A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

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Czernobog
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A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Czernobog »

A Day of Wrath

Prologue: Reflections


The iron battleship floated on the azure-blue ocean, propellers giving it great speed as its nuclear reactor burnt, providing it power. Ahead of it was a distant shore-line, a beach with high cliffs on either side of it, looming menacingly. General Davian wondered what lay beyond. Standing on the deck of the Battleship, his ray-pistol holstered at the hip, bearing the proud, black-embroidered-with-gold uniform of the Tzakatharan military, he looked anxious.

Of course, Tzakathar's developments were grand and beautiful. The city of Tzaranath's skyscrapers and monuments loomed high in his memory, as did the Athenia Bay Launch Centre, that had put the first man in space. But there were darker things, the Great War that had ended just 7 years ago, killing millions and advancing science and thaumaturgy greatly, but ended 20 years of peace. Tzakathar had not been entirely spotless in that conflict, and Davian shuddered at the memory of some reports that had come his way.

It seemed insane, come to think of it. The other side of the planet had been completely unknown, until the first man in space had seen, from orbit, a sizeable continent. Exploration teams had been readied, but Tzakathar had been first, and it looked like its team, comprising of several warships lead by the IMV Hyperion, the ship he was on, would make landfall first. Approximately 13 Divisions were part of the team, 4 of them tank divisions.

He worried and fretted, but it seemed that they would make landfall soon, and that filled his spirits with hope. Hopefully, they would find little trouble, compared to what they had gone through to reach this far.

Then came Loyalty Officer Thule, the senior Panopticon Officer attached to this expedition. It was his duty to ensure its loyalty, and to keep order and loyalty throughout it. If it was successful, they would build up a base camp on the shore and begin exploring this unknown continent. He hoped it would be fruitful.
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Booted Vulture »

1) As always, a paragraph or two, do not make a chapter make.
2)Why do I care about Davian? I don't. He's nothing but a name attached to some flimsy exposition.
3) They are travelling by nuclear powered battleship to a continent they only know about because of space travel. There is no part of this that makes sense. Tech levels = fucked up.
4) Don't review whore via PM, I feel I'm going to serious regret encouraging you by even positing this much.
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Czernobog »

Booted Vulture wrote: 4) Don't review whore via PM, I feel I'm going to serious regret encouraging you by even positing this much.
Okay, I'll stop it then.
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Kingmaker »

Okay, time to break this down.
Kamin997 wrote: The iron battleship floated on the azure-blue ocean, propellers giving it great speed as its nuclear reactor burnt, providing it power. Ahead of it was a distant shore-line, a beach with high cliffs on either side of it, looming menacingly. General Davian wondered what lay beyond. Standing on the deck of the Battleship, his ray-pistol holstered at the hip, bearing the proud, black-embroidered-with-gold uniform of the Tzakatharan military, he looked anxious.
Alright. Not brilliant, certainly, but good enough, I guess. Except the last sentence. Police are investigating the heinous assault on the English language. From the structure of that sentence, it would appear that the ray-pistol is the one bearing the uniform (and you don't bear a uniform--you might bear an insignia).
Of course, Tzakathar's developments were grand and beautiful. The city of Tzaranath's skyscrapers and monuments loomed high in his memory, as did the Athenia Bay Launch Centre, that had put the first man in space. But there were darker things, the Great War that had ended just 7 years ago, killing millions and advancing science and thaumaturgy greatly, but ended 20 years of peace. Tzakathar had not been entirely spotless in that conflict, and Davian shuddered at the memory of some reports that had come his way.
This piece of exposition is entirely out of place. And awkwardly written. He goes from being anxious to musing about how awesome his country is to thinking about not-WWII. Is he ADD?
It seemed insane, come to think of it. The other side of the planet had been completely unknown, until the first man in space had seen, from orbit, a sizeable continent. Exploration teams had been readied, but Tzakathar had been first, and it looked like its team, comprising of several warships lead by the IMV Hyperion, the ship he was on, would make landfall first. Approximately 13 Divisions were part of the team, 4 of them tank divisions.
What. These people apparently have the exploratory impulse of a corpse. They didn't notice an entire continent until they made it into space, despite having nuclear-powered battleships? Does not compute. And is there a reason they're sending a whole army to explore a continent instead of, say... scouting expeditions? Do they have any reason to expect sufficient resistance to require 100,000+ soldiers?
He worried and fretted, but it seemed that they would make landfall soon, and that filled his spirits with hope. Hopefully, they would find little trouble, compared to what they had gone through to reach this far.
How are they going to make landfall? You can't exactly drive a battleship onto a beach and disembark troops. You're going to need a butt-ton of landing ships unless you brought along a portable harbor facility. Also, we've already established that he's anxious, so you don't need to tell us that again.
Then came Loyalty Officer Thule, the senior Panopticon Officer attached to this expedition. It was his duty to ensure its loyalty, and to keep order and loyalty throughout it. If it was successful, they would build up a base camp on the shore and begin exploring this unknown continent. He hoped it would be fruitful.
So he's worried but hopeful. I think I got it now.

