furry arts discussion > furry storytelling

Idea: Fantasy futuristic magic furry zombie apocalypse. Sounds silly, might work

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Old Rabbit:
The story could start with the Wizard loosing a mentor. This could
help give the wizard a reason for his paranoia.

I have a idea you might like for the wizard.  you were saying he
is removing bad thoughts from others.  Perhaps these bad feelings
would build inside his own psyche. This would give his insanity a
good reason to exist for the reader.

Just a couple thoughts.

Keep up the good work. :orbunny:

DazWizzle:
Hi Zungus,
Having just written a very similar story to your idea myself I can offer a few pointers that will hopefully be of some use to you.

For the main story the first thing I advise you do is work out what the plot is. There is not much use starting and having it run rampid without a end goal in mind. For example try something like 'The Wizard is written into a prophecy that he/she will be the one to return the world to normal restoring the zombified populous to normal' or something similar, like what old rabbit suggested.

I have a very very similar story idea to what yours is, Dying planet, the populous turning feral, a world within the protagonists psyche.
In total I have had 27 revisions of my story and the world building started around revision 15 when I left the human race behind.

For the Wizard come up with a few ideas and even write short story's about his/her life. They can be completely unrelated to the story but provide a good foundation on character development.

As for the use of terms, Mage, Wizard, Magi... try looking up synonyms. I opted for 'Shaman' with mine but I guess its an idea to pick one that's suited to your setting.

Hopefully this is of some help to you. For the record, my world building notes are 20K words long and the two books total 125K words. The world building was the hardest part but my advice with that is build the world as you go and add to your document. You can always add in things like a town name when you make an edit.

Regards,

Zugus: Bane of mailmen:

--- Quote from: DazWizzle on July 30, 2017, 07:35:34 am ---Hi Zungus,
Having just written a very similar story to your idea myself I can offer a few pointers that will hopefully be of some use to you.

For the main story the first thing I advise you do is work out what the plot is. There is not much use starting and having it run rampid without a end goal in mind. For example try something like 'The Wizard is written into a prophecy that he/she will be the one to return the world to normal restoring the zombified populous to normal' or something similar, like what old rabbit suggested.

I have a very very similar story idea to what yours is, Dying planet, the populous turning feral, a world within the protagonists psyche.
In total I have had 27 revisions of my story and the world building started around revision 15 when I left the human race behind.

For the Wizard come up with a few ideas and even write short story's about his/her life. They can be completely unrelated to the story but provide a good foundation on character development.

As for the use of terms, Mage, Wizard, Magi... try looking up synonyms. I opted for 'Shaman' with mine but I guess its an idea to pick one that's suited to your setting.

Hopefully this is of some help to you. For the record, my world building notes are 20K words long and the two books total 125K words. The world building was the hardest part but my advice with that is build the world as you go and add to your document. You can always add in things like a town name when you make an edit.

Regards,

--- End quote ---

Thank you.

My idea here revolves more around the corrupting influence of magic. These animals haven't simply turned feral, but they've also been imbued (that is to say, corrupted) by magic. All that they attack is either consumed, or doomed to be corrupted by the same token, like a magical disease.

I would've started as you suggested, but the world, for whatever reason, was the first thing that came to mind for me. I just thought of it one day when I was bored and, instead of forgetting about it like most fantastical machinations of mine, I decided I actually wanted to shape it into something.

Without really intending to, I've already mentally developed the world more than any of the characters.

As for the plot, an idea that's come to mind goes something like this:

A Wizard, intending to cure the ills of the world, has instead unleashed a curse of apocalyptic implications upon it, turning those he had hoped to "save" into terrible and monstrous creatures, corrupted and strengthened by the power of magic.

Our protagonist (names will come later) knows that his small settlement is on its last legs and that it will succumb to these horrible and vastly powerful "animals" if he does not manage to find other survivors to bolster it and to rebuild some semblance of civilization in order to survive against the hordes.

As his quest goes on however, he begins to have visions of a mysterious and formless glow, which whispers to him to "come closer", to "save his people" and "revive the engine". As these visions become more frequent, last longer, and reveal more, he encounters others who have the same visions who call themselves "The Brotherhood of the Glow". This cult seeks to revive the "Mana Engine" which had created the crystal empire that only the eldest from our protagonist's village had any memory of.

From what few stories our protagonist had heard, this empire was a gleaming beacon of progress and prosperity which, through the use of synthetic magic, had become a highly prosperous civilization that was vastly stronger and more advanced than any other.

