Universe Idea: The Geist of It

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Malchus
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Universe Idea: The Geist of It

Post by Malchus »

I wanted to try my hand at having a universe again, but I wanted to try something a bit different. Instead of the usual formula of worldbuilding articles and stories, I'm planning to write this one as if it was a TV series. The worldbuilding will be limited to a few paragraphs in the series bible while the stories will be episodes written in screenplay form, with a few "screen shots" that I'll draw for every episode. I think I'll be able to move this along better this way since what bogs me down in writing prose is, well, writing prose.

Now, this idea is actually a combination of several ideas. It started off as a fic for Siege's Coulda Shoulda Woulda, but as I continued developing it, it got harder to fit it in the CSW universe. I then thought of revising it into a TV show that's broadcast within the CSW 'verse, but by then the connection would've been really, really thin. So I decided to shelve the idea.

Right around when I was starting to revise my art style, I also wanted to come up with a unified setting I could fit most of the revised versions of my characters in. Originally I was developing another idea, but then I remembered this one a few weeks ago. I decided to use this setting instead, polish it up a bit, and here I am.

The series bible shown below is still incomplete, and I won't start this 'verse proper until I've filled out most of it. I'll fill this up over the coming weeks. It'll never be a complete series bible, though, since I will be omitting some of the details that might spoil the seasons and episodes I have planned.

---------------------


The Geist of It Series Bible

LOGLINE

“Astra ‘Blue Cheese’ Vluchis is bored out of her mind a week after moving to Prestonne, Washington. A case of girl meets boy meets twelve-ton dump truck changes all that as she finds that Prestonne is built upon secrets, conspiracies, and psychic abilities.”

OVERVIEW

The Geist of It revolves around the titular geist, a blanket term for psychic and parapsychic phenomena. A small fraction of people can manipulate geist to varying degrees, mostly unwittingly. Often these manifest in the form of so-called ghostly phenomenon and hauntings, with the more severe forms being poltergeists. These originate from negative feelings and are often temporary, but more powerful manifestations often become separate, self-sustaining entities in their own right.

Geist is often strongest in the adolescent years (which is why poltergeists are usually associated with young victims) and fade as the person ages. For a select few, however, geist manifests in the form of psychic abilities that they can learn to control. Training in the use of these abilities usually prevents their loss due to aging, but degradation still occurs. These select few are called geistmeisters by NATO while the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic—the USSR’s successor state after its chaotic dissolution in 1996—has no general term and uses iekstrasensi (espers; also used to refer to psychokinetics) or telepati (telepaths) depending on the primary ability of the person in question.

The rarity of geist and its tendency to fade has resulted in its dismissal as nonsense by most people, but events in World War II and immediately after have caused serious but secretive interests in both major sides of the Cold War. This interest has resulted in initiatives to study and weaponize geist. These studies have noted a growing incidence in geist manifestations worldwide, especially after an infamous incident in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.

Publicly, geist and everything about it are still not taken seriously by the public at large—they’re not even aware of the usage of geist as a blanket term—with the truth lost in the clutter of exaggerated conspiracy theories, misinformation, and made-up falsehoods. Presently the USA, its NATO allies, and the RSFSR have created several towns and cities where geistmeisters are secretly collected, studied, and trained. These secret cities are basically massive illegal operations and operate according to whatever rules their parent organizations set for them. The DSR (Directorate of Special Research) operates the American secret cities while the GRU now operates the Russian ones after it supplanted most of the KGB’s functions when the latter was purged and dissolved following their major role in the ill-fated coup of the midnineties.

The overall story focuses on the secret machinations of these groups—particularly of those stationed in Prestonne, Washington—as well as the inevitable factionalism and infighting. Complicating things is the rise of the Chosen Heralds Advancing New Glorious Emergence*, a secretive global movement of geist manipulators become increasingly troublesome to both sides, and what may or may not be aliens.


*Yeah, CHANGE. I came up with that before the Obama political campaign ruined it for everyone else :P—it’s used in an old 2004 idea somewhere in my DeviantArt account.


FORMAT

Genre: Action-Adventure/Mystery
Episode Length: 22 minutes
Episode Release Structure: Myth arc episodes alternating with standalone (but sometimes related) episodes
Number of Episodes: 25 per season
Number of Seasons: 5 (projected)

SETTING

Prestonne, Washington, is one of the towns in the secret DSR network, housing some of the influential DSR figures and a small number of the WMD-class psychokinetic geistmeisters and their families. It also contains the families of the support personnel and other miscellaneous nongeistmeisters. Outwardly, it seems to be nothing more than a typical isolated small town in Chelan County, Washington, but it is supported by a sizeable subterranean network of tunnels and facilities rivaling that of NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain Complex.

Officially Prestonne is listed as an unincorporated community in Chelan County even though its population approaches that of some of the larger census-recognized communities. It does appear on the map, but information about it is usually understated. Not all of its denizens are in on the secret, but there is at least one member of every household who is. Most of the people in the local government, the sheriff’s department, and the civil maintenance and academic facilities are DSR agents.

WORLDBUILDING

TBA

CHARACTERS

John Son of John "Jack" Baylor
The fifteen-year-old son of John and Celphina Baylor, respectively Prestonne's sheriff and a teacher in the local middle and high school, young John's unwieldy full name is the result of his father deciding that “Roman numerals are for Greeks, and ‘Junior’ sounds like a euphemism for penis.” His mother hasn't quite forgiven his father for managing to sneak it past her and onto his birth certificate when she was distracted.