Okay, a quick C&P into a word processor reveals this to be 328 words, excluding the title. This is not a chapter. This is barely a page. Make it 8-10 times longer, but covering more or less the same events, and then you'll have a good start. The prose could use work, but baby steps, man, baby steps. Show, don't tell, tends to be over-emphasized in writing, and stuff like this is why. Quite literally, nothing has happened here. We have basically no character, no action, no dialogue, and a starting scenario that seems utterly nonsensical upon even rudimentary examination.

Looking at your other stuff here on O1, it seems pretty clear to me that you've yet to develop any decent writing habits, and you look like you're on your way to developing plenty of bad ones. I think you need to sit back and consider what it is you're doing wrong.

Grade: D- Unacceptable. Put more effort into this project next time.
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Mobius 1 »

You don't need an STB 60 pages, but I try to at least get to around 10 pages in size twelve TNR before I consider a chapter of minimum length.
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Acatalepsy »

My advice is to write snapshots. Short, self contained images that try and sum up the way your world works in a nutshell. It's easier, and its more useful for a fledgling universe to have three or four unconnected snapshots than a single chapter of a novel that isn't going to get finished.

Because otherwise, I have to go with Kingmaker. Unacceptable.

One thing my Creative Writing class does is try freewriting. Simply start, and then keep writing, for a good twenty minutes. Don't stop, don't go back, just keep pumping out content - you can go back and fix it later, the important part is to get words out on paper (or a computer screen). That's the only way to be sure that an idea that sounds Totally Awesome (tm) in your head isn't actually a complete pile of drek when read, and the best way to find any hidden gems that practically beg to be expanded on.
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Siege »

I'm not as bad as Mobius -- my own chapters typically clock in at five pages or so, but that's only because I favour quick-paced chapter-release over his 'mega-dozen-page release after half a year of anticipation' method. Even so, I have to agree with the consensus here: your prose is deeply flawed for several reasons. One, you're posting nothing but a few paragraphs. That's not a story, that's the beginning of a prologue. Next, if you're going to drop exposition in a story, space it out over a few chapters. Your readers do not necessarily have to know what is going on right away. In fact, if you can make the introduction interesting enough it's probably a good idea not to immediately tell them too much about the setting, because if you carefully dose your exposition your readers will keep coming back even if your last chapter wasn't too heavy on the action.

Basically then, you're dropping too much stuff into too little text. Take a literary breather, and focus more on character development instead of exposition. Exposition is boring anyway, people don't like reading too much of it, so you're probably better off leaving your readers in the dark, or at least for the first part of the story. There's no particular need to explore in detail who these guys are in the first chapter, you can leave that for the next few.
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Destructionator »

Booted Vulture wrote:3) They are travelling by nuclear powered battleship to a continent they only know about because of space travel. There is no part of this that makes sense. Tech levels = fucked up.
Kingmaker wrote:They didn't notice an entire continent until they made it into space, despite having nuclear-powered battleships? Does not compute.
Lollerskates - I have exactly this in my ase verse history. Well, not exactly; mine wasn't a battleship, but it could have been.

If they have everything they want close to home, why spend the resources sailing around the world? There's no requirement for someone to go around the world before developing nuclear power nor spacecraft.

