For lack of a better title

This is a world/story that Jaynin and I are working on together. We're starting this thread so that we have somewhere to work on our ideas in one place. And yall get to watch along with us as we polish this baby up.

The basic premise focuses on a microkingdom surrounded by larger kingdoms that's plagued by tribes of gypsy-like raiders who have the ability to shape shift. The raiders, as you might expect, sweep in, plunder what they can and destroy the left. This is very detrimental to the small agricultural communities of the micro-kingdom. To protect against these raiders, the king forms a special roving guard. The story we're working on would focus on a small unit of this guard made up of three young men. Also in their troop is a girl who was rescued as an infant from a village that the raiders destroyed and adopted by a high-ranking military official. Not long after our story picks up, she discovers that share's the same shape-shifting abilities as the feared and much-hated raiders. Obviously, this is something she wants to keep secret.

That's the main gist of what we have so far. And here are the rules of how this is going to work: we're going to use font colors and symbols to help keep track of the topics of each post. This is a world we're building and this system will help keep this thread from becoming a giant mess. And it may expand as we go. But here's the main layout:

• At the beginning of each post put "=" and color it according to the proper topic.
• If you're addressing multiple ideas in the same post (as we likely will be), put each topic on its own line with the appropriately-colored "=" in front of it.
• For ideas about geography (both physical & political) use green : 008000. This includes ideas about the other kingdoms surrounding the microkingdom.
• For ideas about the Raiders, their culture, abilities, etc. use red : FF0000.
• For ideas about the microkingdom (military, cultural, political, etc.) use goldenrod : FFBF00.
• For ideas about the overall cobha of the land (a bit broader than just the shapeshifter's abilities), use blue : 4000FF.
• For character development, use orange : FF8000.
• For plot development, use purple : 800080.
• For background history of the world, use aqua : 00FFFF.
• For random ideas that don't fit perfectly under any of these others, use pink : FF00FF.

For those of yall reading along with us who want to encourage and comment, no color-coded "=". But kindly remember to use quotes as often as possible to help us keep things straight. Thanks! See yall around!

= <--- See that's how this going to work. My first few ideas I wanted to share are about the Raiders so I used the red "=" first. When I said the raiders are like the gypsies of the Middle Ages, I was thinking less of a cultural similarity and more of how the gypsies back then we're kinda the homeless scum of Europe. They didn't have a homeland, they were mistrusted wherever they went, and in a lot of cases they resorted to thievery. I also envisioned them kinda like the Midianites in the book of Judges: swooping in, pillaging food, money, clothes, and livestock, and then destroying the remaining crops so as to leave their victims destitute and hard-pressed.

Combining those two essences, I see the Raiders as a race of marauders unwelcome in any kingdom. The larger kingdoms have strong enough militaries to keep the Raiders at bay, leaving the poor micro-kingdom vulnerable to them. Thus the Raiders, with nowhere else to go and mistrusted by all, make their camps in the wilderness borders of the micro-kingdom and raid the villages of the micro-kingdom.

My next thought was about their shapeshifting abilities. I think they all have the ability to change into more than one creature, but it takes time and effort. Basically, Raiders have to "learn" how to shift into a certain animal, which can take years of time and concentration. Thus, most common folk among the Raiders have only learned about three different forms on average and they pick them carefully according to their goals/roles in life. For instance, hunters would choose to focus on learning how to shift into predators and spies would focus on small creatures with keen senses so as to avoid detection easily. It's not uncommon, of course for Raider warriors to have learned 4 or 5 forms instead of the common three. In theory they can learn how to shift into other people, but that is extremely difficult to learn and maybe even painful.

That's all I've got for the moment.