Phoenix Revolution

Phoenix Revolution, typically referred to as just Phoenix or PHNX, was the 3rd Discord server in the MROU community. Its RP is the only one in the community's history to host a name different from that of the server's, being subtitled "Reflected Cosmogony," or abbreviated as PHNX:RC. It's noteworthy for switching to a fully private server style, and giving all members administrative permissions, making it less of a "RP server" and more of a "hangout group for friends."

Origins of Phoenix Revolution
After a combination of events caused MROU Heroes's server to collapse and community to split and leave, many members were completely hopeless for the future of their community they had formed together for the previous year and a half. Even generally lighthearted and optimistic people had begun to accept the community was over after the end of MROU1. However, in spite of this, two servers would come about and revive the broken community after the end of MROU1: DreamRP (see DreamRP below), and Phoenix Revolution, called the rehabilitation group at the time. When MROU1 ended, Sani was concerned for the happiness and wellbeing of Brett, founder and leader of the past server, so he made a group with him, Spooki, and Kuiroko in it. The group was simply called "MROU Rehab," and was made with the sole goal of cheering people up and hanging out after the fall of the server. Eventually, more MROU1 regulars would be added to the group, and it would be used for a couple of days to chat and hang out, without a need to worry about server or RP drama anymore. However, after it had already reached Discord's group member limit of 10 fairly quickly, Sani decided to create a server for it so more could join. This server was different from the past two servers, where all the members were considered close friends, rather than as "members of a discord server," and as such, there was no role hierarchy. All members were given administrative permissions from the beginning, allowing them to create+edit roles, create+edit channels, pin+delete messages, and generally do anything the owner of the server could.

Origins of PHNX's Name & Icons
Not long after the server was made, it quickly shifted from a single chat channel to MROU1's style of categories and different channels. With it quickly growing into the next MROU server, the members had to discuss what they want the name and icon of this new server to be. After a brief discussion, the general census was that the new image for the server should represent a new beginning, or a revolution. One suggestion that came from Brett was "The Phoenix Revolution," as he described the server as being "like a phoenix rising from the ashes." The name would be agreed upon and stuck for the server's lifespan.

The server's icon, however, was a different issue altogether. The group was trying to avoid using the MROU logo again, as they wanted to avoid Phoenix becoming "MROU 2." Several members designed different icons, some of which would temporarily stick, while others would be scrapped. Brett drew an icon at one point that depicted a bright, colorful, stained-glass reminiscent bird, representing the mythical phoenix creature. However, the server icon was jokingly changed by someone several weeks later, and Brett lost his backup files beforehand, so this icon was lost forever, and instead replaced by a placeholder Sani drew the year before then, when trying to come up with a logo for MROU Heroes. This icon stuck for most of the server's life, though any replacements that were made are no longer archived and lost to time at the moment.

The Phoenix Community
Phoenix Revolution's community was one of uncertainty and confusion for some time. At the beginning, though people were happy to be together again, they were afraid of drama from MROU Heroes starting up again and causing the server to end once more. In light of this fear, it was agreed upon that before anyone could join, an incredibly high majority of members must vote for them to be allowed in. No longer was the MROU community open to the public and fairly easy to join, but now it was strictly private, and often kept a secret outside of the server itself. This decision, though emotionally hard on many members who felt bad about leaving friends out of the server, was generally successful in preventing a lot of tension and fear of a MROU1 level collapse happening again. Later in the server's life, though, these strict member restrictions would eventually loosen significantly, and more people were allowed to join with less strict terms.

It can be noted that the Phoenix era was one of the more creative for the community. After the end of MROU1's RP, many artists and non-artists at the time began to draw and write more, deciding to give their former characters more unique designs and focus more heavily on their personalities. General community interests generally remained the same from MROU1: Many members were still fans of similar anime and videogame franchises. Series that became somewhat more popular to talk about, in and outside of RP included Xenoblade Chronicles 2, The World Ends With You, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, and more. It should also be noted that there was no real role / member hierarchy, as all members had equal powers to create and change roles. The role system reflected that of MROU1, where there were groups based on interests that members self-assigned to themselves. Many of the same groups from MROU1 would be carried over and either kept the same or experience minor name changes in Phoenix.

The RP Social Divide
A topic that was first brought up occasionally near the end of MROU Heroes, the argument of if MROU's community should be RP-first or people-first, became significantly more prevalent with the rise of Phoenix and DreamRP. Many members of Phoenix held the belief that the community doesn't need the RP to survive, and as a result, started playing games and talking to other members beyond the server much, much more frequently. Many people, however, still did enjoy roleplaying, and tried hard to make things work out in Phoenix's RP, Reflected Cosmogony. Sometimes, this social divide would result in some people not getting along as well as they used to, or even cutting ties altogether until making up after the end of the PHNX era. This was especially true of those who held a large part in the creation of the first 3 MROU servers, and those who held a major part in making the DreamRP server.

