Fissures of the Earth.

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Prologue

On opening this book you will most probably be wondering ‘what’s this doing in my bag?’. In truth, you will have rented it or bought it, it doesn’t matter which, as long as you read it.
This is a story of my world and adventures, written after they have been completed, or as they are happening. In a way, you hold my entire life in your hands, almost from beginning to end, almost. There are many people in both of our worlds, though my world is your world, sort of. Don’t worry, you’ll understand, eventually.
You hold a treasure in print (I know that sounds conceited, but in a way it’s true.), an entire history of a world that you don’t know. This world is not very far from earth, in fact, you are probably standing, right now, where my story starts. In the muddled and confused city of my birth, Krion.
Of course you won’t know that it’s Krion as Krion will not be built yet, nor even imagined as possible. For what is history to me, is the future for you. It hasn’t happened yet, or it will very soon. Either way, you won’t know what I am talking about, not really. (I’m rambling aren’t I?) I’m talking to you from thousands of years to the future, for you. See this is how it all started, I guess. I was… no no, I’ll just start what I’m going to write and you will understand, I hope.


**************************************

There are some people in the world who think that they are gods gift to the universe, others say they are. Sometimes they can be right, and are halfway decent people, but mostly they are just moronic jerks. (Pardon my language). Decent, there’s a word you don’t hear very often now days, society doesn’t even know the meaning of the word.
Society today is very different to what you’re probably used to.

There are fourteen different orders or so;
The Scyree: they are the upper crust, the crème de la crème of society. They have money, food and living water (the water is pure, similar to rainwater). You know the Scyree because they are very, very clean. You’d call them obsessive-compulsive, see, if they touch anything outside their Citadel they must, must wash their hands or feet or whatever touched the ‘contaminated’ substance, at least four times before they can (or want to) enter their ‘pure’ zone.

They wear a pure white robe, that is pressed immaculately, perfectly even.

The Thandos: they are phobics, almost as bad as the Scyree, or worse than, it depends on your point of view. They are afraid of dirt, all dirt. See you have arachnophobia or claustrophobia, a fear of spiders or small places. These have dirtaphobia? A compulsive fear of dirt, a dislike even. Look at it this way, if they find even the merest speck of dust, the smallest grain of sand, they immediately take out a cleaning agent and a scrubbing brush. They then scour the area that was ‘dirty’ and all around it for at least 40cm in any direction. That’s just the ‘finder’, he (or she) then notifies a few others and they disinfect the entire room, scrubbing as they do so.

This faction wears light blue robes with lots of pockets (for the cleaning stuff). They live with the Scyree as cleaners and slightly less than peers.

The Bions: this order is fanatic about small (or large) animals, you name it, they love it. Say for example, you say ‘what about rats and vermin?’ They’ll say ‘rats and all vermin do a necessary job in our city and eco system, they….’ And then you’d get seriously bored as they explain why you need rats before they off and exterminate a few. I know it’s hypocritical but that’s their job, extermination. Well, technically, they are simply employed by the Scyree to keep ‘contamination’ down. Meaning; keep the animals out of sight. Cage them, destroy them but keep them out of sight. Except birds, god help you if you harm a bird, because nobody else will.

This order wears light red or faded clothes, sometimes they wear robes and other times they are wearing tight fitting stuff, well, tighter than a robe.

The Trigalones: nobody really knows what they do or how they act, as they spend most of their time up in a Tower, studying I think. With good reason as their orders’ colour is fluoro yellow, bright bright yellow. In a greyish city with duller colours or pale ones, they stand out like a sore thumb.

The Saross: these are the priests. I use that word for lack of any other, they are not the saintly men and women of your time, no, they believe and force everyone else to believe, that god demands a blood penalty every hour for the ‘sins’ of the lower orders. Ironically it is the lower orders that get to be ‘payment’, and who do they kill more than any other order? The Golomns of course. (I’ll get to them all in good time).

This order wear dull brown robes, the brownish crimson of dried blood. A really ugly order with really ugly clothes. I don’t like them very much (in case you haven’t noticed).