EDIT:

Perhaps people tried to make the trip too, but none of them came back, so nobody considered it worth the risk to try again (until now of course :P - maybe satellite images or communication has boosted people's confidence).

Why did none of them come back? So many possibilities. Perhaps geography makes it incredibly hard (they could be living on a small continent with water bigger than the Pacific between them any any other land mass). Perhaps there's something so wonderous there that once people see it, they don't want to come back.

Or maybe there's something so horrible there that people can't come back....


EDIT 2:

Or, back to geography, people went out, and they DID come back - seeing nothing. Imagine if the only continents in the world were Europe and Australia. You could sail right around the world several times and never see each other. They figure it is a water world except for their home. Then satellite images prove otherwise.
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Somes J »

^ I don't know, given that we managed to find places like Hawaii and the Kerguelen and Crozet Islands with eighteenth century technology I'm somewhat skeptical of the plausibility of an entire continent remaining undiscovered until the space age.

I guess it's possible though.
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Invictus »

I would agree that it's possible, if the Tzaranath didn't share the same history and seafaring culture with Europe. Take China, for example. Instead of "Europe and Australia" world, if you got your start as the top dog on an immensely resource-rich continent the size of Asia, and furthermore is a landbound empire with no compelling foes and boxed in by seemingly worthless deserts and mountains, *and* developed a metastable culture that allows the population to inhabit the same land for thousands of years, then you wouldn't develop much of an impulse for exploration. Europeans found all those tiny islands because they were crazy people who had to sail everywhere.
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Destructionator »

Somes J wrote:^ I don't know, given that we managed to find places like Hawaii and the Kerguelen and Crozet Islands with eighteenth century technology I'm somewhat skeptical of the plausibility of an entire continent remaining undiscovered until the space age.
A big difference is the real world has a lot of ports and we knew there was something out there of interest.

You might stumble upon Hawaii when starting from California and heading toward Asia. Hawaii is what, about 4000 km out? A lot of distance, but it isn't like the 14,000 if you are leaving from Eurpoe and looking for Australia.

For the thing of interest, Europeans already knew there were things of value out there. There's the Spice in Asia, known from going there across land. They had reason to believe that going across sea meant the spice could flow more freely, so they went.

Imagine if it wasn't there though. Why sail in the first place? Maybe they just want to see what's out there.

So they head out, and see nothing but water for 15,000 km; they leave Paris and end up Moscow. They could have done that in 2500 going straight over land, or about 3500 by simply sailing south around Europe. The expedition certainly didn't pay off!

They head north or south, and hit nothing but water and ice. Maybe some small, empty islands, but nothing worth the trip. They try a whole bunch of angles, and hit nothing but sea and ice, or end up basically back where they started.

Eventually, they have mapped out 50% of the world, and found nothing of interest that they couldn't get to either by land or by a shorter trip around the continent. They might know there's parts of the world left unexplored, but figure the odds of finding anything interesting are very low; based on history, it isn't worth the cost to keep trying.
Invictus wrote:Take China, for example. Instead of "Europe and Australia" world, if you got your start as the top dog on an immensely resource-rich continent the size of Asia, and furthermore is a landbound empire with no compelling foes and boxed in by seemingly worthless deserts and mountains, *and* developed a metastable culture that allows the population to inhabit the same land for thousands of years, then you wouldn't develop much of an impulse for exploration.
Indeed, this is similar to the reasoning in my ase 'verse.


It'd probably be a combination of factors rather than just one, but I find it plenty plausible and with enough story potential for some fun.
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Except, uh, unless the entire world becomes China and doesn't bother exploring, there'll still be people out there who'll be making maps. Unless the Confucianists were so isolationist as to forbid the reading of maps made by gaijins like Marco Polo or whoever, they'll still be hearing developments of the outside world. Eventually, even if they don't care about the outside world, the outside world's going to catch up to them. Look at the Aztecs, who didn't have an impulse for exploration themselves, when they finally bumped into a bunch of guys who did have an impulse for exploration. :twisted:
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Czernobog »

Chapter 1: First Contact


Captain Callahan sighed as he looked at the shore, the landing boat rapidly approaching it. It was dull, under the dim grey sky, but the high cliffs above loomed over the transport craft menacingly. They landed and unpacked the supplies, and the looming greyness at the sky increased the apprehension of the scene, turning it into an almost palpable nervousness. Callahan felt in his gut that this was a bad idea, a fatal error. There would be no going back lightly from this, no easy escape if things went wrong. They barely had any Thaumaturgists in the expedition, and none of this small party's group were trained for combat. Indeed, this was deeply worrying to Callahan, but he didn't dare voice it as they went under the branches of the titanic trees of the nearby forest.

