Forsta-Phoenix
Dreamer
Hey there,
I'm pretty new here (first thread) and am attempting to write a peice of fantasy fiction over the summer. I have a general plan for the narrative and some of the main characters, but am looking for feedback on some ideas and concepts behind the story. I understand this is a large amount of text to read so I give you thanks beforehand and I'll write a summary of points at the end of the post!
I have the geography sorted, with the story mainly occuring on a continent about 1 and a half times the size of europe, with a narrow passage to a much larger continent (of undecided size because who doesn't love mystery?) to the east and a large tropical continent to the north (even less defined because MOAR mystery!). I have a map on paper, but am currently editing it to look nicer before posting it here!
The general state of affairs is that the main continent is roughly at early renaissance levels of technological development, with traces of magic which has faded from prominence as engineering becomes more popular (for the novel value rather than any inherent superiority and more importantly accessibility to the common man). So we have people developing the first firearms that can feasible be used by a single man, however armies are yet to really fully grasp this new technology with even the most developed countries only fielding a few cannons (referred to as bombards in universe) for prestige as opposed to actual practicality, these are supported by infantry and cavalry and the occasional war machine/beastie. By beastie I mean things like war elephants/mastadons/rhinos other large megafauna, or smaller creatures such as dogs, pigs etc. Although the majority of animals are similar to ones we are familiar with there is a simply stunning natural diversity of creatures around the place, from large cats taking the niche of wolves in the north to red-panda-esque creatures replacing raccoons and foxes in the west (my main reasoning for this diversity is more for rule of cool and aestetics than anything else, but also wanting to steer clear of more cliched high/epic fantasy creature conventions).
The political background of the continent is there are 10-15 main countries, with many smaller city states, republics, duchies, confederations, leagues or you-name-its scattered across the map all with a fairly homogenous background and similar ethno-linguistic histories but with enough differences and shoulder-chips for the area to always have a good war or three occuring at once. The event that is on most kings/princes/leaders minds right now is an imminent invasion from the east by a large horde of steppe people, with the easternmost kingdom already experiencing probing raids and attacks. These eastern hordes are obvious mongol analogues but with an even crueler bent, and also a profound love of rockets (fireworks really but morale busting none-the-less) and to a lesser extent early cannons tooled for grapeshot (instead of a cannon ball a bunch of shrapnel is placed in the barrel, think giant shotgun) and pulled by horses, needless to say invasion policies from this group are very brutal and a successful invasion may plunge the continent into a dark age from which a return is unlikely. Most Kings, eastern and western, have heard stories from far away tradeposts of the horrors that these people bring and provides a pretty large incentive for these invaders to be repelled (or diverted/appeased) pretty darn quick.
This invasion whilst pressing for the westernmost nations is not a prime priority as the time necessary to cross the continent and destroy all the intervening nations could take years, besides there will be larger and better bombards by then (or so the yesmen are whispering into kings ears) even more there are a large chain of mountains and forests dividing the continent in the middle, sure to keep back any horse mounted army! But there is a powerful political movement to work together and repel the invaders before they can even set foot on these dividing mountains, the only problem is that each king sees himself as the best candidate to lead a force and negotiations are getting grim, with various blocs forming and each beleiving they should lead the rest to salvation. So typical of people to turn on each other than the real threat at hand hey?
The other major event to happen to these people during the novel is a first contact scenario with a group of overly diplomatic humans (if they are really human or mere avatars I am yet to decide) who claim to be from a large vessel in orbit and wish to trade with the inhabitants of the planet. Although any POV characters have no actual way of confirming whether this is true or not, the fact is that these visitors have technology advanced enough to be indistinguishable from magic (but importantly not magic!) so it is taken as truth. At the time of the novel these Visitors have contacted most nations on the continent (maybe the world, they are very tight lipped about these things) but have decided to focus most relations with a medium/large island nation lying off the west of the continent. For some reason the Visitors seem uninterested with maintaining anything more than one advisor or two in most other big countries, which has alienated the Island Nation from the rest of the continent. A double blow as the king was head of the most powerful bloc and one of the greatest proponents of stopping the Steppe Hordes before they became a problem and he is, understandably, miffed at this. Also each trade that takes place between the Visitors and the Island Nation requires the King to allow more and more social freedom to his people, which he is getting more and more aggravated over but ultimately the deals the Visitors offer are far too good to reject over something as trivial as a duchess's right to a voice in parliament or increasing literacy from 1-2% to 10% in 5 years.