The Palerons: they are the Gatekeepers of the Law, Orderers of Chaos, Wielders of Justice, Protectors of the Peace (they only protect their own behinds). In short, they are the Lawyers and judges, police and whatnot. People are still getting sued or broken into (by the Henakh) so they have to have somebody to complain to. This order wears robes of red and black.

The Encrypters: they make and break security codes, literally. They get employed by a Saross to program their house (solar powered energy or something, all the houses and cities have electricity). So just for the fun of it, they make a new code, they get rather pleased with themselves over that and promptly brags to the rest of their order ‘nah nah, I made a new code, I bet you can’t crack it!’ and then send out coded instructions (of course) to every Encrypter.
I consider them to be glorified Henakh and therefore they wear a dull black colour. It could be said to be faded.

The Henakh: these are purely and simply the assassin order. Well, that and the rulers of the Underworld. Where would a city be without the hired killers, cutthroats and thieves? Ironically this is one of the best orders to belong to. If you kill someone you only have to point to your employer to get off the hook.

The members of this order wear black, form fitting clothes. Usually leather like substitute. This is to better blend with the shadows of the night I suppose.

The Breeders: they supply all the factions with new members. No biggie in the brains department they ‘perform’ in public for fun and/or on order. They are filthy, slovenly and offer themselves to anyone and anything. Let me put it this way, a dog could be your father as likely as a Saross. Go through the right places and you can find who (or what) fathered who. If a child was fanatically clean then it became a Scyree, even if it’s father was a Breeder or Golomn or worse. Blood doesn’t matter, temperament does.

This order wears stuff all, rags mostly that might, might cover the important bits.

The Lochomochs: these are the guards and soldiers. They make up the bulk of the army. They protect everyone above them and anyone who pays them to do so. Unfortunately, they aren’t too bright. You don’t need to be clever to follow orders. They wear uniforms and armour, or, very little if they are unimportant.

The Attarks: this is a rather peculiar order, they are polite in a lofty way, well, more civil to everyone than any of the other orders. They bow to very few and call no man ‘Master’, merely sir or ma’am. They are the only order to go outside Krions walls. The rest are too afraid of ‘contamination’ to do so, or merely don’t want to lose the safety of the walls. Mind you, the Breeders don’t have enough brains to be afraid.

This order wears whatever they consider to be ‘fashionable’ outside the walls of Krion. It’s mostly foolish styles with ten tonne of cloth.

The Namarons: these are the Servants of the People. They cook mostly, or keep businesses up to run Krion. You know, food shops, supply stores, entertainment buildings…you get the idea.
This order wears a light grey cloak with a silver sheen.

The Telemorions: they build and create. They are the carpenters, builders, plumbers, cobblers etc. the Namarons control the money side of things, they are the labour crew. But ironically, without the Telemorions they (the Namarons) and all of Krion would be stuffed. This order wears a dull brown to beige colours.

And finally, the Golomns: these are the underdogs and scapegoats of society, they fawn over anyone and everyone. Born bootlickers, literally.
This order wears the cast offs of the other orders.



There you have it, fourteen orders, all identified and classified in the correct order (or there abouts. It changes from time to time.). Now I know what you’re thinking, which one do I belong to? Answer; none. I’m too bright to be a breeder; too arrogant to be a Golomn, not number orientated, so there goes the Namarons. Not strong enough or building wise for the Telemorions (if I build a chair it’ll probably fall apart as soon as you try to sit on it.), not cruel enough for the Saross, nor heartless- bye bye Henakh. Not a neat freak nor ceremonial- see ya later Lochomoch, Thandos and Scyree. Not fanatical about animals (if it dies, so what?), no coding skills, no head for the many Laws and Sub-laws, amendments, divisions and sections, rules, recommendations and guidelines. Nor could I be civil to a Saross or Golomn if my life depended on it. That leaves the Trigalones. No I am not one of them. They looked at me and said all at once, unanimously I think the word is, “She is not us.” Seriously creepy, forty-eight odd people saying the same thing at the same time? Weird.

