diff --git a/story.md b/story.md index 983f7872..696be830 100644 --- a/story.md +++ b/story.md @@ -124,19 +124,83 @@ head. ## The Great Explosion -The king's culling didn't go quietly. Cornered, the targeted mages ended up -unleashing a magical explosion on a catastrophic scale - one that killed -most of their own kind along with it. - The event is so significant to this kingdom that it reset their calendar around it. Where the rest of the world reckons time by the old calendar (currently **Year 4192**), this kingdom counts years as **AGE** - "After -the Great Explosion." The story opens in **Year 25 AGE**. +the Great Explosion." The story opens in **Year 25 AGE** - which puts the +protagonist, born the night it happened, at roughly 25 years old. Within the kingdom, the event itself is barely spoken of - referenced only obliquely, in hushed tones, as "the Great Explosion." What actually -happened is not public knowledge and is revealed to the player gradually -over the course of the story, rather than up front. +happened is not public knowledge, is actively lied about by the crown +(see "The Official Story" below), and is revealed to the player gradually +over the course of the story, rather than up front. What follows is the +truth of it, for reference - not something the player, or the protagonist, +knows this early. + +### What Really Happened + +Having traced the culinary mages to their hometown - a whole town built +around them, led by their most powerful practitioner, the **Great Mage** +*(name TBD)*, who is also the town's mayor - the king moves to have them +all executed in a single, coordinated purge. He doesn't delegate this one: +he's there in person, with a large force of soldiers, to make sure it +happens exactly as planned. + +The town is rounded up into the streets - every citizen, women and +children included - and the king demands the Great Mage surrender himself. +The Great Mage has done nothing wrong; there is no plot, no uprising, only +a prophecy and a king who has convinced himself, completely, that this man +is the one fated to end him. The soldiers aren't there to prevent some +future act - as far as anyone in the crowd can tell, they're just there to +make sure nothing stops the execution. + +To force the issue, the king takes the Great Mage's wife hostage, along +with their newborn daughter - the protagonist - and threatens to kill them +both on the spot if he doesn't come forward. The Great Mage relents and +agrees to surrender himself into captivity. + +It isn't enough. Having gotten what he demanded, the king - by this point +well past reason - orders the entire village executed anyway. Soldiers +begin killing citizens one by one in the street. It is, plainly, a +massacre. + +With no options left, the Great Mage begins casting: a spell built on an +old, well-known melody, one every villager grew up knowing as a soothing +folk song. As he chants it, others in the crowd who can cast start singing +and casting along with him - even now, even like this. What starts as one +desperate act becomes the whole town casting together, and the combined +spell detonates as the Great Explosion. + +The king escapes only barely, teleported clear at the last second by his +own personal, and extremely rare, teleporter. Everyone else in the town is +killed - along with nearly the entire army the king brought to enforce the +purge. It's a catastrophic loss on every side: the king loses the bulk of +his military in an instant, and every known culinary mage but a scattered +handful dies with the town. In the aftermath, even the king isn't sure +what to make of it - whether this was the prophecy finally arriving, or +whether wiping out every culinary mage in existence means he's just +avoided it for good. + +He's wrong either way. In the same instant, the Great Mage's wife casts a +protective spell of her own on their newborn daughter - small in scope, +powerful enough to matter, enough to keep only one person alive through +what's coming. It saves the protagonist, and nothing else. She ends up one +of a literal handful of survivors, alongside a few surviving soldiers and +a handful of villager stragglers. Not all of the soldiers who survive stand +down - some try to finish what they were ordered to do, hunting down and +killing a few more of the survivors even after the explosion. Those who +can still run do, and they take the newly orphaned protagonist with them. + +### The Official Story + +History gets written by whoever's left standing. The king and what +remains of his army return home with a different account entirely: the +culinary mages were insurgents, plotting to overthrow the crown, and the +Great Explosion was their own doing - a last, failed act of rebellion, not +a massacre. It sticks. It becomes the