Summoning the Prologue

[aggienaut]

   I had an idea today as I collected wax moth larvae to feed to the chooks. I was thinking about the back-story to the idea I mentioned earlier, of writing a sort of fantasy story in which a character is going around studying the creatures, and I came up with this idea that is actually a pretty good story in itself I think.

   But before we get into that I also wanted to note that I've always wanted to set my fantasy universe on a map of Venus as rendered to have the lower 70% of land under oceans like the Earth. I had played a Civ 3 mod once upon a time on this map and fell in love with how earth-like it is (compared to say Mars which would just be all water in the northern hemisphere and all land in the south, essentially, or the moon or mercury which would be just a mish mash of craters), and the fact that it's a "real map," not something made up of whole cloth.



   Anyway, if stories about elves and orcs make you cross-eyed you may want to skip the rest, but here's my story idea:

   On one of the large islands occupied by elves, a horde of orcs has invaded and been steadily pushing the elves back. Facing annhilation, a powerful elf sorcerer of dark magic decides their only hope is to summon an unholy previously unknown race from another dimension. He sends adventurers to the far corners of their world to bring things needed for the summoning: some coffee beans; some amphorae of tarry rock-oil; perhaps the materials used to make plastic (if "phenol" and formaldehyde can be acquired with iron age technology and maybe some help from magic?) -- and then they must sacrifice a virgin ... wetlands. By dumping this oil and plastic into it. After this unholy ceremony overnight an entire city block of some San Francisco Bay Area city appears in the area of the wetlands overnight, much to the confusion of the occupants. Some reference made by the sorcerer to having grabbed these other-dimensional beings from a time immediately prior to their great decline, assuming they'll be at peak usefulness, and, oh look they're from 2018 and don't know what to do without facebook.

   I initially wanted to do it with Dickensian London but people would probably more enjoy reading about our contemporaries adjusting to living in a fantasy universe. And anyway this obviously sets up a sequel where the humans help the dark elf sorcerer defeat the orcs .... before of course turning on the elf sorcerer because it's bound to happen. And then finally with all this back story out of the way I can get to the business of simply having a character explore the world.

Comments

[wpadmirer.livejournal.com]

I think you should write what you love.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Travelogggggs

[stasia]

I am here, ready and willing to be your cheerleader, beta reader, and total fan of this story, oh my yes.

Hello! Nice to meet you.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha (: (: (: thanks!

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

Cool map. Sounds like an interesting story idea.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I hope I can find really good detail maps of specific areas so I can have it all super accurate (:

[thismaz.livejournal.com]

I do like that map. I suppose you would give it an ice cap at top and bottom, from a global climate POV?

I do love a good map. I once saw a fascinating one generated by dividing a rectangle into gradually smaller and smaller triangles that were randomly coloured blue, green or brown. It didn't take long before it looked very credible.

I'm not sure I would dare introduce a whole city full of people into a fantasy world - too many variables to juggle. The 'One (or two) Person(s) Against the World' trope is my comfort zone. Even the dystopian TV series maximum of about 20 people is more than I would want to try and juggle in a story. I'll be interested to see if you do it.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah ice caps for sure, and some sahara style desert somewhere along the middle.

Yeah city does definitely pose some problems. Like I was thinking oh how am I gonna prevent them from introducing guns and things and with a whole city block (just a city block not a whole city, which will still be a lot of people!) there will probably be several guns at least and probably at least one person with the background in chemistry to actually know how to make gun powder. And they wouldn't have power only... at least someone will have an emergency generator. ....but then again, the fact that everyone else avoids introducing so many people precisely makes it worth doing! I don't want to do what everyone else has done!

[nemophilist.livejournal.com]

That sounds so cool! World building is such fun. I spend ages building mine for my books too, haha. My dystopian and fantasy series ones are my favourites ^_^

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ooh I like dystopian

[picadelphon.livejournal.com]

Yea but elves, a horde of orcs has been played out like Nazi And Zombies..
Something New types of lifeforms..

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

True, but I feel like fantasy stories that make up entirely new creatures would be hard for people to get into because it would all just be too alian and unfamiliar. As funny as it sounds, orcs and elves are actually comfortably familiar to us. What I do envision though is a sort of almost sympathetic view of the orcs, which I'm not sure has been done. Which is to say, I envision them like a community of army ants that exhausts the resources in an area and then moves on, so there'll be a roving community of orcs which isn't just motivated by "evil" and a desire to be bad for the sake of badness, but are kinda just doing their thing .... which obviously comes into conflict with the elves who I picture living more in equilibrium in their environment and get driven out when the orcs come.

Also I want to write a separate zombie novel. (: