Windswept - background info
Jul. 17th, 2011 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wiseheartDue to the flattering interest shown for my fledgling universe, I'm giving you some of the background facts. :)
WINDSWEPT
(The outline of a possible sci-fi universe)
by Soledad
Note: This universe is based on the artwork of Louis Royo. The names are likely to be changed, as this is all very temporary at this moment.
THE PREMISE
The planet Windswept is in the state of post-apocalyptic horror. The southern continent is a dry, hostile desert with sheer, sand-coloured cliffs, where the ingenious species of this world still live in a honeycomb of caves. The greater part is an immense ocean, inhabited by nightmarish creatures that have received a sudden evolutionary burst due to the nuclear war that took place almost a century or so earlier. The northern continent is the smaller of the existing one, but it has been almost completely destroyed in the war.
The dwellers of the desert are a race of winged humanoid creatures, a strange mix between humans and bats, but with a dry, sandy skin. They are called the Furies, and they can interbreed with humans. A different offshot of them have huge, horizontal spikes instead of wings, lives under the desert sand and is called the Burrowers. Human/Fury hybrids have become a small but important percentage of the population, as they are more innovative in their thinking than pure-blooded Furies, although physically weaker and less resistant to the harsh sunlight and the radiation.
The primary species of the ocean seems to be the Kraken: a race of tentacled sea monsters big enough to be mistaken for small islands. While the scream of the Furies can shatter glass, the Kraken are said to have strange mental powers, which is how they can rule over the other sea creatures.
Once there was a large human colony on Windswept; the impressive ruins of their great cities can still be seen on the northern continent. The humans have come to Windswept centuries earlier on a huge spaceship that contained not only advanced technology but also thousands of embryos in cryogenic units. They were looking for a new world to colonize, and the Furies – at that time the only sentient species of the planet – who had so adapted to a life in the desert during the warming period of their world that they had no use fort he colder northern continent, let them settle there.
The humans built cities and searched the ocean for resources. Unfortunately, they were divided from the beginning. One group, the Technocrats, wanted to turn their entire colony into a high-tech lab, to develop never-before-seen technologies, with an emphasis on cybernetics and weapons. They experimented with the blending of man and machine, as they believed that cyborgs were the next logical step in the human evolution.
The other group, the Earth-children, wanted to settle on biomechanics. They didn’t want simple bionics, but to *grow* actual, live technology, including organic, sentient buildings and starships. As the resources were limited, a bitter fight began between those two groups, and in the end, under still somewhat undefined circumstances, the conflict ended in a terrible war, involving nuclear bombs on one side and biological warfare on the other one.
Today, there are only a handful of humans living still on Windswept, like rats among the ruins of the cities on the northern continent. But even there, they are not safe. The sea creatures leave the water to hunt them, and slavers from the original ship – that gave the planet its current name – are visiting the planet regularly to capture them.
Because the original colony ship, the Windswept, is still out there, looming somewhere in orbit, manned by cyborgs and controlled by an AI that had somehow gained self-awareness. It’s badly battered, but still functioning well enough to sustain a large population. Thousands of human slaves are kept on the lower decks to do the more mundane tasks, as the cyborgs aren’t numerous enough to maintain such a huge vessel on their own. Due to a cruel joke or their creator, or because of their construction hasn’t been fully finished before the war (the true reason isn’t known), all cyborgs are male, with functional male organs and the needs that go with those. Many human slave girls are separated from the rest to serve the needs of their cyborg masters.
But there are other humans out there, too. The descendants of the Technocrats who were able to flee the planet in time have settled on Thule, one of Windswept’s six moons, exporting the pyramidal architecture of their colony to this much more modest place. They no longer have the means to build huge warships, but they often raid the ship Windswept for supplies, technology… and to break free as many slaves as they can cramp into their small, fast and deadly combat ships. They need to refresh their gene pool as often as they can, as they’re not a numerous people.
The other, larger group still free, the descendants of the Earth-children, are always in space. They live aboard their huge, organic ship, the Leviathan, that can house at least twenty thousand people – not that they’d come near to that number. They have managed to salvage the hibernation technology of the old Windswept, and extracted the still cryogenically frozen embryos, only a third of which had been used to populate the colony centuries earlier. From time to time, they add new individuals to their population from those storage units, to keep the gene pool healthy. They, too, often raid the Windswept, but their main goal is the freeing of the slaves. Some of them have a thin trace of Fury blood in their veins, but it’s usually not visible.
The two groups have agreed in a truce, as long as the cyborgs of the ship Windswept still are a serious threat for both. They also both intend to gain back the northern continent of the planet, but for that, they’d have to eradicate the Kraken from the ocean, which is a questionable task, both ethically and from the point of it being physically possible or not. There are no real guarantees that they’d be able to coexist in a peaceful manner, should any of those common threats be removed.
This is the original outline of the universe; some aspects may be changed as things develop, but these are the basiscs.
Coming up next: main characters and important places.
