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!
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.