Young Writers Society

The only problem with the generational thing is that many of the older writers (myself included) want to keep the characters from the previous sequel.

Some of the old writers got on the chat yesterday, and here is one idea for how JIN could end.

After defeating the priesthood, the group makes their way back to General Harris, with the tome in their possession.

Seraph has been corrupted by the Banic runes, to the point where he turns evil. He gets the Tome and knocks Valin unconscious. This is because Valin has the Tome. He does this out of view of the rest of the group.

Alden returns from bringing a message from General Harris, arrives to find Valin unconscious. Alden asks Seraph what happened and Seraph responds that Valin just fainted from heat stroke or something. When Alden leans in to take a closer look at Valin, he is stabbed through the heart by Seraph, or at least appears to be. Seraph kicks the bleeding gryphon into the river, and that is the last anyone sees of the gryphon in that sequel.

The group finally catches on to Seraph, but by that time, he is all ready flying away on a Wyvern for the Blood Plains, Tome in hand.

The new sequel could start one week after the old one finished under this model.

But Writer does have a point: there needs to be room for a new generation of writers, it can't just be the same old characters running around.

What if...

What if the entire group fell apart after the attack. Alden is gone, Valin is injured, Seraph has betrayed everyone, and an ambush separates the group. In short, the entire world comes down on the group all at once.

During this separation, some may choose to go back to their old life, others may try to find their comrades, some may be injured, and still others may be imprisoned.

None of them are able to even track Seraph and even if they could, they'd be unable to stop him by themselves.

The failure of their mission might be enough to cripple them.

In this gloomy setting, we could start the third sequel. A new group forms to get the Tome, but in order to find out what happened to it, they have to seek out the old group members.

This new group would be composed of friends and relatives of the old group. That would satisfy the generational gap and give them a reason other than fame and fortune to continue.

This is just me combining two ideas together. What else needs to be combined? What are we missing?

EDIT:

Maybe one of the group is put into slavery and when the group rescues that person, they have a few tag along?

With the generational thing, you could solve that by just having the old members of the group come together after X amount of years and, because they're getting a bit too old, decide they need a new, younger generation to help kick Seraph's butt. There could be a sub-plot along with this, in that perhaps there's some new leader from this new generation that they need or something along those lines...depends on how cliche you're willing to go, I suppose. But basically, just think of it as...kind of like (and you'll have to forgive me for my Star Wars analogy XD) the way Obi-Wan recruits Luke to basically end up doing the dirty work (...sort of) since Obi-Wan is, as he states, too old for it. So you could still have the old generation get involved with the new generation without worrying about there being nothing for them to do because of the new generation. Does any of that make sense?

On the other hand, I do like your idea with combining the two ideas together in order to satisfy the generational gap.

Hmm. So even more questions to answer:

-How many years has it been since the original group went back to their old lives/tried find comrades/were imprisoned, etc? It would have to be a good amount of years in order for any descendents of the original group to be old enough to join.

-What's been going on since the time the group went their seperate ways and the time that this group is coming together?

-I'm going to guess that, unless whoever has the descendent(s) has been telling those descendents about everything they did (depends on how secretive about it they are, and since I wasn't in the original storybook, I don't know the answer to that), one of the members of the main group (or maybe a few of them, I dunno) will have to be the one to bring the new group together and explain things to them, which will also give the chance for the new group to be given their task.

I think those are the only questions I've come up with at the moment. I like that my wheels are turning, though. XD

I think even a year after is too long. Seraph would have used the Tome, brought the Blood Plains to power, and taken over, by that time.

Here was my initial idea, that Grif touched on.

The High Priest of Bane is dead-- thrown into his own infernal portal by the force of Henry's crossbow bolt. The party has obtained the Tome of the First Wizard, which fell from the hands of the High Priest as he fell into the portal. The treasonous Elven Council has been executed for their treachery, after being revealed by the Harbingers.

Valin sends Adlen off to report to Harris the situation at hand. Seraph goes to each person in the party, congratulating them warmly. Eventually, Seraph and Valin head to the river. The two friends remenisce about the past, and Seraph launches into a speech about brotherhood, dying for your brothers, and doing what you know if right. When Valin turns his back on the templar, for the first time in his life exposing a weak point, Seraph bashes him over the head with the pommel of his sword, knocking him out.

