BRAINSTORMING sort of

So I need help with brainstorming some stuff. Well, one thing mostly. Also, I guess this is a good way of catching plotholes and stuff. I've had major writer's block with this story for years, and am just now sort of getting past it. Sort of.

So here is the result of my personal brainstorming session! Sorry if it's...um....incredibly convoluted and confusing. It's almost pure stream-of-consciousnesses writing right here.

Anyways:

JADRUS BRAINSTORMING SESSION

Okay, so I need to figure out what the story to this stupid story is.

I have (most) of the setting and characters figured out but no story. I mean, I HAD a story but it sucks. Badly. I need to fix it NOW. ALSO I need to put the setting all the way together. But that can come later.

So, the story starts off with Gehnn meeting Rex. Why is Rex there? What incentive do Gehnn and Yul have for joining him on his journeys? I’ve already looked at the whole “bad people are stalking G and Y so they need R’s protection or whatever” but that is so overdone and stupid and it just doesn’t work with G and Y as characters at all. I’m not going for TOTALLY original here (that’s kind of impossible), but I do want something interesting at the very least.

So, to start off, why did Rex leave Asorame in the first place? Who are his enemies and why? Etc., etc.

Rex’s backstory: he is the grandson of Jadrus Aevarden, the Traitor, who invented many weapons for the Three-Day War and finally went insane and triggered his last weapon, which destroyed most of Asorame. Sort of. Wait, how does this make sense? What did the weapon do?

(for background, Asorame is Rex and Jadrus’s home country. It is known for being awful. Which is why it went to war with pretty much everyone else. I do explain this in a few paragraphs. Sorry for the randomness.)

Let’s start there. The weapon released some sort of chemical in the air, which Jadrus intended to destroy ‘everyone’ because he thought they were all evil (he witnessed some pretty horrifying things during the war). The chemicals caused the air to change and become poisonous, and now strange things grow in Asorame. Wait, that sounds way too much like Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Hm. Okay, keep the air change – the plot point that Asorame destroyed itself, basically. It is a wasteland, but still more or less inhabitable. Asorame lives off of indoor gardens and small sanctuaries where the air is made clean by filters.

Okay! Idea: The Remish discovered that their time is limited. Their gardens are failing and soon there will be no food. Wait, isn’t there magic? Well…um….the chemical extends to magic? YES! Well, more or less. It inhibits peoples’ ability to channel it. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t do small things with it (the enchantments on Rex’s staff, etc.), but you can’t do big things that last a long time like make plants grow and thrive.

It is thought that Jadrus had created something that might remedy this, as it is hinted at in his journals that he was working on something to ‘repair the land’ before he went insane. It’s thought that whatever he created, it must be in his hidden laboratory outside of Asorame (he was one of the few Remish to leave Asorame on a regular basis, being somewhat paranoid about his rivals trying to steal his work). Rex, being Jadrus’s descendant and a highly esteemed Craftsman himself, is tasked with finding it, deciphering clues from Jadrus’s journals and asking for aide from the other magical races who were in contact with Jadrus before the Three-Day War.

Hey, that’s not too bad. But there needs to be opposition…hmm.

Maybe there’s a group that doesn’t want the Remish to survive? Or doesn’t want them to go back to their former glory? Something like that?

How about this for a backstory for Asorame: before the Three-Day War, the Remish were the most powerful and technologically/magically advanced race on the Continent. They let other people live in peace, sort of (if only because of their xenophobic culture….might have to re-draw the map to explain this), but generally lorded it over everyone else, taking what they wanted and threatening attack if anyone complained. Basically. So one nation finally got fed up and attacked, and then EVERYONE (except Samare) attacked. Asorame would have won the war if Jadrus hadn’t lost it and blown everything up (more or less).

So, there are these people who are spying on the Remish people, making sure they don’t come back into power again who hear about Rex’s mission. They’re afraid that if Asorame is brought back into power because of Jadrus’s ‘miracle invention’ (which no one understands the true nature of), then everything would go back to the way it was or else there would another horrible war and this time they would lose and everything would be awful again. Anyways, they go after Rex and try to stop him.

There are also some races that agree with this sentiment and are in league with the Opposition, and so they too try to stop Rex.

So, this is a sort of story of seeking redemption, sparking rebirth and questioning whether or not something is worth saving. There’s also stuff about judgment and responsibility and how one person’s idiocy can make a whole nation suffer and stuff like that. Should probably decide on a certain collection of related themes.

The Opposition (as I have mentally labeled them) can’t directly confront/capture Rex because outside of Asorame he is very, very powerful because the magic is a lot more, um, heightened outside of Asorame’s poisonous atmosphere. They aren’t sure what he’s going to do. They’ve tried speaking with him/detaining him before, but….it really didn’t work. They have evidence of his heightened abilities because this particular confrontation.

Okay, so that’s Rex’s incentive for starting his journey. So why would Gehnn and Yul leave behind their peaceful, quiet lives to help a total stranger who claims to be a member of a race that’s supposed to be extinct?

Well, it can’t just be for the curiosity value. Hm.

Okay, well, let’s go back to G and Y’s backstory:

G ran away from home at a young age and immediately got into trouble in the Big City. A Big Bad named Jethr got her out, on the condition that she become part of his gang. She became a thief, and a very valuable one. Yul was also a thief, but more of the bruiser type. They both decided to run away from Jethr, who tried to get them back and failed. They ran all the way to Yeggronn, which is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the Continent and is known as the City on the Border – it’s right between the Northlands and Southlands. It’s a good place to get lost in, so they did.

So Gehnn saves Rex from dehydration and starving to death in the desert (he was pretty exhausted from his confrontation with the Opposition, as well as low on food since they stole his supplies (all they can really do is hinder him at this point)).

Still not sure why he wants them to come with him or why they would want to go with him. This is always where I get stuck: The Call to Heroism. The Hero’s Call. Whatever you want to call it. I get stuck when it comes to this point. It took me forever to figure out the stuff about Rex. So I know why HE’S on this journey. But no idea why anyone else would be. 

(also, I have a feeling that I should clarify that the Remish/Rems are the natives of Asorame - Asorame is pronounced AH-sor-REM. Similar to how the River Thames is pronounced, basically.)