THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT
Kiano, a Scion (immortal) sorcerer with a severed soul and stolen memory, must fight against the dark entity that ravaged his identity; an enemy determined to destroy the Scions’ creator and the world they live in. While Kiano reveals the secrets of his fellow Scion and fights against them as an assassin for the regime, his stolen memories begin to break free, fragmented bits and pieces of his earlier life that have him questioning his role with the regime. Kiano must regain his memory to fight for his world and himself.
THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT
Juels, a soulless entity known as the Darkness, has taken human form and conquered most of Jymon. She learns the prisoner her assassins brought to her is the severed soul of the Scion who entered her world and revealed to her its captivity. Juels tortures Kiano steals his memories and commands his identity to learn Scion secrets. She has branded him to steal the souls of those he kills to feed the Darkness of her world. She has turned Kiano against his own people to obtain her goals and destroy the Light to again rule the Darkness.
CONJURING YOUR BREAKOUT TITLE
Jymon (working title)
That On Which She Fed
Dark Souls
DECIDING YOUR GENRE AND APPROACHING COMPARABLES
Dark Fantasy/Horror
1984 by George Orwell – Similar worlds based on control, fear and watchful eyes.
The Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb – A young man is forced to be an assassin
CORE WOUND AND THE PRIMARY CONFLICT
An immortal sorcerer attempts to reclaim his memory and his soul from the dark entity that stole them to save his people from annihilation.
OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT: TWO MORE LEVEL
Inner Conflict: Kiano’s false memory is that he was captured and tortured by the Resistance before he was found and taken to Juels to be healed. Kiano believes he is an assassin but begins having internal conflicts. First, he spends time with a prostitute that looks similar to his eternal mate, Kale. Soon after, he meets a young boy (children are known as rats) who he learns is neglected and abused, which pulls at his heart. Kiano was guardian of the mortal children on Jymon. And after raiding the village of his former home, he encounters the child he raised as his own and attempts to kill her. After this scenario, he has dreams that have him questioning his loyalties.
Secondary Conflict: Kiano defects to the Scion, taking the boy and two women with him as refuge from the Regime. He eventually collaborates with the Scion and the Resistance against the Regime, knowing there is a price for his capture. And if the assassins he worked with find him, he knows that he will suffer the same brutality as he made others suffer when he worked as an assassin.
THE INCREDIBLE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING
The world of Jymon exists in the universe of Anavryn, comprised of seven worlds known as the worlds of Light where mortals and immortals called Scion – live together.
A dead world, the Darkness, is centered within this universe. Only the Darkness is not dead. It has manifested itself into a human named Juels, now the dictator of Jymon.
Jymon: Jymon is similar to Earth is its environment, only on a smaller scale, consisting of mountains, small towns, cities, water fronts, farmlands, etc.
Grada: Grada is the only territory on Jymon that the Regime has not conquered. Throughout Grada are small villages. Most of Grada is a forested, mountainous territory. The Scion and many mortals live in Grada, the mortals unaware of the immortal nature of the Scion. As many of the villages house the Resistance, while isolated, they do keep contact with each other through travel by horseback and carry supplies to each other with horse and cart (there are no cars/trucks on this world). The military is aware of the villages in Grada, and occasionally raid them, but because the lowest ranks of the military are assigned this task, most of the villages remain untouched.
The Caves of Noble’s Mountain: In Grada’s center is Noble’s Mountain, where the first of the Scion lived. The caves inside the mountain were created by Being (known as Noble, the Scion creator) and given over to the magic of the Scion to create it into a livable housing unit with tunnels running throughout the cave, apartments within the cave, common rooms for gathering and cooking, etc. The cave is supplied with hot springs and the Scion has created touch rocks and smokeless fire to light and heat the caves. The cave is furnished and livable.
The Regime is unaware of the Scion holdout until Kiano, after he was given his false memory tells them. The Regime tried to find the cave, as well as the village beyond the cave where Kiano lived, but the Scion used magic to hide the cave and the several openings into the cave. No mortal can enter the cave without the help of a Scion. If a mortal does find their way into the cave, the spirits of the cave frighten them away. Jymon believes in the spiritual world, believing in helping and harming spirits.
