Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Transcendence WIP Part One

Transcendence is the name of the concept that Wes and I have been working on for Senior Team Project. Below is the story that I've been weaving for it, whether it makes it to the game space or not.

Who is behind Transcendence? The answer is long, and necessary.

There was once a very large civilization that learned to defy gravity, to the point that their entire population lived floating in the sky.

This society had friendly relations with certain other civilizations on the crust of the earth, but the nature of their home allowed them to simply pass over anyone that did not wish to meet peacefully.

They believed that it was their spiritual connection to the elements of nature that allowed them to bend the planet so liberally to their will. Because of this, spirit guides were an important part of society.

On occasion, this society would adopt young children or babies from other cultures into their own. However, the process of Ascension was in-depth, requiring the child to be fully integrated into the religion of their world before they were taught anything.

Every child was allowed to keep three things from their past life. If the child were too young to choose, the parents would bestow gifts. Pictures of the family were almost always given, as well as quilted blankets or painted vases that could tell the story of their heritage.

One child was brought into this society carrying the religious text of his home people. It was deemed a potential threat, but in the hands of such a small babe, no one thought it would be treasured as anything more than a book of fairy tales...they were wrong.

When the boy was only 10 years old, something terrible happened. A major disaster was foreseen by the spirit guides. This disaster promised to be so monstrous that no one would survive. In an attempt to ready themselves for the impending calamity, the sky-dwellers found a way to propel their civilization farther into the clouds than ever they'd been before. Those on the ground begged to be saved. Friend and foe alike were left behind, left below.

This young man was heartbroken to hear that his parents could not join him in salvation. As the city launched up towards the sun, he clutched the photos of his family, palmed the cold metal of his father's compass, and read every word of the book he'd been left. Until then, it had only been a relic of days gone by. But in that moment, it became a solution.

In that book was named a place where all life could be preserved. At the ends of the earth, solace could be found in the arms of great golden boughs. In reading this, the boy knew that his parents would believe and seek out that mythical safe haven. He knew he must find it too.

When he went to the spirit guides, they gasped in horror, for the holy place of his parents' beliefs was the source of all chaos in their society. After ten more years safely hovering over the planet, as they descended back to an ice-encrusted, snow-tossed world, they refused to travel towards the ancient land. But they offered the boy-turned-man an alternative. They promised him a place as captain of an expedition ship, set to search for survivors in his home country.

Now, they call him The Deceiver. There are no stories of what he did, because he left none to tell them.

There are no stories of what he did, because he is not done.

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