They loomed over his small group like mountains in their size, as they advanced warily into the shade of the great redwoods.

They advanced wearily for what seemed like hours in the jeep, under the gaze of the trees, titanic monarchs of the forests, looking like they could be the size of mountains, immense redwoods that shadowed the forest floor until it was almost black as night. There was little wildlife, and none of it looked predatory, but the atmosphere of tension persisted. Callahan touched his ray-pistol, picking it up and carrying it. He felt far safer with it in his hands than holstered, far safer with it ready to use. Ah, the joys of Techno-Thaumaturgy. He had a weapon that could be used to both stun or kill, the only reason why it hadn't passed to the common soldier yet being that it was too expensive to make and required trained engineers to maintain. He checked the IR scope, noting the lack of heat.

Then, an arrow struck a soldier – Sergeant Eliphas, as he knew him – in the neck, killing him instantly. His senses kicked into gear immediately, as a group of women leapt out of nowhere, dressed in green cloaks and hoods and wielding bows. He fired his pistol at one, the blast of energy blowing off her head, which disintegrated as the water in it vaporised. More came out, firing arrows as assault rifles fired back at the women. They fell down, bleeding as soldiers aimed for the centres of mass of others. He fired his pistol again, blowing a hole in another's chest. She fell, dead.

Then, the trees came to life, spirits of iron-hard bark rushing out to kill and rip and tear with their claws. He fired his pistol on full-auto at one, boiling its sap and making it explode. Bullets did little to them, and the arrows were beginning to take their toll on the group of soldiers. The flamethrower man of Eliphas' squad leapt to the occasion, setting the wood-spirits aflame with his flamer, making them burn and burn and burn, more soldiers desperately firing their weapons at the horrific monsters. More women fell dead, bullets making short work of their only-mortal forms. But there were simply too many, too many to kill. He rushed to the jeep, activated its mounted energy-cannon, and fired.

Boom.

Tree-spirit and warrior woman alike simply ceased to exist in that flash, vaporised by boiling water and sap. Trees simply exploded and burst into flame, destroyed by the power of science and magic combined. He then turned it onto wide-beam intensity, waited until his men were out of the line of fire, and fired. It was like a white, unfocussed light, shining with blinding intensity, setting wood and flesh aflame in a 90-degree arc. The forest floor, the leaves and various detritus, were set aflame, the flames fanned by the wind. More came up.

He flashed it again, and the trees themselves started to be burned away by the razor wind of light. The scorched corpses of the women did not deter them, so he simply turned it around in a circle, setting the forest around them aflame, as the rest of the men mounted up in the jeep, prepared to get out of this accursed forest. But there was an obstacle, a great, terrible spirit of the wood, risen up while they were distracted. It loomed over their jeep, with all the iron-hard resistance of an ancient oak. Callahan fired the energy-cannon, now on its last charge, and uttered a silent prayer to the gods he believed in. The tree-man was blasted apart in a blaze of blinding whiteness, disintegrated in an explosion of burning bark, utterly annihilated.

They ran out of the forest at full velocity, watching as the flames sped along, burning down the ancient forest, the old, immense trees crashing down with gigantic thuds. The warrior women were still chasing them, but the jeep was far faster than their feet. They ran and ran, but the machine-gun one of the platoon’s soldiers was wielding continued to fire, mowing them down. Thick red blood rained down from their ruined corpses, raining down in torrents of gore on the burning ground.

They went out of the forest, after what seemed like hours of breackneck driving, going back into the familiar environs of the beach. It looked safe, but it also looked like those crazed warrior women were coming back to finish the job. Around the beach, machine-guns and sandbags were being unloaded to create impromptu fortifications, General Davian overlooking what was happening. The forest continued to burn behind them, as Callahan walked up to Davian and saluted him.