Kiano, as an assassin, believes he is human and is unaware of the magic of the cave. He is only aware of the rumors surrounding the stories of the cave. He is unaware that upon his defection, he is able to find the cave and enter as the spirits recognize him having a Scion soul.
The Between: The Between is where dead souls go before taking on new life, either back to Earth or one of the three worlds that allow mortals. It is also a place where the Scion travels from one world to the next.
Scion souls can act in the Between; mortal souls cannot. Mortal souls are simple energy in the Between and are drawn to the energy streams that connect the worlds. Scion souls also travel via the energy streams, but Scion souls can act in the Between. They can be as animated as they are in their own worlds.
Form does not happen in the Between for a mortal soul. The soul appears as a light mist, constant movement, swaying. The soul in the Between feels like it’s meandering, floating in a dream.
The best way to describe the Between is from Juel’s POV when she first entered it:
A swirling flow of radiant blue light fused with misted shades of violet and white throughout its atmosphere. The air was warm, almost embracing, and she shuddered in the warmth that surrounded her.
She drifted about these colors, the silence overwhelming compared to the constant groans and rumbles and crashes of her existence. She followed shadowy mists that interrupted the swirling air, only to find them blink away as if only imagined. She studied the raging, black flames at the edges of this light and realized, to her horror, that her Darkness, hardened beneath the flames, stood entombed in this Light.
The City: The city is a mix of every past and present culture of Earth with its construction, its people, its businesses, its government. It’s a busy city that’s watched by the Regime through the military broken into high ranking Gray Guards, Secret Police, and the various military ranks.
While part of the military but not subjected to the military’s discipline or structure is Dofya. Dofya outranks military personnel and can order them as deemed necessary. Dofya are Juels’ bodyguards and her personal assassins. They are the most frightening and cruelest of the Regime. Dangerous chatter would find the speaker left to rot in the towers north of the city if overheard by any in the military. To the dungeons, then the Darkness if overheard by Dofya.
The Resistance has its own spy ring of mortals and Scion. These spies have thriving businesses in the city, have connections to the military, have friendships with Dofya, and live in the palace that the Regime claimed from the Scion with the war.
The Darkness: The Darkness is Chaos, the time before time. It is a conscious energy. It creates and destroys. Creation and destruction are an innate concept of the Darkness. It has all knowledge to create, but what it creates does not have name or meaning. The Darkness creates and destroys without purpose.
The Darkness wakes and sleeps. It is extremely active while awake, sluggish, but still active when dormant. When the Darkness sleeps, it doesn’t create or destroy. But what lives in the Darkness does destroy. It feeds upon itself. While dormant, the population of the Darkness dwindles. It sleeps to regenerate itself. When it wakes, it creates again.
There is no specific cycle of activity or dormancy. It comes and goes randomly. There is no set time period. It can be active or dormant for days, weeks, or centuries.
Being (creator of the Light) built a fire around the Darkness during a dormant stage and entombed the Darkness. The Darkness is a mountain form in the center of the Between. Over time, as Being’s fire died and entombed the Darkness, a small crack formed on the surface of the mountain rock. This crack works like a black hole. Anything that gets near it can be pulled in. But because it does not lie near the streams, nothing has entered until Kiano, who free-floating between worlds, got too close.
Kiano woke the Darkness. Kiano was a foreign existence within the Darkness. The Darkness itself personified into a boda (a physical creature of the Darkness) and attacked Kiano. The boda tore a piece of Kiano’s soul, dropped it into the bowels of the Darkness where the Darkness, as an unknown, unseen entity terrorized and tortured it.
The Darkness keeps itself alive with the creatures it creates. She keeps her corporeal form alive in the Light with the souls she feeds it. And as she is the Darkness personified, the souls she feeds the Darkness give her power.
As soon as Juels became aware of the opening in the Darkness where Kiano entered, she instilled it with magic so that it could not be closed again. The Scion are not aware of the opening in the Darkness and Juels ensures that only she can close it.
It is unknown how a Scion will fare in the Darkness or even if a Scion can be contained in the Darkness. Though Juels has trapped Kiano’s soul.
Juels’s body can die in any world, but the Darkness will never die. Upon the loss of the Juels’s corporeal body, the energy that is the Darkness will be drawn back to its home.
The Darkness can exist on any plane without form. It can take any form it chooses.