official record, and it's why the +truth of what happened stays buried, spoken of only in fragments and +hushed tones, for the twenty-five years since. ## World Notes @@ -169,24 +233,56 @@ over the course of the story, rather than up front. - Getting a teleport *down* the mountain is the opposite problem entirely - one outsiders unfamiliar with the trade routinely underestimate. See Chapter 1. + - The king keeps a personal teleporter on retainer - rare enough to + afford only for a monarch. It's this teleporter who gets him clear of + the Great Explosion in the instant before it kills nearly everyone + else present. ## Characters ### The Protagonist One of the last surviving casters of Culinary/Hospitality Magic. Does not -yet know she has this power. Her arc is the prophecy's fulfillment - the -king's attempt to prevent her existence is, narratively, what creates her. +yet know she has this power. Born the night of the Great Explosion to the +Great Mage and his wife, and saved from it only by her mother's protective +spell cast in its final instant - a fact she has no memory or knowledge of. +Raised after by whichever survivors and stragglers fled the scene with +her. Her arc is the prophecy's fulfillment - the king's attempt to prevent +her existence is, narratively, what creates her. *(Name, background, and how she discovers her power: TBD.)* ### The King Ordered the culling of all Culinary/Hospitality mages after being warned -of the prophecy. Motivations beyond self-preservation, and his current -awareness of how the prophecy is unfolding: TBD. +of the prophecy, and personally oversaw the resulting massacre at the +Great Mage's town. Tunnel-visioned to the point of ordering the entire +village executed even after getting the surrender he demanded - a +decision that costs him nearly his whole army in the Great Explosion he +provoked. Escaped only via his own personal teleporter. Still doesn't know +whether he caused the prophecy or avoided it, and doesn't know the +protagonist survived at all. Motivations beyond self-preservation, and his +current awareness of how the prophecy is unfolding: TBD. ### The Fortune Teller Delivered the original prophecy to the king. Role beyond the inciting incident: TBD. +### The Great Mage +The protagonist's father, the most powerful known culinary mage of his +generation, and the mayor of the town the king wipes out in the Great +Explosion. Innocent of the plot the king believes in - there was no +plot. Surrenders himself to try to save his wife and newborn daughter, +only for the king to order the massacre anyway. Leads the town's final, +collective casting - built on a spell that doubles as a folk song every +villager already knew - that becomes the Great Explosion. Dies in it. +*(Name: TBD.)* + +### The Protagonist's Mother +The Great Mage's wife. Held hostage alongside her newborn daughter to +force her husband's surrender. In the Great Explosion's final instant, +casts a small but powerful protective spell that saves the protagonist +and no one else, at the cost of her own life. The protagonist has no +memory of her. +*(Name: TBD.)* + ### The Party Leader The story's second main character, and whose perspective opens Chapter 1. Leads the band of bounty hunters secretly hired by the king to retrieve @@ -211,6 +307,15 @@ questioning why she was really taken. nothing and gets nothing back. - Humanity mistaken for weakness - the "prisoner" who helps her captors anyway. +- History written by the victors - an entire massacre rewritten into an + insurgency, and believed, because there was no one left to say + otherwise. +- Collective action under duress - an entire town choosing, in its final + moments, to act together rather than die separately. +- Duality of the same magic as comfort and catastrophe - a lullaby every + villager grew up with becomes the spell that ends them. +- A mother's sacrifice narrowed to the smallest possible act - saving one + life, not the town, because that's all that could be done. ## Open Questions / TBD @@ -231,3 +336,12 @@ questioning why she was really taken. - Whether teleportation magic (and its rarity) becomes relevant again beyond Chapter 1's logistics trap - e.g. a named teleporter character, or its scarcity mattering to the wider plot/prophecy. +- Names for the Great Mage, the protagonist's mother, and their hometown. +- The name/nature of the folk song that doubles as the spell behind the + Great Explosion. +- Who exactly fled with the infant protagonist (soldiers vs. villager + stragglers), who ultimately raised her, and whether any of them + reappear later in the story. +- Whether the king ever learns the protagonist survived, and if so, when. +- Whether/how the protagonist eventually learns the truth about her + parents and the Official Story's lie.