The plague (the years before the present)

[dulci]

A possible backstory: (and tying into already stated events)

What if the fantasy world has, for the last several years, been ravaged by a viscious plague? It has, in essence, thrown the blossoming culture back into the dark ages. Whole villages have been wiped out, leaders dead, countries just barely managing to hold themselves together. As the plague has gradually died down, the world has lost a good share of its entire population, and those that have survived have largely lost will to live, becomming barbarian again like their ancestors before them.

Gradually, the plague has dwindled, not done completely, but there are just not that many left to be infected of it yet. Some seem naturally immune, some catch it and survive, nobody has escaped its effects. There is a great disillusionment in the established religions, as the priests and mages have promised divine healing, and yet none has taken place, only death. The people are bitter, unruly, their minds touched by their disease even if their bodies haven't been. The world is poised on the underside of chaos.

Evil men find their niche in this time, too, taking advantage of the weak, conniving and building their own structures of injustice.

So then, it is into this utter desolation and bereavement that the "signs" appear in the sky, the cities land, and the ultra-wary supersticious people look on with jaded interest. Magic, of course, has been lost in the land, with only a few who have remnants of the powers from the golden age before the plague.

And then one young soul ventures to find out what one city is, and sees the powers there, but is cut down. So now there's a new threat to be dealt with. But this young person's companions saw the power that was weilded before the death, and hurry back to spread rumors. One of the evil manipulators, perhaps a mage of the religious orders, perhaps a closet magician who felt he/she never got the recognition deserved, finds a way to get hold of the city, using powers much more honed than the young martyr's. He gets in, overpowers the city, and starts wrecking magical and technological havoc from there.

Jumping ahead: when the scifi crowd and fantasy people are in the battle, and then suddenly Heaven breaks in...how much more receptive would the fantasy people be to this unknown God if their religions would have shattered them before, and their world was in tatters? And here is an offering of hope? Or maybe some, on the flipside, would become even more hardened, angry at this intrusion and perhaps blaming this unknown God for every trouble on their world.

But, plot aside, I'm thinking it would add a certain richness if the world was not all peachy keen when the scifi crowd shows up. I think a strong element of desperation would not only make the battles and stakes harsher/higher and motives stronger, but also alow for more stunning relief between glittering scifi tech and philosophy and dark, dark world. And then how they both deal with the supernatural intrusion into their lives.

Whaddya think?

[tk1912]

I like it.

In the first battle, there could be a few fantasy folks who were in the early stages of the plague and decided to go out and fight in the hopes of dying a glorious death instead of being sick and in bed. The breaking in of the Divine could cure them, leading some to convert to the new religion. The others, of course, would be mistrustful.

[mongoose]

I'm half with it. I don't know how far this development has gone, and thus, my post may not be very relevant, but here goes anyway.

In the following post I do not intend to tell anyone how anything must, or even should be done. I realize I have no more authority in these things than does anyone else. I simply offer my observations based on extensive reading of three speculative fiction authors who are Christians, and of history.

If we're dealing with sci-fi versus fantasy, it wouldn't do to have the fantasy world include technologically advanced cultures, as I read about in the first thread in this section. Nor would the most technologically advanced culture be based in a geographically harsh environment. But that's another matter. Point is, the fantasy world needs to be, technologically, in the high middle ages at the latest. High technology would be something like what the Byzantine empire had right before its fall to the Turks, or whomever finally took Constantinople. Thus, it would need to be either
1. A young world, wherein civilizations have only had so much time to develope
2. A world that had the opportunity to advance technologically, but which, for whatever reason, chose not to or
3. A world in which something, like the aforementioned plague, wiped out the civilization.

In the latter, you end up with something post-apocalyptic. I would propose, to make it interesting, that all knowledge of internal combustion engines and the like has been wiped out. You still have basic machines, and perhaps even explosives used by some peoples, but no firearms, cannons, or the like. Thus, castles can still withstand attacks, as long as their walls are thick enough to take bombardment from catapaults and such.

