. Documents mention plans to use her for creating a "psi-bomb".^note It is not specified what it's supposed to do, but speculation from the name lean towards either killing lots of (or all) neumono psychically, or permanently destroying their empathic link.
• Lighter and Softer: The Three Stripes intermission, in stark contrast with the salikai experiments.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: The salikai's hallucinogenic gas seems to partially work like this, though this may be because of neumono empathy.
• Mad Scientist: The salikai family, to the point of enslaving a neumono science hive.
• The Man Behind the Man: In the intermission, the salikai turn out to be manipulating Rokoa's warhive. They take a more direct approach in the intermission's last thread, taking control of the warhive's ship to try and nuke the entire area; it takes Likol's Heroic Sacrifice to stop them.
• Metaphorically True: Polo's hive was nuked — Ohidi just left out the critical information that the inhabitants managed to evacuate in time.
• Noble Demon: Three Stripes can probably be seen this way from a neumono perspective; he's a member of a species specifically evolved to hunt neumono, but he is very gentle and compassionate towards them.
• Non-Malicious Monster: There are a lot of monstrous creatures on the neumono homeworld, that are only trying to eat: Windbeasts, motons, needleballs and even predators, which have been proven to need neumono flesh to stay healthy. Three Stripes does note however that Four Stripes is a jerk.
• No-Sell: Giant is totally immune to predator Emotion Control.
• Not So Stoic: Polo does not take the total destruction of her hive well. At all.
• Offing the Offspring: While viewing Rokoa's false memories, one of the corruptions involves her mother killing her.
• Off with Her Head!: Rokoa's mother kills Rokoa this way in her false memories.
• Origins Issue:
  • The beginning of part 5 of the intermission is one for Polo, as the hallucinogenic gas causes her to revisit her childhood memories.
  • Polo Quest 3 and 5 are this for Rokoa. During the Battle in the Center of the Mind, Polo goes through all of Rokoa's early memories, so we see her early life and how she became The Berserker.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: Played with in regards to Polo. She is actually rather poor at hand-to-hand combat, but she is incredibly skilled with Sniper Rifles and can silence her empathy, giving her numerous combat advantages. All of this allows her to routinely defeat enemies twice her size.
• Properly Paranoid: Polo. Given she's up against Mad Scientists with hallucinogens, Mind Control, and a Mind Rape creature on their side, this is understandable (and she is often proven right).
• Proud Warrior Race Guy:
  • Rokoa loves to fight, comes from a militaristic hive, and tends to adhere pretty strictly to principles of honorable combat. However, in a subversion, she is Ax-Crazy even by her hive's standards, so her Blood Knight tendencies cannot be attributed to her culture alone.
  • The Tree is, itself, a Proud Warrior Race. Ultraking Az particularly exemplifies the mentality.
• Reluctant Mad Scientist: The science hivers living under the salikai's boot.
• The Reveal: In Polo Quest 5, the reason for Rokoa's broken empathy is revealed: during her Training from Hell, she accidentally triggered the "needle trick", shifting her baseline empathy to the battle high she felt at the time and erasing her memory of the event.
• The Rival: A dark version; Polo is quickly possessed by a murderous obsession with Rokoa, perhaps because she sees herself in her. This eventually subsides and they work together for the Final Battle of the intermission, but Polo still feels an enmity toward Rokoa for a long time afterwards.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • Averted. Polo is frequently thrown into harrowing, stressful situations, but even having her memories and personality attacked by an implanted Rokoa clone has had little effect on her mental health outside of making her Properly Paranoid. Some suggestions are trying to play this trope straight, however.
  • Implied to happen to Polo's enemies on the other hand: Some of the salikai Big Bad's underlings complain that his hatred of her has reached dangerously obsessive levels.
  • In part 6, Penn starts experiencing hallucinations as her guilt and fear for her friends' safety spirals out of control. Fortunately, she can keep it under control by removing her contacts and becoming an Emotionless Girl.
• Sniper Rifle: Polo's main choice of weapon. The best one she got to wield allowed switching between three ammo magazines (such as Armor-piercing, explosive...) without removing them.
• Spotting the Thread: Rakae notices the reports "from Polo" feel off, prompting her ultrahive to intervene.
• The Stoic: Polo. There have been some theories that this contributed to her silencing ability.
• Super-Soldier: Polo. She can turn her empathy off at will, a feat managed only by a few others who were in the same training program as her. This allows her to perform stealth missions (normally all but impossible for neumono) and gives her an advantage in combat, as opponents cannot predict her moves.
• Training from Hell:
  • Rokoa suffered this at the hands of her mother in order to survive in her ruthless hive.
  • Biles's survival training — especially the "final exam" part — was also quite brutal, but wasn't nearly as bad psychologically.
