NaNoplot brainstorming
Oct. 12th, 2007 04:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joiedecombatSo I've been stewing on the four fics I owe for that prompt meme I posted, and I will get them all done before the end of the month, I promise.
In the meantime, though, I've also been stewing on that original fantasy idea I'm planning to do for NaNoWriMo. I'm getting a clearer notion of the plot, although there are still a lot of gaps to fill in.
The setting: invented fantasy world, but drawing more influence from periods like the Renaissance and Georgian or Recency England than from the usual medieval standard, with fictionalized pseudosciences like alchemy and a whiff of steampunk. And, as I've already discussed in some detail in earlier posts, factual human reincarnation.
Lead character #1: This is the half-breed character described in previous posts; I might name her Kirara for the similarity to the Japanese word "kirakira," a phenomime for, more or less, the sound of something sparkling. She's a kind of prim and basically practical character; she likes life orderly, and she's built herself a life that is steady and orderly and really not going much of anywhere, because she'd half-consciously decided that there wasn't much point in striving for perfection if she wouldn't live long enough to reach it. Coming from a culture of near-immortals, she is extremely patient and a bit inclined to passivity, having grown up in a culture in which the attitude is that it's better to endure and outlast than to complain or act out. She has no particular desire to attract attention. She also mostly has the immortal culture's attitude toward death: she fears growing old and finds killing repugnant. She's a reasonably accomplished martial artist.
She starts out working as a secretary and sometimes secret bodyguard for an official in a large and prosperous empire, which is how she first encounters--
Lead #2: Former aristocrat and occasional sneaky bastard from a smaller country currently uncomfortably occupied by the empire. Some years back, his country was involved in political negotiations with the empire, but the negotiations kersploded, the character almost got killed, and with the intervention of some third-world shamanism he ended up sacrificing his future reincarnations to preserve his current life in order to fix things and get his country out from under the empire, which took the kersplosion as justification to just invade the place and take over by force.
He was always a bit of a jerk, and the whole situation aggravated those tendencies quite a lot. He's also, as the choice he made implies, a very here-and-now person, in contrast with lead #1 who, again not surprisingly, takes a long view.
So he's spent the intervening years involved in various acts of espionage and sneaky bastardry, trying to stick it to the empire and get his country out from under it, and hoping for revenge against the guy who he feels screwed things for everyone in the first place. In the course of one of his forays he runs into Lead #1. She probably saves his life due to her distaste for killing, although she doesn't care anything much for him in particular. They are thrown together long enough for him to prick her curiosity with his talk about his country's situation and the empire in general, and after he's fled, she does some casual research, somewhat in the hopes that it'll disprove his claims.
It... really doesn't, and she uncovers some details which add up into an unsettling picture mostly involving the primary source of the empire's current power and prosperity, a powerful alchemical fluid called azoth. For instance, the alchemists who make azoth are displaying a marked tendency to go slowly insane. And the birth rate in many areas of the empire is decreasing, particularly around centers of alchemical research. And azoth production appears to me most efficient in areas close to borders where warfare is going on...
It all adds up to a picture that creeps her out enough that she feels the need to dig deeper, which will undoubtedly get her into trouble - and also brings her into contact with--
Lead #3, about whom I currently know next to nothing save that he is the guy - or more likely the reincarnation of the guy - who is most directly responsible for screwing up the negotiations between the empire and Lead #2's home country, which was also his home country. He might have been a high-ranking soldier who was responsible for his country's end of security during the negotiations; whatever his role, at the eleventh hour he found out part of what Lead #1 is now gradually uncovering - which is that AZOTH IS MADE OF PEOPLE. Specifically, azoth is distilled from human souls, preventing them from ever being reincarnated again, and this is Really Bad. There was no time for him to explain things to everyone when he tried to stop the alliance from forming, and between his apparent sudden betrayal and Lead #2's poor reactions, kaboom. Most likely he did get killed - or survived only to be executed shortly thereafter - meaning that it's been some twenty-odd years between that incident and the story's present in order for him to have an adult reincarnation.
So now Lead #2 is trying to get his country free, and Leads #1 and #3 are trying to figure out what to do about the Awful Truth about azoth, and in the process their paths cross and recross and there's friction and unresolved sexual tension and I have no idea how it all gets resolved. Since the process for making azoth is kept reasonably secret, what this may entail is killing the people responsible for it and burning their notes, a course of action which Lead #1 will be Strongly Against. And even if they talk her into it, once a technology has been discovered, it's hard to bottle it back up...
