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Post by dulci on Mar 5, 2007 23:01:00 GMT -5
Whether we do a world-in-world thing or space invasion thing, I can't shake the idea that the scifi people have cities on the planet too.
So, here's my idea. The scifi people's ships, the largest of them anyway, bent on colonization, actually carry portable cities. Specialized teams will first scan terrain in orbit, and then pick a suitable landing spot, upon which the ship will descend down into the atmosphere and then carefully unfold and unpack itself into a self-sustaining city center, fully defensible. The scifi people's intent is to fortify and secure the city first, with their own technology, and then use their technology to branch out and build more cities from there using the planet's natural resources.
I'm picturing large, bulky, hulking ships--most likely some type of convoluted box-shape--which probably need "tug-boated" down into place in the atmosphere.
Once landed, implanted into the terrain and powered up, those traveling in the scifi fleet will then colonize the city, and use their own battle forces to make armies to secure the surrounding areas. Which, of course, on our fantasy planet don't want to be secured.
I'm envisioning several, maybe as many of five, or maybe dozens, of these cities descending on the fantasy world (maybe seen as from the planet's stargazers as signs from the gods or flaming dooms and whatnot) and unfolding at various locations, at which time the cities unfold, are populated, and the real invasion begins and the clash starts in earnest.
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Post by dulci on Mar 5, 2007 23:06:33 GMT -5
Oh, and maybe these city's power cores, when powered up, ignite some imbalance on the fantasy world and tip the magic scale way overboard.
I'm thinking that in the beginning of the book, there could be quite a play on the fantasy world with what these signs in the heavens mean, while the ships in orbit take a few days or weeks to calculate the best spot for landing. Just think of what the natives will say when the fires from the heavens start actually coming down! Maybe they would first think that the city's inhabitants are their gods because of it, but when the scifi crowd wants to subdue and conquer their lands and resources (including the people) they want to fight back then--and can, because of the immense surge in the magic.
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Post by Jeff Gerke on Mar 6, 2007 8:23:20 GMT -5
I love the idea of the portable cities, dulci. I like how you think.
I could see the colonists arriving in the city and automatically knowing where everything is because these cities are always laid out the same. Kind of like at Wal-Mart.
Jeff
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Post by Jeff Gerke on Mar 6, 2007 9:48:21 GMT -5
Okay, tying this in with the "A collision of universes" thread...
What if the fantasy people see the signs and wonders in the sky and think it is the arrival of the gods? It's really the SF people scanning the planet for a suitable landing spot for the first portable city--and then it's the arrival of the first city.
The first city sets down and unfolds (and you've GOT to have that scene) and immediately starts ionizing the atmosphere--or some other technobabble that means the city is powering up but the result is that it's supercharging the atmosphere and thereby vastly increasing the magical powers of the fantasy wizards.
Some sorcerers saw the great and wondrous city descend from the sky and get together a group that sets off on a quest to see this new thing. (Think magi.) The nearer they get to the city of the gods the more they're finding their magical powers increasing. Even the non-magical characters begin exhibiting minor magical abilities.
Because the city ionizes the entire atmosphere but the effects are most notable closest to the source. Meaning that a fantasy character who suddenly found himself on the SF world/space station would have almost superpowers. Okay, no more Krypton similarities, but it's something we could play with.
So the quest party gets there and...is wiped out by the automated laser cannons at the perimeter. Except for one survivor who instinctively brought up magical defenses he never knew he had. Or something like that.
What if there aren't several portable cities? What if there's just one? What if it's designed to be self-replicating? After X number of weeks, months, or years it is able to complete and send off another portable city, which hops to the other side of the planet and sets down (and begins self-replicating).
What I'm going for is that maybe the SF people, despite their great technological advantages, might actually be in a pickle because the fleet dropped off one city in a supposedly uninhabited world and then left. Now the city is surrounded by millions of primitive but angry natives.
I dunno. Maybe that messes up other things we want to do. But I like how it makes the SF characters feel precarious and vulnerable. Maybe they can call to the fleet for help, but they'll have to hold out on their own for several weeks until help can arrive.
In the meantime the fantasy forces have laid siege to the portable city and are about to destroy it in one last battle.
Maybe THAT'S when the "new" God reveals Himself and the two sides realize they must work together.
Except now the SF fleet has lost contact with the portable city (because the now-empowered fantasy sorcerers have cut off its communications) and has determined that the city is lost and the planet must be destroyed. So here comes the "help" ready to obliterate even their own people.
On the planet, the former enemies must work together to avert their own destruction. Meanwhile they're developing romances and friendships and figuring out what this new religion must be all about.
What sayest thou?