DreamRP: Moving Past MROU
As mentioned earlier, there was an unofficial RP server created to fill in the void that had been created after MROU Heroes, and in turn, its RP, had abruptly ended. Almost immediately after the fall of MROU1, SF veteran Trollzor worked together with others to create the server that is now known as DreamRP. It was similar to SF in the regard that it had a main plot and setting already determined by the server's leaders close to the beginning, making the RP fast and easy to get started up and going. Though a good handful of members did join DreamRP, it isn't considered a mainline, official MROU server in the community's history, due to two main factors: For one, MROU founder Brett was not present there, and thus, neither was MROU in any official capacity. Secondly, a bigger majority of MROU's members would go on to join Phoenix instead, and as a result, the following servers in the community's history would be founded by Phoenix members, not DreamRP members.

DreamRP Plot and Setting
The main plot of DreamRP was spearheaded by Trollzor, the founder of the server. It began with characters entering a new location through a portal, a harbor that Trollzor (character) claimed to be his own. It consisted of several docks and a boardwalk hosting several houses for characters to live in, serving as the main setting of the roleplay. The island upon which the harbor was present was an important setting housing different places to explore, but one of the most noteworthy places in the RP, according to its members, was the Crystal Mine. It was supposedly one of the most developed areas, being a cavern with crystal gems that all served different functions and purposes. Deep within, one of Troll's characters, Shine, was stuck inside one of the crystals. She joined the party as one of the main characters after being freed, and would become a recurring character in Troll's cast.

The RP itself would go on for some time, as characters would go on several adventures together in the new world they were taken to. After it died down sometime in early 2019, it was wrapped up, and concluded by saying all of its events were a dream, similar to the ending of Super Mario Bros. 2. Due to this, some of its events are still canon to some people's characters, as it's easy to implement a series of dreams into other stories.

Community Reception
DreamRP is generally well-regarded when looking back on it. Those who participated in it found it fairly enjoyable. At the time, it wasn't talked about much in the Phoenix side of the community, as some people would see it as "competition" or as "the other side of the community." Despite the presence of some dichotomy and debate among it and PHNX's members back when both were active, members of both servers have come back together since then and don't have any hard feelings over it. DreamRP is noteworthy for technically being the only spinoff / side RP to ever really succeed in MROU's history, as several other attempted spiritual successors / spinoffs would end up failing shortly after being started, such as DRMLNK, SF2, and KSRP. DreamRP is one of, if not the only instances in which an RP was started by former MROU members, and proceeded to run effectively for a solid amount of time after its inception.

The Phoenix Roleplay: Reflected Cosmogony
Phoenix's roleplay wouldn't be decided upon until quite a bit of time after the server's inception. It wasn't until a couple weeks after MROU Heroes fell apart, DreamRP started, and Phoenix Revolution was created that talks of a Phoenix RP would begin. The debate for what the RP would be was intense: days upon days of server talk was full of ideas, arguments, and frustration. Suggestions ranged from going back to MROU1's style, to making a drastically different setting and tone for the RP universe. At the end of it all, it was reluctantly decided that suggestions from several members would be combined to create the setting and tone, while Sani, Brett, and Spooki, the creators of the three MROU community's servers to that point, would work together to make the overarching story and plot.

For the first time in the history of MROU, and the only known instance still to date, the RP would be given a name separate from that of the server's: Phoenix ~ Reflected Cosmogony. This decision was made by Sani, who came up with the name due to the RP's nature of connecting the community's past RPs to the present."'The name really isn't that creative if you think about it- Cosmogony is the study of beginnings. The beginning of time, the universe, how stuff came to be, y'know. Phoenix was not only the beginning of new characters and a new world- but it was also a new beginning for our old characters and their worlds that were never given proper closure.'""-Sani, on Phoenix: Reflected Cosmogony's name"

Setting: Among Earth and Sky
PHNX-RC was unique in the sense that it was trying to allow for the freedom MROU Heroes provided, while also giving off a tight sense of a very present main plot like SiIva Forces had. The main setting was split off into two different areas: The Aether, the land of the sky in which civilization thrived, and The Surface, where the dangerous wastes lied. The idea would be that people could choose between either having their characters live in the aether for a more MROU-styled RP, or they could live in a survival camp on the surface for an SF styled tone. In the end, though, most people chose to have their characters in the aether, as it was more user-friendly and community driven than the surface. The reason for this is that the surface was rampant with corruption and debris, remains of a broken planet that was once something else. This was actually symbolic for SF and MROU's worlds collapsing suddenly, taking inspiration from the likes of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Nier: Automata for its locales.