• Wham Shot: Two in the same update, at the end of Polo Quest 6. First we see what Penn looks like without her contacts,◊ (accompanied with a noticeable shift in narration style), then we see her through the eyes of everyone else, discovering the database's title for her: "biological reincarnation of the Sapphire Emperor".

Polokoa Quest

• Abhorrent Admirer: Dastrika's boyfriends in her college years were primarily interested in her because of creepy fetishes that she was emphatically not interested in.
• Action Prologue: And in a somewhat unusual use of the trope, the momentum of the fast-paced opening is mostly retained throughout the entire quest. Back Story and character details are either explained on the fly or relegated to Inside the Quest.
• All There in the Manual: Possibly has it even worse than Asteroid Quest. Pretty much the entirety of characters' backstories, as well as the mechanics of the Alternate Universe, are completely relegated to Inside the Quest.
• Alternate Universe:
  • The Polokoaverse is a whole multiverse of alternate timelines, each with its own Polo Quest and Unnatural Selection. Asteroidverse!Polo vehemently denies their existence.
  • The main plotline diverged at some point around here — Rokoa and Polo were both badly damaged in the explosion, and the only way to make them survive was to stitch the remaining body mass together into a single being. This created Polokoa.
  • The Unnatural Selection CAI's identity as the CAI in the Salikai base from Polo Quest, was considered canon in the Polokoaverse years before it was confirmed in the Asteroidverse: In all universes where Polokoa exists, it invariably becomes her personal CAI, holding her Biological Mashup body together.
  • The multiple-worlds interpretation is apparently canon, going by Inside the Quest; the mechanics of alternate universes are frequently discussed. "Rokolo", an Evil Twin of Polokoa from another universe, has featured prominently in supplemental materials.
• April Fools: Polokoa Quest started as this, on April 1st 2013. It has been running for over two years since, and has spiraled into a much more detailed and serious story.
• Art Shift: The first Transformation Sequence and the rap battle are in full color, and after the second Transformation Sequence, everything from Polokoa's perspective is in full color.
• Ascended Meme:
  • Polokoa herself; the concept originally started as a joke on the discussion boards. Jukashi took the idea and ran with it.
  • Rokolo originated similarly (a poster hypothesized possible other names for Polokoa immediately before she appeared), though it's possible Jukashi had her planned from the start.
• Auto Cannibalism: Much less disturbing than most examples; Dastrika does this in her sleep, which she suspects is a psychological thing. According to her, she tastes delicious.
• Bad Future: Rokolo comes from an Alternate Universe where Polo killed Rokoa after their duel, resulting in a much darker ending to the intermission that basically amounted to wholesale slaughter.
• Blood from the Mouth: Exhibited by Polokoa after her second Transformation Sequence to show how it's overclocking her.
• The Cameo:
  • Saulanna, the protagonist of Jukashi's Lunar Quest, can be seen in the crowd in this shot.◊
  • This guy◊ looks an awful lot like Misho, but that could just be Jukashi's art style.
• Chekhov's Gag: In March of 2015, Jukashi posted this◊ Castlevania parody comic with Rokoa as Dracula and Polo as a Belmont. It seemed like a one-off gag... until Vampire Rokoa showed up in the quest proper, revealing that it was actually Foreshadowing.
• Cool Shades:
  • Polokoa, though they change◊ into a transparent visor◊ after her second Transformation Sequence.
  • Rokolo has them as well, though she drops them◊ almost immediately after she appears in the quest.
• Cyborg: Polokoa, though it's out of necessity. Without her cybernetic enhancements she'd be a blind, twitching blob on the floor.
• Deadly Upgrade: Polokoa's second Transformation Sequence makes her powerful enough to take on an asteroid-sized Eldritch Abomination, but incapacitates all neumono in the area and slowly kills her.
• The Dreaded: Polokoa. Parodied.
  Polokoa: Once I go anywhere with neumono, the alert will go up that I'm in the area. I'd like to go silent, but the last interstellar treaty says I have to give civilians a chance to run away.
• Duality Motif: Polokoa and Rokolo, once The Glasses Come Off. One is pink and one is red, a reflection of Polo's and Rokoa's eye colors. Interestingly, Rokolo's colors are mirrored.
• Eldritch Abomination: Late in the story, there are references to an "External Force" that exists outside of normal reality. Rokolo has apparently been agitating it, and the time cops are highly concerned. In certain fringe universes, it bonds to certain individuals in a symbiotic relationship, giving them magical powers in exchange for furthering its goals. This allows for Fantasy elements in a Science Fiction story.
• Electronic Eyes: Polokoa has these as part of the Cyborg package; eyes were too fragile and complex to survive her "birth", so she had to get new ones.