Alden returns shortly to find Valin near the riverbank, where Seraph left him, and Seraph nowhere in sight. When Alden bends down to check if Valin lives, Seraph stabs him through the back, and is POSITIVE he hits the gryphon's heart. He then kicks the body into the river, as Alden's bewildered eyes close. The river runs red for a moment as the body floats down stream. A shadow descends over Seraph as he picks up the Tome.

Soon after, the party comes looking for them, only to find a bloodstained riverbank, a recovering Valin and no sign of Seraph. They think they were ambushed, until Valin confirms the unlikely truth--Seraph has betrayed them.

Now--Seraph's primary motive is to restore the Blood Plains to power, and crush those who oppose him. Bane has twisted his mind so, and has been since he lost his eye, when healing Sirloaz. In order to restore the Plains to power, Seraph woulkd need to restore the Weave, thus powering the magical oasis that provides the Blood Plains their water, food, and source of wealth.

If you need a more in depth motive, I'll post one.

I kinda like this slavery idea, actually--perhaps part of the group attempts to infiltrate the Blood Plains, only to get lost, and captured by slavers, nowhere near the Plains.

I have to say, I really do not like the "next generation" idea. I think we can incorporate new characters just fine, without passing twenty whatever years. Besides...it's a direct parallel to Star Wars if we do that, as Writer kindly pointed out.

Whadaya think.

I like the overall idea, but I still fail to see why Seraph would necessarily harm Valin--or on the contrary--harm, but not kill him. Unless this is an opening to "bring him back"

But I like the idea of one of the party (or maybe a new member) getting sold into slavery. Sounds like it could be fun.

Also, I think the friends/relatives of party members searching for the members of the original party to incorporate new members. But who would serach for Valin, an orphan wiht few freinds (Seraph being the closest thing he had to family)? But it would be cool if someone does come looking for Valin, however, perhaps a member of the Royal Elven High Court, after hearing the news of his return, but never actually well...returning. Or perhaps an enemy out for revenge for a past wrong (maybe Valin assassinated a brother or freind back when he was a rogue?)


In case you haven't guessed already, I'm in, wiht Valin.

I don't really see another way to easily bring in new characters without doing a generational thing. I mean, I guess doing it the other way would work, but having it be a new generation sounded kind of fun. The fact that it'd be Star Warsy is...well. I'm on the fence as far as that's concerned, but I don't mind as long as it's not blatantly obvious that it's parallel to Star Wars.

Hmm. Well. I'm kinda out of ideas now since the generational thing seems to be getting turned down, even though I thought it'd be kinda fun.

To be fair, what do you mean by "generational?" If you mean the passing of many years, so that many of our characters, who are in their prime, become old and unable to quest and fight...then it kinda ruins the point of using the same characters.

If you mean the bringing in of outside, younger characters, i see no problem.

I think the group should run into an ambush as well, maybe while Seraph and Valin are doing their thing. General Harris could go rogue and make a grab for the Tome. She wouldn't get it, but the group would be separated and in confusion.

Also, it would be quite possible for Seraph to be delayed a substantial period of time before he can restore the weave, depending on how difficult the weave is to understand and what might be required to restore it. If it takes certain materials, he would have to get them.

What would make it even more complicated is if the original weave was completely illogical in the first place. So if you did one spell a certain way, you could light a candle, but if you did the same spell under slightly different circumstances, you could set your house on fire. This randomness would be very difficult to categorize and isolate, which is good because it does some things for us.

1. Magic becomes mysterious. Nobody understands it and normal people are afraid of it.

2. Magic becomes dangerous. Not just to bad guys, but to the casters. This sort of thing makes you think twice about using magic and adds a twist to the entire story (no more safe magic assumption.)

3. The weave can be delayed indefinitely. So we could pull it off several years later, we don't have to arrive at the blood plains within a month or so.

I meant generational as in X amount of years pass by in order to make room for characters who would be old enough to really be of use (meaning 18 years old VS 5 years old).