(The outline of a possible sci-fi universe)
by Soledad
Note: This universe is based on the artwork of Louis Royo. The names are likely to be changed, as this is all very temporary at this moment.
THE PREMISE
The planet Windswept is in the state of post-apocalyptic horror. The southern continent is a dry, hostile desert with sheer, sand-coloured cliffs, where the ingenious species of this world still live in a honeycomb of caves. The greater part is an immense ocean, inhabited by nightmarish creatures that have received a sudden evolutionary burst due to the nuclear war that took place almost a century or so earlier. The northern continent is the smaller of the existing one, but it has been almost completely destroyed in the war.
The dwellers of the desert are a race of winged humanoid creatures, a strange mix between humans and bats, but with a dry, sandy skin. They are called the Furies, and they can interbreed with humans. A different offshot of them have huge, horizontal spikes instead of wings, lives under the desert sand and is called the Burrowers. Human/Fury hybrids have become a small but important percentage of the population, as they are more innovative in their thinking than pure-blooded Furies, although physically weaker and less resistant to the harsh sunlight and the radiation.
The primary species of the ocean seems to be the Kraken: a race of tentacled sea monsters big enough to be mistaken for small islands. While the scream of the Furies can shatter glass, the Kraken are said to have strange mental powers, which is how they can rule over the other sea creatures.
Once there was a large human colony on Windswept; the impressive ruins of their great cities can still be seen on the northern continent. The humans have come to Windswept centuries earlier on a huge spaceship that contained not only advanced technology but also thousands of embryos in cryogenic units. They were looking for a new world to colonize, and the Furies – at that time the only sentient species of the planet – who had so adapted to a life in the desert during the warming period of their world that they had no use fort he colder northern continent, let them settle there.
The humans built cities and searched the ocean for resources. Unfortunately, they were divided from the beginning. One group, the Technocrats, wanted to turn their entire colony into a high-tech lab, to develop never-before-seen technologies, with an emphasis on cybernetics and weapons. They experimented with the blending of man and machine, as they believed that cyborgs were the next logical step in the human evolution.
The other group, the Earth-children, wanted to settle on biomechanics. They didn’t want simple bionics, but to *grow* actual, live technology, including organic, sentient buildings and starships. As the resources were limited, a bitter fight began between those two groups, and in the end, under still somewhat undefined circumstances, the conflict ended in a terrible war, involving nuclear bombs on one side and biological warfare on the other one.
Today, there are only a handful of humans living still on Windswept, like rats among the ruins of the cities on the northern continent. But even there, they are not safe. The sea creatures leave the water to hunt them, and slavers from the original ship – that gave the planet its current name – are visiting the planet regularly to capture them.
Because the original colony ship, the Windswept, is still out there, looming somewhere in orbit, manned by cyborgs and controlled by an AI that had somehow gained self-awareness. It’s badly battered, but still functioning well enough to sustain a large population. Thousands of human slaves are kept on the lower decks to do the more mundane tasks, as the cyborgs aren’t numerous enough to maintain such a huge vessel on their own. Due to a cruel joke or their creator, or because of their construction hasn’t been fully finished before the war (the true reason isn’t known), all cyborgs are male, with functional male organs and the needs that go with those. Many human slave girls are separated from the rest to serve the needs of their cyborg masters.
But there are other humans out there, too. The descendants of the Technocrats who were able to flee the planet in time have settled on Thule, one of Windswept’s six moons, exporting the pyramidal architecture of their colony to this much more modest place. They no longer have the means to build huge warships, but they often raid the ship Windswept for supplies, technology… and to break free as many slaves as they can cramp into their small, fast and deadly combat ships. They need to refresh their gene pool as often as they can, as they’re not a numerous people.
The other, larger group still free, the descendants of the Earth-children, are always in space. They live aboard their huge, organic ship, the Leviathan, that can house at least twenty thousand people – not that they’d come near to that number. They have managed to salvage the hibernation technology of the old Windswept, and extracted the still cryogenically frozen embryos, only a third of which had been used to populate the colony centuries earlier. From time to time, they add new individuals to their population from those storage units, to keep the gene pool healthy. They, too, often raid the Windswept, but their main goal is the freeing of the slaves. Some of them have a thin trace of Fury blood in their veins, but it’s usually not visible.
The two groups have agreed in a truce, as long as the cyborgs of the ship Windswept still are a serious threat for both. They also both intend to gain back the northern continent of the planet, but for that, they’d have to eradicate the Kraken from the ocean, which is a questionable task, both ethically and from the point of it being physically possible or not. There are no real guarantees that they’d be able to coexist in a peaceful manner, should any of those common threats be removed.
This is the original outline of the universe; some aspects may be changed as things develop, but these are the basiscs.
Coming up next: main characters and important places.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 05:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 09:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-19 04:02 pm (UTC)That's a very intriguing premise you have there.
Have you been working on this world, at least to some extent or in a different variation, for a while? Because it seems to me as if you told me before about something like this, though not in as much detail.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-19 04:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-19 04:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-19 04:34 pm (UTC)