20 KiB
Of Medics and Magics: Story synopsis for a new biopunk!fantasy web fiction
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Author: u/notmy2ndopinion Concent of Saunt Edhar*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2ofzm9/of_medics_and_magics_story_synopsis_for_a_new/
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Score: 6
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Created: 2014-12-06T07:20:36
Post:
Rational hard biopunk!fantasy synopsis
I'm a big fan of HPMOR and Worm. I recently discovered Symbiote by farmerbob, which I am excited to read as well. www.HPMOR.com www.parahumans.wordpress.org https://farmerbob1.wordpress.com
I thought I'd try my hand at serial web fiction and I've set up a site... but I still need to hash out the details of plot, characterization, etc. That's where you come in! Disclaimer: I'm a busy physician/researcher so writing this story will be a slow process. But I am interested in initial reactions and suggestions!
Story synopsis: A chance encounter brings the young halfling Osler and the charismatic priest Xavien together on the road as they travel through a small medieval town during the times of the Black Plague. Fear and paranoia turn the common folk into a frenzied lynch mob against them, but they are staved off from killing these new travelers by an unusual promise. Xavien suggests that they fight off the plague -- through science! Osler helps recruit a medical team of a dwarf surgeon, an elf midwife, and a gnome wizard, to discover the cause of this affliction.
- Is it the vampire prowling through the medical wards?
- Is it the monsters in the caves?
- Is it the witch in the haunted forest?
- Or is it the necromancer in the crypts?
What does this have to do with biopunk!fantasy? Read alexanderwales' post for some "biology hacks" and then with your brain brimming with these ideas, tack into a different direction with me with a single question: http://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/296k78/d_if_you_had_a_control_of_biology_what_fun_things/
Background question: What if magic exists but it only enhances our perceptions of reality to better understand the truth of the world?
(It would be ~= to the first perception level of Mage:Ascension spheres)
What would such beings actually be capable of?
What sorts of cultures would naturally develop?
What impacts would this have on society for science and medicine?
The twist: Imagine if humans were bioengineered with special extra-sensory perceptions, like enhanced sight, sound and touch... and then became "fantasy races."
- Gnomes: ability to see extremely close-up fine detail (microscopic vision, but agoraphobic). This makes them see things in a mechanistic fashion, take people quite literally and they can get frightened by the big picture.
- Elves: ability to hear very well (ultrasound imaging, but deaf to normal tones). This puts them in tune with waves and cycles, like the ebb and flow of nature but they have difficulty communicating since they use sound to see instead of talking.
- Dwarves: ability to feel very well (vibration/proprioception, fine touch, pressure, but subject to chronic pain). They are great crafters and miners, in tune with things they can lay their hands upon but they also need to wear heavy armor all of the time and drink heavily to shield themselves against the pains of the world.
- Goblins and Orcs: "see in the dark" (infrared, ultraviolet and x-ray vision and susceptible to light/radiation). They are frightening creatures who cannot stand the light of day since it literally burns them and warps their bodies -- but some of the rocks in the Underdark help them see through flesh at the cost of becoming sickly and dying young.
- Halflings: (top secret meta-power! I'm still developing its potential but I know that it will require a team to make their powers work.)
- (Smell and taste are tentatively going to be manifested by werewolves and vampires since none of the "classic" fantasy races fit the bill.)
The implications: In order to build "modern medicine/science," microscopes, stethoscopes, ultrasound machines, blood pressure cuffs, thermometers, X-Ray/CT scans, MRI machines, EEGs, EKGs, blood tests, etc... will all be replaced with the "powers" of these metaperson races. These races will be born with these powers but won't necessarily know how to use them to their highest potential, lacking the requisite knowledge. (Just because you can see a rash, doesn't mean you know what it is. That's why you see a dermatologist to tell you what you are looking at.)
The story synopsis noted above has helped me turn my fantasy world into an approachable, understandable project for novices. My initial idea of "House MD set in Middle Earth" was getting bogged down with awkward info dumps. For example, every time I wanted the main medical-intern character to order an X-Ray, I'd have to interrupt with a tangential story about goblins in radium mines, etc. It makes more sense to have the main character go investigate the monster in the dark and find out they can see through flesh and bones!
- How dark and deadly would you want this world of Medics and Magics to be?
- How much mystery should I reveal on stage vs keep behind the curtain?
- Other reactions, thoughts or comments?
Comments:
u/Farmerbob1 [+7] Level 1 author (8 hours later)
Well, Trolls can be your enhanced smell race, and ogres your enhanced taste race.
Trolls are so enamored of all sorts of smells that they keep fetishes of strong smelling things round them all the time. Most people don't want to be around them, because some trolls develop affinities for some unfortunate scents. Like limburger, for example. Or rotten eggs. However, as mentioned below, it's possible that they might be able to smell cancers or other chemical imbalances.