Jack, as he prefers to be called, has inherited his father's confidence in himself and is thus exactly as you see him: a little boorish and loud, but ultimately a friendly and amiable kid. Piss him off, however, and he is fully capable of Spite (capital S, always) and kicking your ass, which something he inherited from his father. While a little short for his age, Jack is also strong and very well-built thanks to good exercise habits his USMC-trained father instilled in him. Additionally, he also has the ability to throw narrowly-focused concentrated psychokinetic bursts that he channels through his hands and feet, enabling him to destroy tanks and fortified structures with his punches and kicks.

It is this ability that he used to save Blue Cheese from getting run over by a dump truck, psychokinetically punching it from across the street and away from her. Neither the girl nor the truck driver were seriously hurt, though the driver was mildly irritated at him for wrecking his truck. Having blown the town's secret to Blue Cheese, he finds himself essentially being Blue Cheese's guide to the secret world of Prestonne and beyond, which grows to a somewhat mentoring role when Blue Cheese is discovered to have latent geist abilities as well. Blue Cheese also develops something of a crush on him, which he doesn't notice because he has his own crush on a strange girl named Kaylee Kaminskiy. Kaylee, for the most part, also doesn't notice his crush because she can't decide whether she has a crush on Jack's best friend, Tyler, or on the girl Tyler has a thing for, Maricar.

Goddamn teen dramanimus. Why can't everything be solved by the proper application of punching?
Sheriff John Baylor
John Baylor is an inactive Marine—not an ex-Marine because once a Marine, always a Marine, dammit—currently serving as the Prestonne's official sheriff. Being a small community of around thirty-six hundred people, the Prestonne Sheriff Department is also correspondingly small, with only him, a quarter dozen (what he likes to call the number three) deputies, and a bored receptionist slash secretary slash the chick who buys coffee and donuts. As with all things in their town, outward appearances are deceiving as, like him, his deputies are all trained military and they have a line to the DSR’s well-equipped local response team.

John Baylor, used to the fine Force Recon tradition of beating ass, actually finds life as Prestonne’s sheriff boring and humdrum—especially since the most action he’s likely to see would be calling the DSR response team when anything really exciting actually turns up. It does have its upsides, though, since being a sheriff means Baylor finally has an excuse to go around wearing spurs and a Stetson and talking in an atrocious cowboy accent that would get him shot by a real cowboy (theoretically, of course, as Baylor would likely shoot the bastard first). His wife and deputies pointing out that Washington is nowhere near cowboy country is moot point because a sheriff isn’t a real sheriff unless he looks like a sheriff is supposed to.

Idiosyncrasies aside, though, Baylor’s colleagues all respect him, and most of the town enjoy—or have learned to live with—his predilections. His DSR superiors are another story since Baylor’s eccentricities make him difficult to control. They are willing to tolerate his antics, however, since his son is useful to them, and making sure Baylor is happy is a small price to pay. Of course, Baylor doesn’t quite trust said superiors fully and is wary about their ideas about his beloved son and is ever vigilant in that regard, but for now he is content to cooperate and let them think he is dumb and happy since their training has allowed the boy to control his potentially destructive abilities. About the only person who actually can control him is his wife, Celphie, whose true displeasure Baylor finds existentially terrifying . . . and kinda, sorta really hot.
KEY LOCATIONS

TBA

LOOK AND FEEL

TBA

VISUAL REFERENCES

TBA

GLOSSARY

TBA
Last edited by Malchus on Wed Aug 29, 2012 6:08 pm, edited 7 times in total.
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Re: Universe Idea: The Geist of It

Post by Ford Prefect »

Neat idea in regards to structure. Good puns too. Blue Cheese lol
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Re: Universe Idea: The Geist of It

Post by Malchus »

Ford Prefect wrote:Blue Cheese lol
That was actually a happy accident. I saw the name Vluchi fleetingly in the credits of something that was showing on TV and thought it'd make a good character surname. Added an s to it since I have this weird predilection for names with an odd number of letters, and I realized that it sounded like Blue Cheese. So I made it her nickname.
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Re: Universe Idea: The Geist of It

Post by Mobius 1 »

you could still make it for cs-

Hey, hush, you. This looks really promising, and GEISTMASTER sounds badass.
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Re: Universe Idea: The Geist of It

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I like the idea. I can't help but think of Stephen King's Firestarter too.
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Re: Universe Idea: The Geist of It

Post by Magister Militum »

This is a very interesting method of worldbuilding, and the format alone definitely has me interested. And, of course, psychics and cold war antics.
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Re: Universe Idea: The Geist of It

Post by Malchus »

Added some characters. I spoilered the descriptions so that they don't take up too much space.

I decided to start with the John Baylors since, hell, John Baylors are fun.
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Re: Universe Idea: The Geist of It

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Ye gads. :D

Man, Baylor. What a bunch of loons. :D
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Re: Universe Idea: The Geist of It

Post by Invictus »

I don't watch enough TV series to get a good view for this kind of setting building but yeah, this cool.
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Re: Universe Idea: The Geist of It

Post by Malchus »

Ladies and gentlemen, Sheriff John Baylor.

I based his uniform on the Chelan County Sheriff's Department (except the Stetson hat and spurs, of course), although Prestonne's Sheriff Department doesn't really belong or answer to them since in-universe it exploits some obscure, convoluted loophole to do so. Those pouches hold speedloaders for his .357 Magnum revolver.
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Re: Universe Idea: The Geist of It

Post by Booted Vulture »

Excellent art as always Malchus. There's such an air of cheeriness about that Cowboy Baylor
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Re: Universe Idea: The Geist of It

Post by Invictus »

Is there something special about his watch?
"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
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REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
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Re: Universe Idea: The Geist of It

Post by Malchus »

Invictus wrote:Is there something special about his watch?
Not really. It's just based on an old rectangular shockproof watch I had as a kid.
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