Though the surface was very rarely inhabited, some groups of characters did tend to explore it quite often, as it was a good canvas for starting arcs, taking advantage of the mystery of the ruins. As stated before, though, most arcs took place in the main city most characters lived on, on the particular floating island of the Aether they started out on.

Plot: What's Old is New Again
The main plot of PHNX-RC was kept quite secret for some time early on in the RP. At first, it was seemingly just about learning about an old, post-apocalyptic planet, but it would eventually be revealed that the world was the target of an all-consuming entity that destroys entire multiverses, including the past two RP settings, SF and MROU1. This would explain why many characters returning from those two RPs had no memories, and looked different from an aesthetic viewpoint; they were the same characters, but it was an AU. Unlike MROU1, where it was generally taboo to use characters who were aware of the previous RP's existence, it was actually not only allowed, but encouraged in PHNX-RC. People would eventually be allowed to use 1-2 characters taken directly from an older RP, memories and abilities fully in-tact.

This main, antagonizing force was never given a final name, though Spooki nicknamed it "Terminal" while planning. The idea behind Terminal is that he would be used as a plot device to go back to SF, as well as MROU1, and give an in-universe explanation for everything ending so suddenly, as well as eventually going back and giving them full, proper closure at the end of PHNX-RC's main story. Ironically, though, a server vote decided that PHNX-RC would be ended and replaced with a reboot of MROU, long before the proper end of PHNX-RC could actually come.

Ending & Aftermath
As of now, Phoenix: Reflected Cosmogony is the only time in the MROU community's history when an RP had a proper final arc, aside from Realms of Ifrit (2020). The original idea for the ending of PHNX-RC was completely abandoned after the decision to abruptly scrap it was made, as the writers agreed it wouldn't make sense without the several arcs that were supposed to lead up to it beforehand. So, Spooki took the reigns, and performed a finale arc, which tied heavily into his own story arcs he had been doing prior in SF and MROU1 prior. A lot of build-up, twists, and reveals led to a final battle atop a tower (in homage to SF, in which the main villain resided in a tower), where the end result would be the Aether being destroyed, islands falling and crashing into the surface world below. After the destruction, waterfalls began to fall from the tower, as the once-ruined world was slowly, but surely, over plenty of time, born anew. Plant life took over, animals came back to the surface, and the planet was left behind as a beautiful memory of renewed life.

This ending was generally well received.

The End of Phoenix
Unlike MROU1 and SF, the Phoenix server itself never actually fell apart. In fact, the server was simply rebranded when the RP change decision was made, and ownership was transferred over.

Swapping Ownership
Sometime just around the middle of PHNX's lifespan, Sani, who created and lead the server from the beginning, ended up leaving all MROU-related servers for a couple of weeks due to built up emotional stress that came out suddenly one day. Before doing so, he transferred ownership back to Brett, then made his leave to do some self reflection and work out the personal problems he was dealing with. In doing so, the beginning of the end was marked for PHNX, as without the original creator and primary writer for the RP, the server would inevitably struggle to stay afloat while trying to respect the original ideas and concepts that it was founded on.

Phoenix: Reflected Cosmogony Problems
Though the ideas for Phoenix's RP were well received and seemed exciting to many members of the server, it didn't work out in practice nearly as well as it did on paper. No major story arcs were ever actually executed, primarily due to Sani's shyness and uncertainty after several things from MROU1 made him much less confident in leading arcs. Being the main writer for the story, he was in charge of executing the main story arcs, but never did. This led to an RP that, while solid in the setting, felt lifeless due to a lack of support from its main creators. This was what eventually started up discussions of abandoning Phoenix's RP, but everyone agreed they did not want to leave the server or start a new one. A vote was held to determine what the new RP would be, and the winning vote was a reboot of MROU1, titled MROU-EX: FiNAL REMiX.

Trivia / Fun Facts
Some other interesting tidbits of interesting regarding PHNX...


 * As mentioned earlier, PHNX's RP is the only one to have a name separate from the server's. There was no reason for this, it just "seemed cool."
 * Phoenix is the server with the smallest amount of member growth, as there were very few exceptions made to the "everyone must agree before allowing an invite" rule.
 * Phoenix had the shortest running RP of any MROU server, not even making it from 2018 to 2019. In that sense, Trollzor's DreamRP technically lasted longer than the official RP at the time did.
 * Every server's RP had some major influences and inspirations. For example, SF had SiIvaGunner and Kirby: Planet Robobot. MROU1 had Xenoblade Chronicles X and the Persona series of games. PHNX took inspiration from a wide variety of different sources, including the Sonic the Hedgehog OVA, Nier: Automata, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and more. It arguably took the most inspirations of any RP, thanks to the fact that it also involved other RPs into its story and setting.
 * Phoenix (and by extension, MROU-EX) was the only server to follow the strictly private format. SF and MROURes were/are fully public, while MROU1 and Realms of Ifrit were on an "invite whoever you want" basis.