In such a world, everything is not in chaos. Many who survived the plague or whatever and the subsequent chaos and purges, would have banded together for mutual survival and welfare. They would have formed structured societies, and even basic civilizations to withstand the ravages of the environment, further plagues, brigands, and warlords.

The warlords, of course, cannot simply wage war. The whole point in doing so is to gather resources to run their own civilizations, to get for themselves power, wealth, security, the good life, whatever. Thus, they need farms and rudimentary industry, just as the less warlike peoples do. Thus, you end up with a plethora of rival city-states ruled by feudal lords, some of which are more benevolent to their people than others. In such a post-apocalyptic, or pre-endustrial society, survival is enough of an issue that you can't really focus much on industry, art, or government. People didn't start worrying about such things again until the Renaissance.

Into such a world come the sci-fi equiped invadors. Initially they'd sweep everyone ahead of them, enslaving those who yeilded, killing those who resisted, perhaps setting up puppet governments of some of the existing warlords or other feudal lords who yeilded. It would not be until after the initial invasion was successfull that survivors would begin to organize themselves and regroup to wage a resistance against the occupation. It would look a lot like our conflicts in the Middle East. The question, then, would be how it would turn out. Could the resistance get under the occupation's skin enough to convince them to leave? Would they be wiped out, such that only a scattered few remained independent in the harshest geographical reasons, scraping a living from the land, and hoping and praying for deliverance? Would the world basically give up, acceding to the new rule as much of Great Briton did to the rule of the invading Normans?

In any case, I am opposed to the idea of an overt divine intervention. I'm going to assume (correct me if I'm wrong) that most of us prefer allegorical speculative fiction. Allegory is supposed to carry a message about reality. The reality is not usually overt divine intervention. Even in instances such as Elijah on Mt. Carmel, Paul in various places, St. Patrick in Ireland, and various missionaries around the world today, God works through His human servants be it through miracles, signs, wonders, or simple service and ministry. Ultimatly, a few people, prophets, if you will, have a revelation of the reality of the spiritual, and are more or less able to communicate that to the people around them, to tie into that power and use it in obedience to God, bringing His will and Kingdom. They might also be called paladins, I suppose, or by authors like Lawhead, Filidh, Ceile De, Christian Druids. Or there's the mages in Tolkien, though his works were not allegorical. God works powerfully, and is victorious, but most people don't see the divine intervention.

I'm trying to think of examples that make the point. If you don't read Ted Dekker, you should, particularly "Blessed Child," and "A Man Called Blessed," For examples of what I'm talking about. People are raised from the dead, slain in the Spirit, overcome by conviction. Prayers travel on colors dancing in the sky to distant places, and work small changes. Religious relics are melted when the man of faith prays, that God, not the relics, would be glorified, and that waring factions would be deprived of a reason to go to battle. In Lawhead's works, quite often the druid priest would call up a storm, or speak a ruin of peace to silence animals that would otherwise alert the villains to the presence of the priest and company. Patrick ignites a fire with the tip of his staff, spreads a smoke screen between himself and his enemies, and departs disguised as a deer with its band.

So I think it's more likely that a few people, being charismatic leaders empowered by God and walking by faith, would overcome destruction, than that God would show up in the sky and smite the bad guys.

Remember also the ultimate theme of Jesus' life and teachings, which I am hoping to show by our allegorical stories: Selfless, humble, loving service, and sacrifice. Mercy and grace. These things, with truth and some justice overcoming evil, even bringing evil about to commitment to righteousness.

Of course, we'd have to establish the nature of the divine, for the purpose of the story, the relationship between the divine and its worhipers and those who reject it, and the various beliefs, true and false, concerning these things. There can not be a world with a history without a myriad of philosophies, theologies, and religions to go with them.

[dulci]

That's really great stuff, mongoose, alot to ultimately chew on. I myself am partial to the allegory rather than the overt, although I do believe each can have its place.

But as for a sense of the history, yeah, that's really important whether you're going epic or on the smaller scale.