Jeff
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tk1912
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Posts: 68
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Post by tk1912 on Mar 6, 2007 9:58:57 GMT -5
Just a thought.
Maybe you were implying this, Jeff, and I'm just feeling a little dense today.
What if the portable cities were droppped off with no inhabitants? The colonists follow in a separate ship a few months later after the city has had the chance to set itself up.
In the meantime, after the first group of fantasy world peopel got shredded, an evil wizard took up residence in the city and used its effects on him for his own personal gain, thereby making the fantasy world denizens extremely wary of the "gods" (since they believe the gods are evil and on the side of the wizard).
When the colonists show up, they have the inenviable task of chasing the evil wizard out of their home. They manage that through sheer numbers.
This leads them to the horrifying conclusion that the planet isn't so uninhabited and, worse, they find that the surrounding inhabitants hate their guts because they associate them all with a known evil.
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Post by dulci on Mar 6, 2007 12:14:16 GMT -5
>>What if the portable cities were droppped off with no inhabitants?
I think, for the purposes of getting everything set up in the beginning with a bang that you need to bring in at least a preliminary scifi colony party. They'd have to do the scanning and determining (although just WHY they didn't think there wasn't life down there, who knows?) Or maybe they thought that life would be harmless, as they've never before encountered the magic element and have easily destroyed all other enemies on other planets.
I do think that overall there should be more than one city--it would give a sense of the vastness and power of this scifi society and that they mean business. Maybe have three such cities set down (I would think, too, that such a sophisticated society would have multiples in case one got damaged in the going down or damaged by unknowns in the terrain), or maybe two set down and another poised to come down when the others ok-ed it.
I had originally had in mind that these vast city-ships were really mostly hulks of machinery with a small skeleton crew--think of ocean-freighters. The people themselves would follow with the passenger parts of the fleet.
I love the idea, Jeff, of replicating cities! I think I was driving towards something like that initially, and had been thinking, too, that each portable city was in itself built for its own expansion, so each city was only a core base initially ready to expand continually, but still large and much inhabitable in its original form. So, portable, replicating, self-sustaining and growing world-hopping cities.
Maybe the scifi folk know that the fleet left, but would return regularly with new people to populate the planet. Maybe they didn't distress call it back (maybe they couldn't) but they knew that the fleet would arrive at an exact time, at first thinking to their help, but then, after the battle, thinking to their ultimate anxiety! Like they couldn't stop it if they wanted to. Maybe they knew that this next wave of colonists would include the provisional government.
So, maybe the scifi culture has this colonization system of:
1) they find the planet
2) they take initially take 2 or 3 city ships to the planet, along with ~two passenger liners or military transports, and a couple of protectionary frigates and such (which would have the tugs in them to help settle the massive city ships in place)
3) they go into orbit and make intensive scans of the planet--HEY, maybe here is where the magic in the world's makeup would have somehow kept the lifesigns from being detected--and when they find it good and find their spots, two cities are taken down
4) When the cities are unfolded and the skeleton crews aboard them make their scans and give the ok, the passengers on the transports (which would include mostly military and scientific people to start with) are disembarked and shuttled down (or however) to settle the two cities (or maybe only one, the other is a backup--?)
5) The transports and frigates in orbit hover for a couple of days, making sure everything's going well and settled, and then, if all's well and the plan looks to work, return to their starting point to pick up the next wave, which would be mostly civilians and government officials, possibly brining more city-ships with them (doubt that the cities on ground would have fully replicated by then)
6) Those on the planet lose comm contact with those who leave (maybe major comm laspses? or the magic?) but don't worry initially, as everything's on schedule
I also love the idea that in the initial pilgrimage to the "gods," that all but one are iradicated. Great ideas y'all!
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Post by Jeff Gerke on Mar 6, 2007 12:30:15 GMT -5
Okay, having three cities might be good. This would allow us to bring in fantasy cultures from all over the planet. But then the story starts to get very big. But hey, epic is our middle name.
What if the whole city replication thing were automatic? What if the whole first wave of the colonization fleet consists of automated city droppers? Automated scanning, automated site location, and automated city drops. Then after the automated systems on the portable cities okay the deployment, they signal the automated fleet to move on and the portable cities begin ionizing the atmosphere and replicating the next portable cities.
Maybe the colonists arrive in a later wave. Maybe they're with the fleet. But what if it's kind of an Oklahoma land grab thing in which the worlds are being settled (through the automated process) and any settlers who happened to be in the neighborhood could pick any suitable city and just start living there? So you never know who you'd get: maybe nobody for years, maybe some campers or long-haul shippers, maybe religious outcasts looking for a home, etc.
More grist for the mill.
