Archive | October 25, 2015

The Leviathan of World/Story Development, part One (For Into Lannamer)

I found this thing: http://kittyspace.org/leviathan0.html and I’m gonna play with it because I’m finding it instructional!

1. DETERMINE YOUR SCOPE
Oh hey I know this one it’s in the title!
The personal scope of Into Lannamer is very tight – it’s Rin and Girey. It’s their struggle to cope with the world being over, and what that means for both of them.
The background, the villains – that’s three personal stories, too, thee people with reasons to want to hurt Rin and/or Girey and one person who wants to pull Girey back to the far South. They all have very intimate reasons.
The background, that’s far wider, but it’s all out of focus. That’s the struggle of peace (of losing the war/of winning the war) after generations of war. It’s shaking everything. But we’re only seeing the tremors as they shake Rin and Girey.
Geographically, the scope is most of the continent, from [City continually renamed] in Bithrain to Lannamer up in the north of Calenta.

2. DESCRIBE YOUR CHARACTERS
Rin is a career army medic faced with the end of the war. She’s a royal daughter who never sought to climb the army’s hierarchy further than the authority she needed to do her job with minimal interruption, and thus she’s an Optio (lieutenant)

Girey is the only son of the king of Bithrain, and while he has not been “spoiled rotten,” he has been pampered and spoiled more than is probably healthy. He took to the field with a given rank, and had not truly earned his way up to that rank in duty, sense, and respect before he was captured by the Bithrain.

Esnees, Esnetrennesnees, is Rin’s uncle, older than her mother and the Emperor’s second-born child. He long ago accepted that he would not inherit his father’s title, but he has been grooming a specific set of his nieces and sisters as options for rule; if they rule, he believes he has a better chance of being the power behind the throne.

[2 more redacted]

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An Invitation (a story of the Foedus Planetarum in Earth’s early days of knowing of it)

The giraffe-people (“Cortcheczocko”) and the beetle-people (“Dezzirezz’hezz”) had not been the first of the Federated Planets to visit Earth, but their delegation had come with the formal ribbons and banners, the formal papers and, most importantly, the engraved invitation to visit the Federation (“Foedus Planetarum”) and see if they wished to engage in the paperwork to join.

“Send twenty delegates from each of your five largest countries,” the Cortcheczocko ambassador had said, its (his? Despite the giraffe-like horns and spotted skin, the Cortcheczocko looked decidedly human, and the ambassador both handsome and male.) – or his translator working madly to keep up. “Send your science-people and your entertainment-people, your mechanics-people and your representative-people. Send no more or no less than one hundred, and the shuttle will take them in forty-five days.”

The smirk on the ambassador’s face had suggested he knew that humans did nothing that important that quickly. Behind him, the Dezzirezz’hezz ambassador (female, probably, although hairless, with iridescent blue patterns over much of her skin) smirked as well.

It was thus that Etel found herself on a shuttle between a mechanic from Jersey and a famous rapper, bound for – well, bound for somewhere, at least, and somewhere that promised to be interesting.

The mechanic had introduced herself first. “Amy Colivanni. I fix imported cars. Think the Cortcheczians gonna need their oil changed?”

“Etelvina Escarrà. Friends call me Etel, and we might as well be friends. I’m a biologist from New York – upstate New York,” she added by reflex. “By the lake. I don’t know what they want.” Personally, she thought the translator had mangled “mechanical engineer”, but she wasn’t going to say that. “I think they want to make sure we understand them as best as possible, inside and out – and vice-versa.”

“Hunh. Well, they’re gonna get a fun picture, ain’t they? Hundred people picked in a rush.” She cracked her knuckles. “I already wanna see under the hood of this shuttle. I got a chance to look at Space Ship X once. That was a blast. This is absolutely nothing like this… and yet it’s a lot the same. You know?”

Etal nodded fervently. “Yeah.” She was having the same feeling about the Cortcheczocko and the Dezzirezz’hezz. They looked too human, too similar and too different. “Yeah, I know the feeling.” She wanted to get under their hoods, too.

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Brainstorming: Roddenberry Aliens / Variations on humanoid

I’m playing with Foedus Planetarum to give myself something to, uh, play with.

Yira’s people, the Medusas, have tentacle braids and tend large in stature.

Jahnan’s people tend brown-and-green, very dexterous, with prehensile toes and prehensile, forked tongues.

I am looking for a couple more variations on the humanoid theme and have not yet found a generator for that /goes looking/

Ideas?

Edited to add: [personal profile] inventrix had provided these links:
http://www.scifiideas.com/alien-species-generator/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=alienrace
and this one
http://www.springhole.net/writing_roleplaying_randomators/humanoid.htm
and
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=fantasyrace

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