So Krion has a problem, what to do with me? Nobody would take me and I could not tell one end of a blue print from the other. So in the end they just let me do as I pleased. I’ve collected some fairly good assassination skills, an okay head for numbers and I can connect with animals.

With my civility, look at it this way, the Golomns get my contempt, the Breeders my disgust, I would happily kill the Saross and the rest could go jump off a cliff for all I care.

Sorry for it being so long...I'm a novellist, not a short story writer. When I'm not being poetic that is. XD
I speak with abscences, my lips move but no sound escapes; my life is but an eternal darkness searching for it's light.




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Sometimes they can be right, and are halfway decent people, but mostly they are just moronic jerks.


Aren’t ‘morons’ and ‘jerks’ the same thing?

You know the Scyree because they are very, very clean.


Perhaps: You’ll know or You’ll recognise?

Sorry, I lost interest after the Bions(sp?). This is info dump, you’ve gone straight into giving information about the society and I really don’t care for them or how they live. You should get rid of most of the above and only keep the parts in italics. You can slowly start showing the reader what your world and society looks like in later parts. If this was a book I wouldn’t continue reading, honestly.

Don’t give too much away in the prologue, it introduces the story. One way of presenting the society is having a character scrutinising the world around them, give them feeling and it will all come together.

-- Myth
.: ₪ :.

'...'




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Ah thanks...hehe, but I don't actually -use- all of the orders, nor describe them in that much detail in the rest of my tale...I suppose I could cut it out...but I feel so proud of that section! *sulks* Thanks for the crit by the way, I didn't notice that typo.
And aye, I suppose moron and jerk are the same thing...Hrm. Ah well, I like it though, it emphasises the point! XD Anyways, enough yapping, here's the second chapter.


Chapter One


Out of all the orders the Scyree are First and there is one big boss Scyree, Jahanthro (it’s a title and the name all the men of the family get. They breed themselves.). He’s a clean freak, an obsessive clean freak. Mind you, everyone around him does whatever he wants them to do for fear of being proclaimed contaminated or worse, unclean. He’s an arrogant, egotistical, imbecilic tyrant. Personally, I don’t like him.

His ancestors created the orders and rebuilt Krion in the first place, just so that they would have a city and people with which to rule. Twelve thousand years ago it started, the dividing of the peoples, and today it is so ingrained that even children, new born babes, know how to act to be in a particular order. It sickens me, the way my world is.

Thirteen thousand years ago the Old World died in with a blazing sky of white-hot agony and mushroom clouds. Not very many people remember the Old World, due to radiation poisoning and all that. (Maybe that’s why the Thandos and Scyree are afraid of contamination?). Anyway, there was this huge atomic war (called the Ultimate Ending by us that remember it.) that wiped out 90% of the population, about seven billion people dead in the blink of an eye.
As far as I know, it was a small thing that started it, an insult or off course bombing or something. The Insulted country declared war on the Insulter, the allies of the Insulter jumped in and attacked the Insulted, thereby causing the Insulted allies to attack a major Insulter ally (the one that had the food trains.)

You still with me? Good.

The Insulter allies joined forces and attacked the Insulted attacker for attacking their food supply. It went like this, back and forth, back and forth (you attacked me, I’ll get my buddies to bash you….) while the major opposing countries (those with the most fire-power and men-Russia and America I think,) remained neutral and glared at each other but was willing to sit out of this war (they were still feeling the after effects of the last one) as mediators for the peace talks…. well, they weren’t really talks, more like shouting matches with each side accusing the other of worse deeds.

Well, they (Russia and America) sat back and laughed quietly, until some silly technician punched in the wrong co-ordinates for a little itty bitty A-bomb. It hit a little city in the middle of Russia called Murom I think. (Check your atlas, it should be there.)

Oopsie.

Hmm, well Russia didn’t take that too well….
So they retaliated by joining the war and blowing the city off the maps….

Another oops. America snickered when they (Murom) was hit but when Russia joined the insulter side, they grumbled and joined the insulted side. Well, war is messy anyways but when those two joined in it got a whole lot messier….