Ogres, well, ogres are foodies. They make incredibly good tasting food, but you might be a bit disturbed about what actually goes into it if you ask. Their sense of what chemically goes together to get the taste they want is uncanny. They are so in tune with chemistry in general that a few of them have lost some of their interest in cooking and moved into alchemy and making medicines.
The above ideas are yours if you want to use them :)
u/notmy2ndopinion [+3] Concent of Saunt Edhar (a day later)
Nice -- my original idea was that there would only be the friendly fantasy races, but it makes sense to expand the universe out more and have all the fantasy monsters and apply rational principles to them as well.
Trolls are going to be "cancer" in my world -- with immortal, replicating malignant cells all hungry and all consuming.
Ogres -- not sure. I'll think about it more. I like your idea with the smell fetish!
u/Farmerbob1 [+3] Level 1 author (a day later)
Remember, it's your fiction. Trolls and ogres aren't necessarily bad. Halflings, elves, and gnomes aren't necessarily good.
u/notmy2ndopinion [+2] Concent of Saunt Edhar (3 days later)
hm. Good point. I don't want to do a "classic" good vs evil story, nor the reverse trope like thunt's "Goblins"... so it will be important to keep races at neutral value.
I do like the idea of opposing philosophies so I will have a progressive/tech vs conservative/nature -styled alignments that various groups will rally around.
u/xamueljones [+3] My arch-enemy is entropy (an hour later)
How dark and deadly would you want this world of Medics and Magics to be?
Depends, are you planning on mostly having Osler play around with and learn about ways to
abuseuse biological abilities? Keep it light-hearted and funny. Is he trying to catch a criminal? Make it mildly dark with a fair amount of danger. Is he trying to actually cure a plague? Make it grimdark. Anyone can die from disease. I recommend killing off Xavien, if he becomes Osler's best friend or his love interest if he has one in the middle of the investigation. In real life, there's no such thing as plot armor. In a rational fic, that should also apply. Although, the logical extension is to kill off Osler halfway through the plot-line, I get that would be too hard to maintain the story, but everyone else is open game. Don't just kill off the NPCs, the more player deaths, the better. For example, Wildbow's character deaths in his books are part of what makes it such a gripping story.How much mystery should I reveal on stage vs keep behind the curtain?
Eeeeh, this is your call to make, but let Osler's thoughts and motivations be transparent at all times since he's the main character. Go with whatever works best for you.
Other reactions, thoughts or comments?
I'd strongly suggest combining enhanced smell and taste into one race, because the two senses tend to be strongly linked. I'm imagining a race of wolf shape-shifters who have extremely good noses and tongues. Since you seem to want abilities that can be exploited for medical gains, dogs are known to be able to detect changes in blood sugar levels and even cancer cells. This way you can still take advantage of introducing medical knowledge in terms of how one can detect disease early. They can be extremely focused on the past, since they rely on understanding people through their scent which indicates past actions and feelings. This encourages strong traditions and keeping grudges for a long time. They are very good trackers, very at noticing subtle clues, loyal, and group-orientated. I'd imagine that they would think like a wolf in wolf-form as a way of giving them a weakness, since all of the races mentioned have a weakness of some sort.
Thanks for such an interesting story idea. I had fun thinking of advice or suggestions to give.
u/notmy2ndopinion [+1] Concent of Saunt Edhar (an hour later)
Thanks! I was listening to Writing Excuses, Sanderson's podcast and they had a recent episode on "killing off characters." I'm figuring that if this is going to be about discovery, Xavien will probably die after the first act like Obi-Wan Kenobi. And there won't be a Yoda. Going full grimdark might make it Games of Thronesy with a brutal end by a lynch mob... or tragedy of the caregiver like Father Damien.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Damien (I'm from Hawaii, so I realize this reference to a Catholic priest who dies of leprosy after helping a leper colony may be obscure. I'm also realizing why I crossed the names Xavier and Damien unconsciously when I came up with the idea of "recruiting for a new medical school" in my first iteration of this story!)
u/autowikibot [+1] (an hour later)
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#### Father Damien:
Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokaʻi, SS.CC. or Saint Damien de Veuster (Dutch: Pater Damiaan or Heilige Damiaan van Molokai, Hawaiian: Pāpā Kamiano o Molokaʻi; January 3, 1840 – April 15, 1889), born Jozef De Veuster, was a [Roman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_(term)) Catholic [priest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priesthood_(Catholic_Church)) from Belgium and member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a missionary religious institute. He won recognition for his ministry in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi to people with leprosy (also known as Hansen's disease), who had been placed under a government-sanctioned medical quarantine on the island of Molokaʻi.
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^Interesting: ^Molokai: ^The ^Story ^of ^Father ^Damien ^| ^Father ^Damien ^Statue ^| ^John ^M. ^Systermans ^| ^Tremelo
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u/notmy2ndopinion [+1] Concent of Saunt Edhar (2 hours later)
Re:shapeshifter wolves - that's basically going to be the werewolf idea I have. Werewolves will be more natural and feral, whereas vampires will be more refined and haughty, but their powers will definitely overlap with taste, smell and chemesthesis. Vamps will basically be the equivalent of a Coulter Counter if you're familiar with lab equipment.