‘Sir?’ he asked.

Davian noted the arrow stuck into the jeep.

‘You were attacked?’ Davian said.

‘Yes,’ Callahan replied.

‘Hmm...’ Davian said. ‘If the natives are hostile, we have to get ready for an attack. Loyalty Officer Thule, do you concur?’

‘Yes,’ Thule replied simply.

OooOOooOO

The throne room of the King of Lucia was gilded and marbled to immense degree, countless tapestries and awesome wonders. It was built of white marble, with great tapestries depicting battles and hunts hung up, gilded bas-reliefs of swirling dragons on the walls, gold statues of angels of the Church of the Shining Flame swinging down on wings of wrath to bring down death to the Church’s enemies on the balcony above, while encircling the throne in a semi-circle were the statues of countless past kings, from Aurien the first that had founded the Kingdom of Lucia to his predecessor, Argentum VII.

In the very centre, of course, on a dais of solid silver from the dwarves of Westhome, was the Dragon Throne of Lucia, a throne of gilded marble, covered with reliefs of dragons. The King of Lucia, Cyprian II, was young and inexperienced, still in his late 30’s and having reigned just five years. He was the supreme master of Lucia, its leader and the symbol of its power. He had already dispatched half a dozen plots from the nobles of the court to assassinate him, something he considered no small matter.

Beside him, of course, there was the Chief Magister, his advisor, and the Pontifex of the Shining Flame, the religious leader of Lucia.


He looked, as it were, young, full of vigour and hot-bloodedness. He had trained in the arts of battle from his 10th year, his instructor from the eastern desert of Hylund. He had black hair, and a short, stern beard and moustache. He looked composed and silent.

Then came the messenger. He was a young page, who had ridden all the way from the western coast of Lucia, over two weeks.

‘My lord,’ the messenger said. ‘I bear grave news.’

‘What is it?’

‘There are rumours...rumours of great metal birds, flying over the land without flapping their wings.’

‘And why should this concern me?’

‘There are also tales that a great deal of the western forests of the Elves were burned...by men who had weapons that shot thunder and death and killing light, and travelled in a beast of iron and flame.’

‘Then,’ Cyprian said. ‘We should summon an army to deal with these men. For the elves of the forests are allies of ours, and any hurt delivered unto them is delivered unto us.’

‘I shall send the Magisters,’ the Chief Magister replied. ‘For then the death we shall unleash upon them shall be greater than whatever horrors they may conjure. Yet in the cold north, I fear that the Witch-Lord shall see our weakness and attack us, for Lucia borders his territory. Thus I request that half the army stay here, in the capital.’

‘Your reasoning is impeccable,’ Cyprian replied. ‘And it is for this reason that I shall stay here, in the capital. You may lead the army, Lord Magister.’

‘A pleasure and an honour,’ the Magister replied.

‘Indeed.’

OooOOooOO


The Palace of Illasia, Queen of the Forest Elves, was a picture of arboreal beauty. And she, the Queen herself, was a picture of rage and hate. The men from beyond the sea had wounded the forest, had wounded her, for no reason she could not discern, although she thought that it was likely greed. The Wild Hunt was being gathered, all the Great Houses had sent men and women, and thousands of Elves were bearing arms and armour right now. The spirits of the forest would join the hunt, the ships of beautifully, exquisitely sung wood would attack them on the sea, and then she would have her revenge upon the intruders, killing them all in abominably horrific ways, ways they deserved for wounding her, for wounding the forest that was their home, for setting it aflame.

That was her exquisitely detailed plan. Soon, she would be revenged upon the infidel beasts that had no care for the wild things of the earth. She had sent orders to her ambassadors to the races of the deep, the Tiamet, the Naunet and the Bahamut. Soon, the wrath of the deeps and the sea would destroy them all. Soon, she would have her cold revenge upon all her enemies, all the scum that hated the forest, all the beasts shaped in human form that attacked her. Soon, there would be great, great amounts of blood and skulls piled high in her name.
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Somes J »

Destructionator wrote:<snip>
Although it occurs to me that if the continent is that isolated it really begs the question of how the people already living there got there.

