Brainstorm

• Pasted from ideas doc

  • Li’s master

    • Francois talking to generals, as they leave he shouts “You can come out now”

    • General’s underling worried about kid, what if Republicans have started using child assassins?

    • Need to learn how to take advantage of an opponent’s weaknesses

      • Read, identify, exploit

    • Build up for a while and then BAM, holy shit they did it

  • A message gets found on a corpse which has vital information which could help the other side of the war, but would also prevent a massacre. And some randos have to decide whether they will pass it on, against their own country.

  • The March - A story about an army taking a long, essential march from one location to another

    • Deals with the strain of awful environments like peat bogs and lack of supplies, and how it affects the health of the army

    • Then the army, after enduring such an ordeal, have to fight as soon as they arrive

  • Intro story traversing the spirit world

    • Intro story to introduce the spiritual aspect of the world

    • A dude looks for his wife in the spirit world

    • Starts seeing some strange spirit phenomena

  • A key part of the final battle between the Republicans and Royals screws something up and causes their side to lose. The rest of the story is them trying to redeem themselves by trying to un-screw things up, and coming to terms with the fact that they can’t fix what they did. Though, they do deal a small blow to the opposing side in their efforts.

  • Guy leaves The Mainland and arrives at a land with little vegetation, black stone (Like the Giant’s Causeway), imposing castles and creatures of black steel.

    • Just really play up the alien feel of this land.

• Stories

  • Frame story

  • Searching

    • Wife looking for husband in spirit world

  • Li’s Master

    • “You know this place? (Referring to the farmhouse on the hill) It was made by…”

  • Nightmare Causeway

  • Spiritual 1917

  • The March

  • Redemption

    • A key part of the final battle between the Republicans and Royals screws something up and causes their side to lose. The rest of the story is them trying to redeem themselves by trying to un-screw things up, and coming to terms with the fact that they can’t fix what they did. Though, they do deal a small blow to the opposing side in their efforts.

• How does the spiritualism of the world manifest practically?

  • Dualism: The physical body and the spirit, whilst connected, are two different organisms

  • Royalists have learned to starve their spiritual selves, removing the teather to the spirit world and giving them the drive to shape the physical world as they see fit

  • People teathered to the spiritual world have the sense that …

    • They’re tied to the world in some way?

    • They have an innate sense of placement and staying put as they are teathered to their spirit

    • Severing the connection between your physical self and your spirit allows you to roam more freely, but robs you of your sense of home and place

    • Both are in some way aware of the other and what they have done

  • Objects created or moved in the physical world show up in the spiritual world, albeit the locations aren’t one to one

• Searching

  • Spirit world trippy

    • No light but can still “see”

      • Like, you know where everything is and what everything looks like but there’s no visual input

  • Maybe better to have a more temporal story be the starter

World

• Places of Interest

  • Undergrowth

    • Hidden in a vast and dense expanse of forestry

    • Has a very strong spiritual presence

    • Shrouded in darkness, impossible to see from the outside

    • Almost as if the forest worms its way into your brain and lets you see

      • Still can’t “see” anything, but you are given knowledge of where everything is

    • Protected from Royal incursion as they have shunned any sense of spirituality, and thus can’t see in it

    • The people of Undergrowth, even those with naturally darker skin, are pale from having lived in the town for so long

      • Even the traders who move between different towns seem to never get rid of their pale skin

• The Mainland

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  • The Continent is the main setting for the series

    • The most recognizably human out of The Infinite Expanse

  • Tasmania climate/biomes

    • See misty cloudy mountains from Tasmania trip

• The Infinite Expanse

  • The world is functionally infinite ocean and landmasses

  • The further out you go, the more alien it gets in terms of landscape and people

• Religion

  • Spirit world

    • Everything that exists, living or not, lives in both the physical world and the spirit world

    • A rock, a plant, a human, will all have a spirit world equivalent with their spirit having more autonomy based on how much free will they have

    • A tree that is cut down in the spirit world will wilt in the physical world

    • Spirit world traversal

      • It is possible for people in the spirit world to cross to the physical world and vice versa

    • During sleep, in the physical world, the physical souls of people remain teathered to their bodies but rise into the air like balloons

      • These can’t been seen in the physical world but can be seen in the spiritual world

      • If one is in tune with one’s spiritual soul enough, they can get their spiritual soul to latch onto this physical soul and show them around or whatever they want

    • After death it is the physical soul instead which locates and latches on to the spiritual self

  • Spirituality

    • Within each person is a spiritual equivalent, seemingly separate but cosmically linked

    • These spiritual equivalents live in the spirit world. What they do is intrinsically linked to the physical world and vice versa

    • They are a more abstract representation of what is driving someone (A warrior is fighting, a writer is generating structures into existence, etc)

    • Just as people need to satisfy their physical needs (breathe, eat, etc) the spirit needs to fulfill its needs too (breathe, freedom, satisfaction, etc)

    • Animism: Everything that lives has a spiritual equivalent

    • Makes for complex interplay with humans, ostensibly the only sentient race on the mainland

    • Common wisdom goes that the spirit world is underground, and the further away from the ground you are, the further from your spirit you become, for better or for worse

    • Death

      • Death isn’t the end of life, not by a long shot

      • Once the physical is dead, it will join its counterpart in the spirit world

• History

  • Historiography

    • The concept of years exists but without a reference point, so events are “ten years ago, five months ago, etc etc”

    • The concept of time passing in and of itself is very medieval period

      • Time passes, sure, but history remains in place (as far as everyone’s concerned)

  • Before The War

    • There was a time when towns wouldn’t even communicate with each other

      • Something to be said about the royals eschewing spirituality when that already happened somewhat naturally

  • Concerning The War

    • Republicans

      • A confederation of people who have had to come together to mount an effective defense

      • They’ve attempted to keep things as egalitarian as possible but they are still losing contact with their spirits

      • They often ham-fistedly rush to the defense of independent cities, who are not thrilled with the help they receive

      • In contrast with the royals, their uniforms are a much more ragged affair with a loose “bring your own uniform” policy unified under the colour red. If you can bring your own red clothes, great. If not, red pieces of cloth to be worn can be provided.

    • Royals

      • Its first ruler, Yas, 100 years BA, was the leader of the capital city and nothing else

        • Her beloved of forty years died, a determined person who’s passion demonstrated strength of spirit

        • With the help of her son, she attempted to contact the spirit world and talk to her husband again

        • She actually did, but the spirit was almost like a different person. There were similarities in character, but different language and the spirit was more confused and alarmed than anything else

        • This began a closing off of her physical and spiritual sides, and she found herself more in tune with the physical world, more able to focus on it and make it prosperous

        • The more she roided up her own city, the less its main trading partner was keeping up. With the explosive rate of growth and the need for more food there was only one thing she could have done: Conquest.

      • A kingdom that has eschewed spiritual training in order to unite the people into a prosperous society

      • Its subjugated cities are most worried about losing both their culture and their connection with the spirits

      • Places most in tune with their spirits are by far the hardest to subjugate

      • Its generals are supposed to be “The embodiment of the powers of the monarch” and as such is referred to as “My lord”, much as the monarch would.

      • The current Lord is Lord Yenli

• Flora

  • Sweet Tea Snare

    • Mostly found wrapped around dying or dead trees

    • Known to wrap around the legs/arms of people careless enough to step in a pile of its vines.

    • The leaves can be easily brewed into a delicious and delicate tea

  • Mountain Wind

  • Foggy Dawn

  • Fanleaf

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