In the meantime, though, I've also been stewing on that original fantasy idea I'm planning to do for NaNoWriMo. I'm getting a clearer notion of the plot, although there are still a lot of gaps to fill in.
The setting: invented fantasy world, but drawing more influence from periods like the Renaissance and Georgian or Recency England than from the usual medieval standard, with fictionalized pseudosciences like alchemy and a whiff of steampunk. And, as I've already discussed in some detail in earlier posts, factual human reincarnation.
Lead character #1: This is the half-breed character described in previous posts; I might name her Kirara for the similarity to the Japanese word "kirakira," a phenomime for, more or less, the sound of something sparkling. She's a kind of prim and basically practical character; she likes life orderly, and she's built herself a life that is steady and orderly and really not going much of anywhere, because she'd half-consciously decided that there wasn't much point in striving for perfection if she wouldn't live long enough to reach it. Coming from a culture of near-immortals, she is extremely patient and a bit inclined to passivity, having grown up in a culture in which the attitude is that it's better to endure and outlast than to complain or act out. She has no particular desire to attract attention. She also mostly has the immortal culture's attitude toward death: she fears growing old and finds killing repugnant. She's a reasonably accomplished martial artist.
She starts out working as a secretary and sometimes secret bodyguard for an official in a large and prosperous empire, which is how she first encounters--
Lead #2: Former aristocrat and occasional sneaky bastard from a smaller country currently uncomfortably occupied by the empire. Some years back, his country was involved in political negotiations with the empire, but the negotiations kersploded, the character almost got killed, and with the intervention of some third-world shamanism he ended up sacrificing his future reincarnations to preserve his current life in order to fix things and get his country out from under the empire, which took the kersplosion as justification to just invade the place and take over by force.
He was always a bit of a jerk, and the whole situation aggravated those tendencies quite a lot. He's also, as the choice he made implies, a very here-and-now person, in contrast with lead #1 who, again not surprisingly, takes a long view.
So he's spent the intervening years involved in various acts of espionage and sneaky bastardry, trying to stick it to the empire and get his country out from under it, and hoping for revenge against the guy who he feels screwed things for everyone in the first place. In the course of one of his forays he runs into Lead #1. She probably saves his life due to her distaste for killing, although she doesn't care anything much for him in particular. They are thrown together long enough for him to prick her curiosity with his talk about his country's situation and the empire in general, and after he's fled, she does some casual research, somewhat in the hopes that it'll disprove his claims.
It... really doesn't, and she uncovers some details which add up into an unsettling picture mostly involving the primary source of the empire's current power and prosperity, a powerful alchemical fluid called azoth. For instance, the alchemists who make azoth are displaying a marked tendency to go slowly insane. And the birth rate in many areas of the empire is decreasing, particularly around centers of alchemical research. And azoth production appears to me most efficient in areas close to borders where warfare is going on...
It all adds up to a picture that creeps her out enough that she feels the need to dig deeper, which will undoubtedly get her into trouble - and also brings her into contact with--
Lead #3, about whom I currently know next to nothing save that he is the guy - or more likely the reincarnation of the guy - who is most directly responsible for screwing up the negotiations between the empire and Lead #2's home country, which was also his home country. He might have been a high-ranking soldier who was responsible for his country's end of security during the negotiations; whatever his role, at the eleventh hour he found out part of what Lead #1 is now gradually uncovering - which is that AZOTH IS MADE OF PEOPLE. Specifically, azoth is distilled from human souls, preventing them from ever being reincarnated again, and this is Really Bad. There was no time for him to explain things to everyone when he tried to stop the alliance from forming, and between his apparent sudden betrayal and Lead #2's poor reactions, kaboom. Most likely he did get killed - or survived only to be executed shortly thereafter - meaning that it's been some twenty-odd years between that incident and the story's present in order for him to have an adult reincarnation.
So now Lead #2 is trying to get his country free, and Leads #1 and #3 are trying to figure out what to do about the Awful Truth about azoth, and in the process their paths cross and recross and there's friction and unresolved sexual tension and I have no idea how it all gets resolved. Since the process for making azoth is kept reasonably secret, what this may entail is killing the people responsible for it and burning their notes, a course of action which Lead #1 will be Strongly Against. And even if they talk her into it, once a technology has been discovered, it's hard to bottle it back up...