Humans got lucky in that most of Earth's habitable lands can be reached from each other without long ocean journeys. If you define a continent as a body of land unconnected to any others then we really only have 4 (Eurasia-Africa, the Americas, Australia, and Antarctica). And the two largest (Eurasia-Africa and the Americas) are seperated only by a narrow straight (I bet they wouldn't have been such seperate worlds if said straight existed anywhere but Arctic lattitudes) which only exists during warm periods. During the ice ages they join into a single enormous landmass which includes most of the planet's habitable land. We're a lot closer to living on Pangaea than I think most people realize. And the only really seperate habitable continent, Australia, has a nice archipelago to provide a convenient island-hopping bridge between it and the continent. The only really isolated big landmass on our planet is Antarctica, which is largely worthless anyway. And notice it's the only continent that has no native human cultures, although it's hard to tell how much of that is the isolation and how much is the hostile climate.

If you suppose a landmass as isolated as that, nobody's making it there without serious oceangoing craft.

The Polynesians did manage to reach a lot of isolated Pacific islands, but if the ocean had a lot of stepping stone islands like the Pacific you'd think there'd have been more interest in exploration.

Maybe there was a period of serious maritime exploration and colonization followed by a dark age. Or maybe the natives have an entirely independent origin from humans (or the Tzakatharans aren't human).
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Destructionator »

Somes J wrote:Maybe there was a period of serious maritime exploration and colonization followed by a dark age. Or maybe the natives have an entirely independent origin from humans (or the Tzakatharans aren't human).
Agreed. It isn't too hard to make something up that works.
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Czernobog
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Czernobog »

Destructionator wrote:
Somes J wrote:Maybe there was a period of serious maritime exploration and colonization followed by a dark age. Or maybe the natives have an entirely independent origin from humans (or the Tzakatharans aren't human).
Agreed. It isn't too hard to make something up that works.

I'm assuming that there was some kind of dark age after a period of colonisation. The Tzakathar weren't hit so hard and were knocked back to the Middle Ages, while the people on the other continent were knocked back to the stone age.
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Somes J
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Somes J »

Kamin997 wrote:I'm assuming that there was some kind of dark age after a period of colonisation. The Tzakathar weren't hit so hard and were knocked back to the Middle Ages, while the people on the other continent were knocked back to the stone age.
Keep in mind it doesn't need to be anything that severe. If Captain Cook could reach Hawaii in 1778 people with roughly equivalent technology could probably reach your continent. All you really need is for the technology to build serious ocean-going ships to be lost. Which might not be that hard if the only place you need them to go to is someplace thousands of km away with nothing apparently worth the expense of the trip.

You might not even need a dark age. The continent is discovered by an expedition which establishes a small fort there and then decides to go home to report their discovery. On the way back the ship is lost in a storm. Back home the expedition is charted up as a failure, nobody ever comes back for the people in the fort, and eventually their descendants end up filling up the continent. Meanwhile it's decided back home that the attempts to find other lands in the world-ocean are a waste of resources and nobody tries again for a while.

The main problem I can see is if the culture was similar to historical primitive ones I would expect the people on that ship to be mostly or entirely men, which makes founding a viable colony problematic, but you can imagine ways around that. Especially in a universe where magic exists.
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Re: A Day of Wrath - A Tale of Science and Magic

Post by Destructionator »

Somes J wrote:On the way back the ship is lost in a storm.
It could also be a convoy, which on the way in loses most the ships. One might make it home, and report nothing but hurricanes there, so don't bother heading there again.

What they didn't know was while the weather sure did start to get rough, and the giant ships were tossed, but thanks to the courage of the fearless crews, the ships were not lost.

The ships were not lost!

The ships set ground on an uncharted desert continent, with quite a few survivors. They'll have to make the best of things, but it's an uphill climb. There's not a single luxury; it's primitive as can be.


Sorry, I couldn't resist! :D
His Certifiable Geniusness, Adam D. Ruppe (My 'verse)
Marle: Lucca! You're amazing!
Lucca: Ain't it the truth! ... Oh, um...I mean...
Marle: Enough with the false modesty! You have a real gift! I would trade my royal ancestry for your genius in a heartbeat!

"I still really hate those pompous assholes who quote themselves in their sigs." -- Me
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