As his adventures with the Brotherhood progress, he starts to find out their terrible secrets, and that this empire had been built over the corpses of all that it had conquered and that its people had slowly been corrupted by their love and worship of mana, their civilization's lifeblood. The Brotherhood had also kept, within its ranks, scholars of the crystal empire who were related by blood to the upper echelons of the crystalline society. They detailed, in loving obsession, the genocide of countless other nations beneath their crystal empire's armies and had hoped to revive their civilization, which the wizard had accidentally destroyed, so that they might rule the world with a crystal fist.

Realizing what the Brotherhood intends to do with the Mana Engine, he attempts to sabotage their efforts at every turn, knowing what will happen to his village if he does not stop them.

Eventually, the Brotherhood, with our protagonist in tow, reaches the Mana Engine. The Brotherhood, down to its last surviving members, is finished off by our protagonist in his last ditch effort to prevent them from possessing the engine.

By this point, however, the glow has gained substantial influence over his mind and, to our now nearly insane protagonist, unexpectedly speaks through the lifeless bodies of the cultists to convince him to "finish the job".

Unbeknownst to him, his revival of the Engine only allows the Demon, who had masqueraded as a divine and mystic glow, to gain direct control over the monsters to use them as an evil army which was to give them the organization to exterminate all life which was not imbued with magic. Indeed, the Engine, and the Demon which inhabited it, had the power to spare the village but, in exchange for this, the protagonist was to forcibly imbue them with magic, to give this Demon absolute power over all of them, giving them ultimate security in exchange for the loss of their souls.

Wanting only to save those that he cared about, the Protagonist accepts the Demon's offer and he returns to his village to infect the few people who remain (some having succumbed while he was away).

The end result is that civilization is brought back to life, but all of its people are made eternal slaves to what is effectively the ultimate embodiment of evil. The protagonist only realizes his error when he finds that his people, instead of being saved by the magic, have been saved in body only. He realizes that, as a result of his folly, he is the last sentient person left alive, and that he is a conscious slave who had, by his big heart and this Demon, been tricked into granting this thing absolute power over everything, with him left to be the Demon's plaything.

Of course, this is tentative, and I've yet to think exactly of the details, but the gist of it is that the would be "hero", with nothing but good intentions to save his people, is instead corrupted by the influence of this Demon who tricks him into doing all of this and into helping it gain absolute power over the world. Its mostly a story about losing one's way in the face of unspeakably terrible circumstances and of the belief that the ends justify the means.

I'm not yet sure I want the final ending to be so dark though. But the story itself is more or less about this dark. The Demon is effectively an eldritch type monster which gains near infinite power once it is able to combine the power of the Mana Engine, with its own mastery of natural magic which is vastly more powerful than the synthetic magic used to build the crystal empire.

Except for the rough shape of the world and of the strong corruption of power theme that will run throughout, all of this is subject to change.

I also don't quite know how I want to fit the wizards in, except for the fact that it was they who created the Mana Engine, and that these same wizards had killed the others of surrounding nations in order to gain absolute power as the sole living beings who could fully utilize mana for their ends. The Wizard's spell (from the start), however, ultimately warps them into the strongest of the feral beings which then are too powerful to be contained by the soldiers and peons of the empire, making their infection inevitable. I don't really know yet what the ultimate fate of these initial wizards will have been though, or for the fate of the first wizard, who was a surviving outcast that had escaped the crystal empire's gaze after his people were annihilated.

It is his attempt to uncorrupt the world which kicks off the story's events.

I am writing this while very tired so some of this might not make sense. But this is roughly the gist of it. As it stands, this world is doomed either to be conquered by ultimate evil, or annihilated by savage beasts; pending any empathy I may eventually have for any of the characters.

I still need to work out the nature of infection and the nature of mana. So far, the working assumption for me is that mana is generally regarded as evil and is highly toxic to any living thing which cannot utilize magic. The "Animals", by some means I've not yet determined, are capable of infecting people which effectively makes them magical zombies whose blood is mostly mana.

I am hoping I don't wake up tomorrow just to find this riddled with contradictions. This fiction writing process is relatively new to me as I've otherwise been pursuing other things which are completely different to it.

I really appreciate the feedback.   :)

Zugus: Bane of mailmen:
Seeing that massive wall of text, I will summarize the themes present. This might make more of what I'm going for apparent, and could probably help me better shape this story going forward.

1. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions

2. Trying doesn't count, only results do

3. The world does not care about feelings, only realities

4. Doing the right thing (or in this case, failing to) in the face of harsh circumstances.

5. No one knows whats best for everyone else

I hope this clears things up. I do want to make a good story though before any of this.

DazWizzle:
Sounds interesting, I like the idea for the story. What are you planning on doing with it? Is it something just for you or are you looking at publishing?

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