I agree in Griffin about the weave making it take longer to decipher what the book says. An interesting idea could be that Seraph could need someone to decipher it who somehow, either by magic or otherwise, seems to naturally understand the language that it's in, and it could be a member of this new group. Just something to optionally play around with.

I hate to keep shooting you down, but it's much easier to create a character from scratch and just say he's X age, rather than forcing the rest of the characters to age in order to make room for them.

Let's approach this differently--what character do you have in mind that X amount of years must pass in order for you to use him?

...or her.

And please keep in mind, Fantasy, that we really don't need extraneous characters who will only make the RPG unwieldy. If your character doesn't add something integral to the plot, then are you really sure you want to join? Also, we've basically got the plot (at least, major plot points) written out.

Yea, I'm in...

I'm not exactly sure how to end the first one (xD), but lets just say seraph does go evil, and summons forth the armies of Bane. Well the king is gonna want to do something about that, so he creates this massive draft, and essentially takes everyone able to wage war with bane, because he is going to need everyone. Well, since people want in on this and people want to keep their old characters. The old characters (that want to be kept) are split up (to go solo, or in pairs or what ever), and they each command armies, so we're talking huge battles. The older characters will also be part of the kings closer advisors (the king thinks they will be of use to him, since they have fought with seraph before, but what he doesn't realize it's not just seraph anymore). The new characters come in as drafted or volunteers, essentially they are grunts (could possibly rise in rank, but it would be much later). These would be your ordinary people no special abilities, none, etc. (there will be reviewing of character sheets).

Yea thats just an idea (it exposes people to a different writing style, and experience being a grunt rather than some spec ops team of elite soldiers).

I dunno, sounds a bit unwieldy to me, bud.

I agree. It wouldn't be a unified plot, everyone would be working on their own, and that would make them have nothing in common. It would make a better video game then it would a storybook I'm afraid.

There may be some confusion, so let's be perfectly clear: our plot doesn't exist until it is written out on the storybook. Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING here is the tiniest bit permanent. This can not be stressed enough. It can be changed the moment someone comes up with something better. Not all ideas will make it into the storybook, but all will be considered. It is only fair.

Now before we go telling Writer that she has to conform her character to an unestablished plot, why don't we give her the benefit of the doubt and see who her character is?

She may have come up with something that will lead to a more interesting plot line then the one we have now.

The only idea I had for my character was that she would be a modified version of the main character in my Watcher story. She won't be a Watcher, and I might only give her one or two magic abilities, either healing or Seeing, or both. I was told that her being a healer would be invaluable because there aren't any at the moment, so I'm leaning toward that. Just a fair warning, though, I've never written about or played a healer before, so I don't know THAT much about it. I keep imagining her to be like Leo from Charmed when it comes to healing, but it won't be as simple for her to heal like it is for Leo. All Leo does is put his hands over someone's wound and this light comes from his hands that heals the wound. If I did it this way (which, considering how little I know about it, might be the best route to go), I would have it take a lot of energy out of her to heal certain wounds so that it wouldn't be so easy.

So basically the only idea I have at the moment is for a healer...though I was talking to Hunter on IM last night and he seemed to like the idea of someone being needed to decipher the book, which would make up for why it would take so long for him to be able to use the book, and that person would be a member of the group. I'm not necessarily saying it would be MY character, but I'm not exactly opposed to it, either....especially since, apparently, she needs to add something integral to the plot, so this would make up for it.

Hunter has some other ideas that I think we should consider that go along this route, but I don't quite remember what they were, so I'll let him explain them.

...I hate to ask this, but I'm kind of curious. This is the first time I'm joining a storybook- I'm attempting to start one of my own but my ideas for it are kinda lacking- and I was wondering...it's basically like a role play, yes? Or a co-written story? If so, what's the point of pre-planning EVERYTHING that's going to happen to the point where it seems like it's set in stone? Where's the fun in it? I used to do things the same way when I would start role plays, and I think that's why they failed for me...I would plan things ahead of time too much and make it harder for people to stay interested and want to be involved. I'm not saying that that's the case here at all, but I just think that if TOO much is pre-planned, it could eventually get sort of boring. I hope I'm not overstepping my bounds in saying so, it's just a point I thought I'd bring up.