Frankly, we don't know much about how smell actually works from my research on the subject poking around casually on Google (it mostly links to trash pop-articles on how dogs smell things) that I have a hard time even conceptualizing what that super sense would be like. (Maybe Professor Farnsworth is onto something big with his Smell-O-Scope.)
u/Timewinders [+2] (7 hours later)
You could give the vampires an infrared-sensing ability like in vampire bats and snakes. That would allow them to detect warm parts of the body, ones with more blood flow.
u/notmy2ndopinion [+2] Concent of Saunt Edhar (a day later)
Hell yeah! That makes so much sense. There's no reason that these creatures would be limited to one super sense! I'll probably introduce characters with multiple powers later on so people will be eased into it.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (3 days later)
It strikes me that werewolves are clearly a subset of trolls - with their superhuman noses - that has become infectious, like that old joke about eating troll meat.
u/autowikibot [+1] (3 days later)
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#### Clonally transmissible cancer:
A parasitic cancer or transmissible cancer is a cancer cell or cluster of cancer cells that can be transmitted from animal to animal. They are quite rare in both animals and humans. Parasitic cancers are distinct from cancers caused by infectious agents such as viruses and bacteria, which are more common.
^Interesting: ^Allograft ^diseases ^| ^Cancer ^cell ^| ^Canine ^transmissible ^venereal ^tumor ^| ^Mir-19 ^microRNA ^precursor ^family
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u/notmy2ndopinion [+1] Concent of Saunt Edhar (3 days later)
not as "clear" to me... but the idea of infectious cancer is absolutely terrifying!
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (17 hours later)
Huh, I'd totally forgotten about that thread. Anyway ...
How dark and deadly would you want this world of Medics and Magics to be?
I like my worlds dark and deadly, but my stories somewhat less so. So it's totally fine if there's a zombie apocalypse that's wiped out 99% of humanity, but I don't really want to read about people raping and killing each other and getting slowly ground down as they inevitably betray and sabotage one another while they get overrun by the living dead. Instead, I want a story where people find safe havens and rebuild - where there's still some heroism, and where that heroism isn't universally punished. I like dark worlds that aren't so damned cynical about things, if that makes sense. It's a matter of personal preference though.
How much mystery should I reveal on stage vs keep behind the curtain?
If you're listening to the Writing Excuses podcasts, then I'll assume that you already know Sanderson's Laws for magic. If the powers are being used to solve problems, the reader needs to understand the powers (though my preference is to see the power in action once or twice before it's probably explained). An antagonists powers don't need much in the way of explanation, but I think it's generally good if they have some limits so that the audience doesn't feel like you're copping out. Generally speaking, infodumps are boring, and people don't like them, so if you're revealing things, do it in some clever way (like two people arguing with each other about some manner of specifics), incidentally (while someone is using their power), or in bits and pieces.
biopunk
Aside from super senses, what do you mean by biopunk? When I hear the phrase, I'm imagining transhuman stuff (or transhumanoid in your case, I guess). Subdermal implants, augmented biology, grafted limbs, transplanted eyeballs, etc. The "punk" aspect is about that sort of grittiness - carved bone and jacked muscles. Are we using the term in the same sense?
u/notmy2ndopinion [+1] Concent of Saunt Edhar (a day later)
I read The Mistborn series last year and read about the Laws of Magic then -- I'll have track back to the podcast episodes that they talk explicitly about it though!
Behind the curtain, it IS biopunk. Except that civilization crashed and burned about 800 years prior. So... I guess it is post-biopunk or proto-biopunk depending on how you look at it. The ancient magic items are going to be the types of devices you are talking about in a different guise.
Similarly, the super senses are amplified sensory organs powered by new magical organelles (not quite nanotechnology, but microbiological genetic technology.)
If I use Worm as an example, this would have to be a late reveal by a creator, since the characters would not be privy to any of this advanced knowledge.
u/xamueljones [+1] My arch-enemy is entropy (a day later)
So if you wanted to have wizards in your setting, then they could be the humans who were alive before the fall. They would have used their mastery over biology to make themselves immortal and the long, long years have forced them into towers of isolation where they spend the decades fruitlessly trying to recreate the miracles of the past.
It's not a very rational behavior for them, but it's a way for you to have near immortal sorcerers. You could limit them by only allowing them to be wealthy citizens who received all sorts of post-human perks but don't actually have the knowledge or skill to recreate it to give to others.
u/notmy2ndopinion [+1] Concent of Saunt Edhar (3 days later)
Wizards will probably only exist as mere shadows of their former selves as genetic content and possibly psi-content that can be triggered through deep knowledge of certain books... sort of like a horcrux of Roger Bacon's diary.