• Evil Twin: Rokolo, an Alternate Universe Polokoa appearing in Inside the Quest. She comments on the trope.
• Fan Fiction: However, Lagotrope does help out as a consultant, so some details can be considered canon.
• Fusion Dance: Polokoa is a Composite, constructed by stitching giblets of Polo and Rokoa together. This also appears to be a Mental Fusion.
• Gender Bender: Rokolo's Chief was originally male as in Unnatural Selection, but decided to switch to a female appearance sometime before they appear in the story.
• Gender Flip: Chief is female in Rokolo's CAI, while in the story they originate from, he is male. In a subversion, she reveals that she was originally male as well, but Rokolo's CAI played around with body modifications a lot, and she eventually decided she preferred a female appearance.
• Gunblade: Polokoa's glaive.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Dastrika is a predator-neumono (or "predamono") hybrid. This gives her more powerful empathy abilities at the price of some physiological and psychological complications.
• Hallucinations: Discussed and invoked by the mentally unstable Rokolo and her CAI. Afterwards, images of Polo and Rokoa show up whenever the personality fragments speak.
  CAI: You know, Rokolo, a lot of the symptoms of insanity are actually coping mechanisms. Maybe if you let yourself think of the fragments as separate voices in your head, just temporarily, it’d be easier to deal with them? We can help it along right easy by jiggering a few neurons.
  Rokolo: Ugh. I have enough trouble with these girls in my dreams. Alright, bring on the hallucinations.
• Hearing Voices: Rokolo, though it's not standard schizophrenia. She absorbed the brains of Polos and Rokoas from various Alternate Universes, and some personality fragments stuck around in her psyche. When it gets really bad, this can result in Talking to Themself.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: Averted with Father Zozu. He exhibits this trope in his first appearance, but is clearly seen in his second.
• Hidden Depths:
  • The quest itself. Who knew an absurdly over-the-top April Fools parody of Asteroid Quest would contain thoughtful commentary about societies, leadership, racism, and genocide?
  • Dastrika. She barely appears in the quest itself, but Inside the Quest reveals a lot about her, from her scientific background to her political opinions. She was also important in helping Polokoa recover from the trauma of her "birth".
  • Polokoa herself. In the quest she seems like a cocksure, unstoppable warrior, but Inside the Quest reveals her to be a barely-living Body Horror who had to go through years of intensive physical therapy and surgery just to become functional. Then there are her political opinions...
• Hybrid Power:
  • Polokoa. She has both Rokoa's and Polo's abilities while being stronger in general. This applies mentally, too; she has Rokoa's unstoppable willpower and determination reigned in by Polo's stoicism and intelligence, giving her both of their personality strengths while canceling out their flaws. Granted, she does have other complications by virtue of being a hybrid in the first place.
  • Averted with Dastrika, despite her creators' hopes. Her empathy abilities aren't nearly as impressive as a predator's on their own, and she requires technological augments to do the really impressive stuff. She's also quite frail physically due to her organs not working perfectly. Possibly played straight mentally, as she has the social/communicative skills of a neumono while retaining the tactical/multitasking intelligences of a predator.
• An Ice Person: Vampiresque Rokoa and her mother had magical powers over ice.
• In Medias Res: The story begins with Polokoa crash-landing on the asteroid, with her mission unknown to the readers until the end of the introduction.
• Ironic Hell: Of a sort. The personality fragments absorbed by Rokolo are imprisoned by their own specialties within her mindscape — for instance, a Rokoa with magical ice powers is imprisoned in a block of ice, while a Polo who studied structural engineering is buried under rubble and construction materials.
• Lighter and Softer: Is much more comedic, optimistic, and madcap than Asteroid Quest.
• Mad Scientist: Rokolo, though she insists she's a mad engineer.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Polokoa downplays the damage her Deadly Upgrade causes her, though her CAI helpers enjoy undermining her aloofness.
  Polokoa: I'm fine.
  CAI: Hey, now that we have a moment, we can vent your lungs a bit.
  Polokoa: Huaghk! Argh. What have I told you about humorously undercutting me?
• Most Common Superpower: Rokolo lampshades this in her◊ shirt◊ choices.◊
• Painting the Medium: After the "Rashomon"-Style split, certain panels contain◊ differences◊ between the two◊ versions.◊ It's theorized that this reflects the differences between the narrators' personal perceptions and reality.
• Power Armor: Polokoa's neurosuit, which is bio-armor taken up to eleven.
• "Rashomon"-Style: For the semifinal act, the story is split into two threads; one continues to follow Polokoa as the viewpoint character, while the other follows Rokolo. The two were updated simultaneously, allowing readers to pick one side or see both viewpoints on the story develop simultaneously. There are a few subtle◊ differences◊ between the two as well.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Pokoloa is the blue, Rokolo is the red. Ironically, Rokolo is the Science Hero while Polokoa is the Guile Hero, reversing the normal tendencies of this trope.