Now one of the major problems I have come up with is that I want these Visitors to want something far less than altruistic in return but I am struggling to think what a star faring race could want from a world as developed as 15th century europe. The best reason (i.e. most logical and one that doesn't require too much suspension of disbelief) that I can come up with is that these Visitors are grooming the island nation to become very loyal to them, and thus create a base from which to control the rest of the continent and thus keep a captive market for the Visitors (Much like the British in India in our history, just with a more pronounced tech difference!). However that reason is ultimately unsatisfying to me, could you imagine the reveal?:
The Visitor turned to face the King and after a brief pause to twiddle his waxed mustache whispered "Aye my good Lord King I do want something from you, which you have just delivered to me: TOTAL ECONOMIC DOMINATION MUAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA *cough* hurk *cough*".
Whilst that might be an over-satirization of the situation, it fails to really take me as a consequence the King and his people would be able to get emotional about let alone actually do anything about! I wouldn't want to change it to just a "them aliens wants our lands/resources/tangible objects" because that's what the Steppe Hordes are meant to convey. But I am really drawing a blank on what the Visitors could realistic want in return for their services! So any suggestions there would make me very happy!
I've just realised that this is now turning into a massive wall of text so I'll leave the explanation here for now and ask these questions:
Are there any works of fiction that sound similar to this?
Are there any tropes or cliches that I have unwittingly stumbled into?
Do you like the setting?/Do you think it is interesting?
What do you think of the set up? (Hordes from the east, Subject in the middle, Aliens in the west)
Can you think of any reasons a space faring race would want to trade with a renessiance era world?
Again thank you very much for reading this! And I look forward to any constructive criticism or feedback!
I'm pretty new here (first thread) and am attempting to write a peice of fantasy fiction over the summer. I have a general plan for the narrative and some of the main characters, but am looking for feedback on some ideas and concepts behind the story. I understand this is a large amount of text to read so I give you thanks beforehand and I'll write a summary of points at the end of the post!
I have the geography sorted, with the story mainly occuring on a continent about 1 and a half times the size of europe, with a narrow passage to a much larger continent (of undecided size because who doesn't love mystery?) to the east and a large tropical continent to the north (even less defined because MOAR mystery!). I have a map on paper, but am currently editing it to look nicer before posting it here!
The general state of affairs is that the main continent is roughly at early renaissance levels of technological development, with traces of magic which has faded from prominence as engineering becomes more popular (for the novel value rather than any inherent superiority and more importantly accessibility to the common man). So we have people developing the first firearms that can feasible be used by a single man, however armies are yet to really fully grasp this new technology with even the most developed countries only fielding a few cannons (referred to as bombards in universe) for prestige as opposed to actual practicality, these are supported by infantry and cavalry and the occasional war machine/beastie. By beastie I mean things like war elephants/mastadons/rhinos other large megafauna, or smaller creatures such as dogs, pigs etc. Although the majority of animals are similar to ones we are familiar with there is a simply stunning natural diversity of creatures around the place, from large cats taking the niche of wolves in the north to red-panda-esque creatures replacing raccoons and foxes in the west (my main reasoning for this diversity is more for rule of cool and aestetics than anything else, but also wanting to steer clear of more cliched high/epic fantasy creature conventions).