They went for A-bombs to H-bombs and decided that the other side still hadn’t learned their lesson and out came the R-bombs. (To give you an idea as to how powerful a H-bomb is, it would wipe out Miami, quite easily actually. A R-bomb or Radiation-bomb would not only wipe out New York or Los Angeles, it would make the area for about 40 miles-for metric users about 83 kilometres- intensely toxic. Anywhere past that would merely be highly poisonous…go in there and you’ll be mutated.)

KA-BOOOOM! Bye bye civilisation.

Well before these bozos (no offence) came into the picture, the countries that caused the war had started fading out of the frame…Russia and America came and they were shunted to the side.
Whew, you get the idea, minor mistake, major disaster.

If you’re wondering where I got this information about history from. It’s simple, there are old folks whose grandparents’ grandparents’ parents were there and remembered the Ultimate War and the Old World (they grew up in it) so they told their children and their children’s children, the old folks told me when I expressed an interest in the Old World before the War.

No, I’m not unique by knowing how to read and ask questions. About 40% of the population can read but only what the Saross decree you can read. Like law books, or religious books, ie boring stuff.
We still have the technology of the Old World, like cars and stuff, just no way to get to the fossil fuels to power them. We have electricity because some bright spark (no pun intended) found out how to work a wind farm and then some hydroelectric generator or something. Now all of Krion has electric power and everything that we cant use just rusts and crumbles into dust until its original shape is a mere shadow of a memory.

* * *

I am fed up with this stinking city and the way that it is run. The other day I went to see Jahanthro to ask him to clean the lower factions living quarters, I mean, they were (and are) worse than the sewers!
He just looked at me as though I was crazy for even suggesting such a thing, didn’t I know who he was?! Hmm. Well he summoned the Saross and asked if they had ‘found’ this hours payment yet. They hadn’t so, surprise surprise, he gave them me.

I was fuming. They grasped my arms and I tolerated it until we were out of Jahanthros presence then I rather pointedly looked at their hands where they were holding onto me. They got the hint rather quickly and let go. I stopped, turned around and said, “Go find your helpless victim for this hour elsewhere, you’ll not find it here.”

Their blood red robes rustled and the eyes behind the masks were scared. Evidently my erm, dislike, of their order had gotten around. One put their hand on their ceremonial dagger while the other said, in that expressionless and bland voice that they had perfected “We will force you to give payment to Urantoth, god of payment and penance.”

To that pronouncement I said, quite bluntly I’ll admit. “No, you will not.” Before turning around and walking away. Ironically, if the Saross on duty do not manage to find a ‘payment’ within their hour then they are the payment. Sounds like a kind of fatal occupation, being a Saross.

I have spent the passed two days packing and making preparations to leave, saying my goodbyes, dodging the odd assassin, you know, average day to day stuff.
I speak with abscences, my lips move but no sound escapes; my life is but an eternal darkness searching for it's light.




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Hey! Haven't seen you around before, so welcome to the forums!

I started to read your story (beginning at the prologue) and once I got about halfway down the list I thought, "Ah, well, I'll read all of this and then complain about infodumps and syntax and all of that.."

But then I got to the first chapter. The first chapter was good- funny, easy to read, all of that.

So my somewhat simple fix-all? Move the list of the Orders to the end of the book- like an appendix. A reference. That way, if your readers want to know more about a character's background, they can find that stuff out, but they're not bombarded with straight facts for four or five pages.

And yeah- keep the first chapter! I actually laughed during that. It was easy to read, and gave an idea of the history without being dull and pointless. That stuff should be near the beginning, because it really showed off how good you could be as a writer.
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Yes, the prologue needs to be axed and turned into an appendix or a library of terms.

Chapter one seemed to be an info dump - this reads more like an encyclopaedia, where are the characters? We dont meet them until the very end of the first chapter.

A first chapter should introduce the external conflict, the main character and a little world.
Previously known as "Phorcys"
Witherwings Harry Potter RPG



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