Jeff
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Post by dulci on Mar 6, 2007 12:42:45 GMT -5
Hmmm, now that's something to churn over! Might be chaotic, but it would also have all kinds of "fresh blood" in many different factions. I'm wondering, in that sort of situation, would there be any governments involved on the scifi part? Maybe one overuling Colonization Inc. or some type of planetary federation or empire--because, essentially, SOMEONE had to build, fund, and organize the endeavor! If things go wildly wrong, contact broken off, whatever, maybe the big guns of this massive organization would come in?
Or maybe it'd be a situation something like what happened in Dune, where a bunch of royal/powerful houses/companies were scrambling to carve up their share of the gain, making for political wars between them, too? (Or maybe that's too much like Dune and been there done that...)
I'm really sensing that, because of the relative chaos that's bound to be in the fantasy world once this whole thing sets off, there should be at least some sort of strong governmental presence among the scifi folk to counterbalance and anchor the story, keep it from spiralling off into general chaos, and keep whatever epic-type scale that we adopt in check!
If we do go with immediate colonization, I was sort of backing off my thoughts to have one main city, one "backup module" per se, maybe nearby. Anyhow, it's all wacky ideas at this stage!
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tk1912
Junior Member
Posts: 68
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Post by tk1912 on Mar 6, 2007 13:01:29 GMT -5
Continuing to riff on the portable cities idea...
What if you have three cities drop with a minimal crew presence?
The first drops in a relatively uninhabited area and is witnessed by a shepherd boy (or some analogue). The shepherd boy approaches the city with all due awe and reverence (due to recent signs in the skies) and discovers that he's able to do magic now. He's drawn into the city where he starts doing bigger and bigger magical feats, much to his delight ... and then he gets mowed down by the skeleton crew of that city. They note what the shepherd boy had been doing and they want that power for themselves.
The second drops unknowingly into the domain of an evil wizard, who comes and investigates what's happening. He too notices the boost in power and uses it to kill the skeleton crew. He wants to figure out how to make the power boost permanent.
The third drops closest to the largest population center in the fantasy world. Because of what happened at the first two cities, though, they become the focii of the conflict. The sci-fi government orders them to go to war with the fantasy people to find out where they get their magic powers. The fantasy world wants to kill and destroy the third city because they fear what the evil wizard is able to do...
... and in the first battle, we could have the in-breaking of the new God that dazzles the participants and makes them realize that Something Bigger is taking place.
The sci-fi and fantasy governments, however, assume that the in-breaking is just "more of the same" and makes them all the more rabid to either get their hands on the magical powers or destroy the sci-fi people.
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Post by pixydust on Mar 6, 2007 13:22:44 GMT -5
Have any of you see Chronicles of Riddik? This reminds me of that with the signs in the sky thing. The invader's ships look like commits as they come towards the planet.
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Post by dulci on Mar 9, 2007 1:54:46 GMT -5
I like love your idea, tk! I'm wondering, though, if the third city, instead of largely going to waste, would instead become THE stronghold of the scifi people, as they've seen what happened to the first two and now need a planetary stronghold from which to take them back.
Or, conversely, maybe the city that the shepherd boy first went to is the one that the scifi crowd comes and inhabits/defends en force, because the evil guy that takes the second city has already destroyed the third...? Maybe that's the catalyst to provoke the war for the scifi people (their city going to shreds) while the shepherd boy incident (who was conveniently watched at a distance) ignites the fantasy people to bombard this threat to their society...?
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Post by dulci on Mar 9, 2007 1:55:57 GMT -5
No, I haven't seen the Chronicles of Riddik. But yeah, guess the comet thing does sound kind of similar!
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terry
New Member
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Post by terry on Mar 9, 2007 12:21:47 GMT -5
I am not sure this post belongs here, but I would love to see a small, group of the SiFi group committed to missionary efforts of some type (See my post in PLOT and CHARACTERS). This group would be misundestood and hated in the larger culture. Thank you.
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Post by Jeff Gerke on Mar 9, 2007 15:10:54 GMT -5
Sounds good, Terry. Would they be Christian missionaries or missionaries for some other religion or cause?
One of our possible directions is to present a world in which neither the fantasy nor the SF people have ever really heard of the One True God.
Jeff
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Post by j2thek on Mar 14, 2007 0:35:56 GMT -5
Wow! This is so fun to read...I don't have anything to contribute right now, but I love the idea of self-replicating cities powering up the magic of the fantasy race and at the same time threatening them. I love the idea of the fantasy people fighting back, and the conclusion of the scifi help becoming a threat to all of them. I can see SO MANY little threads within that big picture that would be fun to follow...I can't wait to see what develops...The best thing about this is reading the posts that start with "What if...?" I think that one question is what makes spec. fic. the best fiction....I love the "What if's..."
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