The political background of the continent is there are 10-15 main countries, with many smaller city states, republics, duchies, confederations, leagues or you-name-its scattered across the map all with a fairly homogenous background and similar ethno-linguistic histories but with enough differences and shoulder-chips for the area to always have a good war or three occuring at once. The event that is on most kings/princes/leaders minds right now is an imminent invasion from the east by a large horde of steppe people, with the easternmost kingdom already experiencing probing raids and attacks. These eastern hordes are obvious mongol analogues but with an even crueler bent, and also a profound love of rockets (fireworks really but morale busting none-the-less) and to a lesser extent early cannons tooled for grapeshot (instead of a cannon ball a bunch of shrapnel is placed in the barrel, think giant shotgun) and pulled by horses, needless to say invasion policies from this group are very brutal and a successful invasion may plunge the continent into a dark age from which a return is unlikely. Most Kings, eastern and western, have heard stories from far away tradeposts of the horrors that these people bring and provides a pretty large incentive for these invaders to be repelled (or diverted/appeased) pretty darn quick.
This invasion whilst pressing for the westernmost nations is not a prime priority as the time necessary to cross the continent and destroy all the intervening nations could take years, besides there will be larger and better bombards by then (or so the yesmen are whispering into kings ears) even more there are a large chain of mountains and forests dividing the continent in the middle, sure to keep back any horse mounted army! But there is a powerful political movement to work together and repel the invaders before they can even set foot on these dividing mountains, the only problem is that each king sees himself as the best candidate to lead a force and negotiations are getting grim, with various blocs forming and each beleiving they should lead the rest to salvation. So typical of people to turn on each other than the real threat at hand hey?
The other major event to happen to these people during the novel is a first contact scenario with a group of overly diplomatic humans (if they are really human or mere avatars I am yet to decide) who claim to be from a large vessel in orbit and wish to trade with the inhabitants of the planet. Although any POV characters have no actual way of confirming whether this is true or not, the fact is that these visitors have technology advanced enough to be indistinguishable from magic (but importantly not magic!) so it is taken as truth. At the time of the novel these Visitors have contacted most nations on the continent (maybe the world, they are very tight lipped about these things) but have decided to focus most relations with a medium/large island nation lying off the west of the continent. For some reason the Visitors seem uninterested with maintaining anything more than one advisor or two in most other big countries, which has alienated the Island Nation from the rest of the continent. A double blow as the king was head of the most powerful bloc and one of the greatest proponents of stopping the Steppe Hordes before they became a problem and he is, understandably, miffed at this. Also each trade that takes place between the Visitors and the Island Nation requires the King to allow more and more social freedom to his people, which he is getting more and more aggravated over but ultimately the deals the Visitors offer are far too good to reject over something as trivial as a duchess's right to a voice in parliament or increasing literacy from 1-2% to 10% in 5 years.
Now one of the major problems I have come up with is that I want these Visitors to want something far less than altruistic in return but I am struggling to think what a star faring race could want from a world as developed as 15th century europe. The best reason (i.e. most logical and one that doesn't require too much suspension of disbelief) that I can come up with is that these Visitors are grooming the island nation to become very loyal to them, and thus create a base from which to control the rest of the continent and thus keep a captive market for the Visitors (Much like the British in India in our history, just with a more pronounced tech difference!). However that reason is ultimately unsatisfying to me, could you imagine the reveal?:
The Visitor turned to face the King and after a brief pause to twiddle his waxed mustache whispered "Aye my good Lord King I do want something from you, which you have just delivered to me: TOTAL ECONOMIC DOMINATION MUAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA *cough* hurk *cough*".
Whilst that might be an over-satirization of the situation, it fails to really take me as a consequence the King and his people would be able to get emotional about let alone actually do anything about! I wouldn't want to change it to just a "them aliens wants our lands/resources/tangible objects" because that's what the Steppe Hordes are meant to convey. But I am really drawing a blank on what the Visitors could realistic want in return for their services! So any suggestions there would make me very happy!
I've just realised that this is now turning into a massive wall of text so I'll leave the explanation here for now and ask these questions:
Are there any works of fiction that sound similar to this?
Are there any tropes or cliches that I have unwittingly stumbled into?
Do you like the setting?/Do you think it is interesting?
What do you think of the set up? (Hordes from the east, Subject in the middle, Aliens in the west)
Can you think of any reasons a space faring race would want to trade with a renessiance era world?
Again thank you very much for reading this! And I look forward to any constructive criticism or feedback!