• Science Hero: Rokolo can be interpreted as this if you take a sympathetic reading of her. She's definitely of the Anti-Hero variety, however.
• Splash of Color: Inverted; as in Unnatural Selection, characters are black-and-white while most background elements are in color. Played straight with Vampire Rokoa (who is fully colored) and the eyes of Rokoa and Polo fragments in Rokolo's mindscape.
• Super Mode: Polokoa's second Transformation Sequence makes her incredibly powerful, but it comes at the cost of incapacitating all the neumono in the area and slowly killing her.
• Talking to Themself: The first indication that Rokolo is less stable than she claims to be. In a subversion, it's not a symptom of wholesale insanity, but rather the side-effects of her Mad Scientist experiments and her Bizarre Alien Biology. It's still not a good sign, of course.
  Rokolo (from Polokoa's perspective): Fuck, ‘they’ don’t even really exist! It’s just parts of my mind being a bit delusional. That’s a- Shut UP Polo you’re an aerospace engineer you don’t know SHIT about neurobiology OR psychiatry!!
• There Are No Therapists: Averted; Dastrika's one, and she helped Polokoa through a lot of trauma in the Backstory.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Rokolo's reasoning. A bit better than most examples, as her ultimate goal is to perfect Time Travel such that she can correct every tragedy in the timeline, including her own villainous actions.
  Rokolo: But it doesn’t matter how much trouble I cause. Once I’ve fixed everything in my timeline, I’ll be free, and I’ll have the time and the power to pay back any karmic tab you could ever put my name to.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Rokolo does terrible things, but her motives are just: she wants to create a perfect timeline where she can avert her Bad Future.
• Your Mom: Rokolo says the gender-flipped version in her first appearance.

The Christmasverse

An Alternate Universe featuring Polo and Rokoa in a Buddy Cop Show. Currently contains two stories, "The First Neumono Christmas" and "The First Neumono Valentine" (the latter of which contains NSFW elements).

• Air-Vent Passageway: Double Subverted: Rokoa mentions that these days no one builds air vents big enough for people anymore... except those with arkots on their payroll (which is pretty much only salikai).
• Bluff the Eavesdropper: Jules knows his house is bugged, and uses sign language to give information to Polo.
• Chekhov's Gun: Midway through, the possibility of empathically-powered weapons are brought up only to be dismissed as impossible. Naturally, a Power Rangers parody under the control of the Big Bad immediately shows up wielding said weapon. Easily dismissed as a one-off gag, but in fact, the Big Bad's plan involves a similar superweapon, powered by the collective sadness the neumono race will experience upon discovering that Christmas has been ruined.
• Christmas Special: Started on Christmas Eve 2014. It went a little long, though, ending in May of 2015. It also has shades of parody — this is the first time neumono are trying out the experience, so everyone is rather awkward and confused about the whole thing. The villain is also literally called "The Grinch" by everyone who doesn't know their true identity, and provides an absurdly over-the-top Final Battle.
• Emotion Bomb: As Pilon demonstrates, a proper neumono bark is not just vocal, but also psychic.
• Fatal Family Photo: Lampshaded by Polo, who immediately asks Rokoa if she's going to also tell her she's two days from retirement.
• How the Character Stole Christmas: Subverted and spoofed. How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is explicitly referenced, and the Big Bad's plan is to use the resultant sadness of the neumono race to power his superweapon. However, these being neumono, they instead react with anger, foiling his plans and causing a huge mess for the police to clean up.
• Impostor-Exposing Test: The fake Rokoa cuts herself to prove she can bleed, but the drop of blood refuses to completely detach from her, exposing her as a fufa.
• Mall Santa: Pilon works as one, much to Polo's denial and horror (because it means she'll have to pass as a child, and she hates when that happens).
• Mythology Gag: In Unnatural Selection, there was a one-off gag in a discussion thread about Alison being a cruel crime boss in cycle #1700. Here, while Polo's ultrahive's CAI uses Alison as a spokesperson, the Grinch's CAI has mafia!Alison.
• Native American Casino: Lots of such places in Voklit territory.
• Revealing Cover-Up: Jamming communications ends up warning Polo of the incoming attack.
• Running Gag: Polo's denial of alternate universes extends to the cop version of her.
• Saving Christmas: The gifts have been stolen! It's up to Polo and Rokoa to get them back.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Heroic example. Many players asked this upon seeing the Big Bad try to make his getaway within range of Polo's guns. Polo obliges, ending the Final Battle somewhat anticlimactically.

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