What's next? Well, for one, I'm not sure if I'll keep working on Fox and the Hawk right now, the motivation just isn't there. That's a fun story, and I haven't been in a "fun" mood lately.
I'm contemplating actually severing Legacy from the Sennadar universe and trying to develop the concept behind the story into an independent work. Well, more than contemplating actually...I've more or less already worked out how to do it. The reason for this is simple. I've wanted to continue work on Legacy, but I'm really not sure I'm prepared to deal with that kind of power again that I'll have to face working in the Sennadar universe. Delving into the Sennadar universe means I have to deal with Sorcery, and the raw power it entails. That means I always end up having to tread very carefully around that power and work my butt off to develop challenges to beings of that raw power and yet keep it believeable and constrained. That might be a little too much work for me right now. I think I'm entering an angst phase similar to the conflicted personality of Tarrin, but I don't want to do THAT again. Tarrin was a keg of gunpowder...if I didn't do it exactly right, the whole damn story would explode in my face. I'm looking for something a little less earth-shaking, but something that satisfies my sense of dark angst.
I like the idea, the concept, behind the story of Legacy, a study of the conflict between two very dissonant races and a clash of their basic motivations, but I think I'd like to try it in a different venue.
That, and I feel the need to do something, I dunno...darker than The Fox and the Hawk. There's little conflict there.
I guess redoing Legacy would continue my work down the "furry" path, because a severed Legacy would follow the orginal plotline of humankind coming into conflict with the Wikuni and magic coming into conflict with technology...which would transform into humankind coming into conflict with the replacement race for them...which would be a much more hostile relationship. But it would still involve technology and magic, and a study of two radically different races with different appearances, different approaches, and radically different capabilities, competing with each other and trying to nervously co-exist.
In the redo, which I'm aiming to be a "novella" length story, the humans are the technologically savvy race, and the "furry" race, the Arcana, would be the ones connected to power of magic. The humans are technologically adept, akin to America in the 1700s, but used to be much more advanced. Humans used to have machines that traversed the sky and buildings that touched the heavens, but their civilization was destroyed in what was known only as The War, when humanity turned on itself. The destruction of humanity's great civilization caused the power of magic to emerge, literally as the war raged across the land, and the Arcana appeared along with it. But while humanity seeks to regain its lost knowledge, it has also begun to touch on the magic of the Arcana. Since the Shaman appeared two hundred years ago, only Arcana were capable of using magic, but recently (in plot reference) humans have begun to show magical aptitude, the power to harness and control the power of magic and the power of the spirit world, to become Shaman.
Humanity and the Arcana do not get along. When the Arcans appeared they were simplistic, primitive, without even their own language. Humanity enslaved them, even used them in their war as soldiers, but after the world-shattering war, the lot of the Arcana did not improve. Though stronger and more durable than humans, they lacked education and intelligence to resist the human race, and remained enslaved for thousands of years as the human race dropped from its pinnacle into a near-stone age existence after it consumed all the remnants of its past glory, then slowly clawed its way back towards its former glory. During that time, the Arcana were the backbone of human labor efforts. It was the Arcana that built the new great cities of Eusica, the first dynastic human civilization to rise of the ashes of the great ancestors. Arcana mined the ores, worked the fields, and were often abused and treated like the animals they resembled. But over time, the Arcana changed. Though humanity saw them as stupid and savage, Arcana were actually as intelligent as humans, only lacking education. Arcana began to show more intelligence, began to develop their own culture, albeit a slave culture, and began to question their lot as slave labor for their inferior masters. But the human technology always kept them subjugated...until the Shaman appeared. Shaman were an anathema to humanity, for every one of their ancient religions saw the power of the Shaman as evil, as witchcraft, as demonic in nature. But the one thing the humans couldn't deny was the power of the Shaman, for Shaman could use their magic to stop human weapons from harming them, countered their crossbows and their powder muskets and grenades. Shaman began helping Arcans escape from bondage, form hidden settlements in remote, hidden tracts of untouched wilderness, and worked to free the Arcana from human enslavement. The power of the Shaman began turning the tide for the Arcana, forcing humanity to reassess their opinion of the race, and also touched off a new round of anti-Arcana violence and hatred as humans began to realize that their former slave race had developed a defense against them.
The new Legacy would study this unusual world where the remnants of a once-powerful human race seek to rediscover the mighty secrets of their ancestors, while they contend with the Arcana, who are bigger than them, stronger than them, faster than them, and have Shaman who can wield the power of magic, yet whom they enslave because humans are more educated than Arcans (but not necessarily smarter), and the human race outnumbers the Arcana by one hundred to one. But when humans begin demonstrating a connection to the spirit world and the ability to wield magic, conflict erupts within the human race as they try to come to grips with this new revelation. Does humanity continue to try to reclaim its former glory and rediscover the power of their lost technology, or do they walk down the path of the Arcana and explore their new ability to use the power of magic? It seems, though, that it cannot be both. Walking the path of the spirits requires the walker to reject the power of technology, to embrace that which is natural, to use technology to enhance the natural world, not usurp it. But there is true power in both paths. The power of technology, and the magical power of the Shaman. For the power-hungry humans, desperate the recover the glory of their ancestors, it is a dilemma.
And thus lies the conflict.
It's a question for a race, but a personal quandary for Vik, a young human who has begun to see strange things and hear mysterious voices, and comes to understand that he's seeing the Spirit World, hearing the voices of spirits and is starting to touch on power that his village has always taught him was the purview of the heathen Arcans, the power of witchcraft, the touch of the devil. Vik's attempts to puzzle out what's happening to him is only clouded by an Arcan wanderer who comes to their village, a frightening wolf with coal black fur and yellow eyes that epitomizes everything Vik ever heard about the Arcans. He is huge, powerful, savage, and terrifying...and he has quite unwillingly come to Vik's village of Ataln because the spirits have commanded him to take a hated human as his apprentice...and Shaman heed the voices of the spirits no matter how they feel about it.
For Stalker, it's an intolerable situation, but there is little he can do. Shaman do not go against the commands of the spirits, not matter how much they hate the commands they are given. Stalker hates humans as much as humans hate his kind, and to be ordered to take a human as an apprentice seems to him to be both an insult to him and an affront to the Arcana, to instruct a human in the secrets of his people, secrets that are their only defense against the technology of the humans that enslave them, abuse them, murder them, and use them in vile, unspeakable ways for nothing other than sport and amusement.
I'm not sure how good of a story it'll be, but the idea of doing something less cute and cuddly appeals to me right now. All the schoolwork I'm doing might have something to do with it.
Looking forward to whichever story you decide to do next.
