Retooling my Setting

[Queshire]

So I've been retooling my setting, and one of the things I did was get rid of the Arcana. In case you didn't know, the Arcana were the godlike beings that gave the characters their power and created the monsters they fought. Really they were just a relic of an older setting that I canbalized for this setting, and didn't serve any purpose besides making the monsters and giving the characters their powers, and there were other ways to achieve that without introducing otherwise pointless characters.

After thinking it over, I've decided that the "monsters" are actually a natural part of the world, like spirits, gods, elementals, demons and such. They attack the characters with powers because their powers are stolen from other monsters, for each character with a power a monster had to die for the power, and the other monsters attack to set them free. Of course, the characters with these powers might not know they were stolen!

There's two factions;

Bel Corperation: a Megacorp that recently bursted on the scene and advanced just about all areas of human technology by decades, their success is that they uses powers and technology developed from the monsters and power users to advance traditional technology. They also serve as an organization for the power users, giving them training and support to fight off the monsters that attack them. This group is inspired by the legend of the Tower of Babel. Man taking the power of spirits and gods and twisting them to their own use.

Pandora: A smaller group, they don't have powers themselves, but can manipulate existing powers to tame monsters, negate or even remove others powers, or borrow powers from monsters. They're the descendents of Atlantis, their society relied heavily on using the powers and abilities of spirits (or monsters, the two terms are interchangable) but that ultimately destroyed their society. The few surviors and their descendents have since been working to supress all knowledge of spirits or the magic used to take advantage of them, which puts them dramatically opposed to Bel. They have opened Pandora's Box and are now working to close it.

By the way, the main character ultimately chooses a third option inbetween the two factions.

Well, that's what I have for now! I know you don't really care about me gushing on about my setting, but it helps me to get it all typed down. Do you guys have any comments, suggestions, or questions about it?

 

[ThinkerX]

Ok...

What about everybody else? Do ordinary folks ever cross paths with the monsters? Any cases of monsters clashing with or being killed by ordinary sorts? Or to put it another way:

Is the existence of the monsters commonly acknowledged? A badly concealed secret? Or a closely held learn-of-it-an-you-die type secret?

 

[JCFarnham]

In fact, I think this new corporate leaning retooling of your story allows us to engage more with the setting. It's more grounded and no longer abstract. One could have sympathised with the previous version, but the inclusion of god-like beings throws open the fantasy doors a little too much for my tastes.

These days some kind of grounding is good for business. If you see what I mean!

Other than that I'm going to echo Thinker's questions. You may want to think about the driving forces behind the two factions overall goals. Like... there's no such thing as quote-unquote Evil with a capital E, just people who are in opposition to you because they strongly believe themselves to be correct in their actions (whether falsely or not is what the fiction should explore).

Its great Pandora want to cover the whole thing up (can they really do it?), but WHY? It has to be more than altruism right? Why were they formed? Was there a formative incident in their head's life that lead him/her to forming the factor?

The same scrutisation goes for Bel co. and in fact the rest of your characters. Why isn't enough. Give us tangible causes and reason.

That should be some where for you to start.. It good to see the evolution of this idea. You seem to be strengthening it all the while.

 

[Queshire]

Let's see, um.....

For the most part, ordinary people don't notice the monsters, anything supernatural has this sort of aura about them that makes others simply not notice them. Sort of like the mist from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Some people can naturally see through this ability but that's rare. There ARE certain rituals, techniques, and technology that would let an ordinary human see, capture, kill, and steal the power of monsters, and there are some that do that, but it's still pretty rare.

EDIT: Ah, you posted while I was thinking up my response to the earlier post.

First off, at least initially Bel is the good guys while Pandora's the bad, of course it's not that simple.

Bel's goal is to improve the condition of Humanity using technology designed based off the powers of them and the monsters as well as helping the people empowered with the "stolen" power of the monsters.
Michael Bel: "We have a unique opportunity. We can see a world that most people are blind to. It is our responsibility as humans to use this chance to help our fellow man. With the knowledge we can gain from studying these powers we've been given and disecting the monsters that hound us, we can stop war, cure world hunger, solve the fuel shortages. Even the stars themselves would not be beyond our grasp!"

Sera White: "Of course the wealth and power doesn't hurt neither,"

Pandora was founded by the survivors of the tragedy of Atlantis and their descendents. In my world Atlantis was an advanced culture built off the use of magic and the monsters/spirit's power. That ultimately led to it's downfall though. By trying to grab too much power too fast Atlantis was wiped from the face of the earth killing millions. The few survivors then decided that the power of the spirits was too much for mortal hands and have been working tirelessly since to supress all knowledege and use of that power.

I suppose it could be simplified to science(bel) vs religion(pandora) but meh...

In the end, neither's right and the main character picks a third route between the two, focusing on imporving humanity by working WITH the spirits/monsters instead of forcing them.