![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Shadowfist fiction -- Welcome to the Secret War
I have a bunch of fiction I wrote back when I was doing Shadowfist. For advanced technical reasons, it's no longer up on the official web site, nor do I want it to be. (And some of it never was, including a couple of pieces I think are decent.)
So, I'm going to post it here on LJ. I haven't decided what to do with the incomplete stuff yet.
If you don't know the Shadowfist/Feng Shui world background, I make no promises of comprehensability, but I'm posting this one out of order.
Song awoke. He was alive, but he ached all over. He couldn't see anything.
"Hello?"
A woman's voice responded, from somewhere nearby. "Good. You're awake. How do you feel?"
"Been a lot worse, but I can't see."
"The generator's out. The Thunder King's feeling kind of cranky - seems somebody nearly wiped out one of his patrols near here. He got in a lucky shot. Somebody'll fix it once the macho posturing's over."
"No, you don't understand. I should still be able to see."
"Oh, the little sensor package you've got instead of an eye? I turned that off when I was fixing you up. I like my privacy. As best I can tell, it's fine, and so's the rest of your hardware, but I can't be sure - I didn't have much time, and it's a lot more sophisticated than the stuff you find on your average monkey."
"What?"
She chuckled. "Never mind. Next time you decide to take on thirty armored knights, get the guy in robes and a funny hat quickly. Most of them are sorcerers."
"What?"
She sighed. "I guess you really are new to the game. Ah, well, I've got time to kill. What's your name, son?"
"Song. Well, everybody calls me the Little Dragon, but... Song."
She laughed. "The Little Dragon? Funny old world. I'm the Prof. Maybe I shouldn't tell you all this, but you guys are in the hot seat, so it's only fair. Besides. I think I like you. Stop me if I'm going too fast."
She continued, "You've heard of feng shui, the idea that some places have good chi flow, and bring you good fortune? I don't know if you believe it, but it's pretty certain that the folks who sent you nosing around do."
"They're right. If you're attuned to a place with good feng shui, you get good fortune; things go your way. If you're attuned to enough of them, the whole world goes your way. So, everybody who knows the score is secretly fighting over them."
"Just to add to the fun, sometimes portals start opening from the normal world to here. We call it the Netherworld. You can usually find portals from the Netherworld to several different points in history, or junctures, as we call 'em. At the moment we've got five open junctures that we know of. What year was it when you left?"
"2066," said Song.
"Good," said the Prof, "You're still using the same calendar. Means I don't have to do the arithmetic. The other open junctures are to the years 79, 1860, 1936, and 2005. They all move forward in time at the same rate. If you're about to ask 'why?' about any of that, I'll save you the trouble: nobody knows."
"Now, the fact that people can jump around in time means that they can change history. Of course, it isn't easy. Feng shui is what matters. If feng shui's not involved, you can't make a change no matter how hard you try. But if a lot of feng shui changes hands in one juncture, you get a really big change to every juncture after it."
"We call that a critical shift, and we just had one. About a month ago, your juncture was completely different - a totalitarian police state built on twisted science, busy collapsing in a global civil war. Then, a lot of feng shui changed hands in 1936, and that never happened. Instead, the history they taught you in school happened, whatever that was. Nobody remembers them, and good riddance."
"Well, almost nobody remembers. Once you've been to the Netherworld, you stay the same, even when the world changes around you."
"I'd tell you about the current players, but that's kind of in a state of flux at the moment. Besides, there are no neutral parties in the Secret War, so the only thing I can tell you that you should believe is that you can't trust any of 'em...."
So, I'm going to post it here on LJ. I haven't decided what to do with the incomplete stuff yet.
If you don't know the Shadowfist/Feng Shui world background, I make no promises of comprehensability, but I'm posting this one out of order.
Song awoke. He was alive, but he ached all over. He couldn't see anything."Hello?"
A woman's voice responded, from somewhere nearby. "Good. You're awake. How do you feel?"
"Been a lot worse, but I can't see."
"The generator's out. The Thunder King's feeling kind of cranky - seems somebody nearly wiped out one of his patrols near here. He got in a lucky shot. Somebody'll fix it once the macho posturing's over."
"No, you don't understand. I should still be able to see."
"Oh, the little sensor package you've got instead of an eye? I turned that off when I was fixing you up. I like my privacy. As best I can tell, it's fine, and so's the rest of your hardware, but I can't be sure - I didn't have much time, and it's a lot more sophisticated than the stuff you find on your average monkey."
"What?"
She chuckled. "Never mind. Next time you decide to take on thirty armored knights, get the guy in robes and a funny hat quickly. Most of them are sorcerers."
"What?"
She sighed. "I guess you really are new to the game. Ah, well, I've got time to kill. What's your name, son?"
"Song. Well, everybody calls me the Little Dragon, but... Song."
She laughed. "The Little Dragon? Funny old world. I'm the Prof. Maybe I shouldn't tell you all this, but you guys are in the hot seat, so it's only fair. Besides. I think I like you. Stop me if I'm going too fast."She continued, "You've heard of feng shui, the idea that some places have good chi flow, and bring you good fortune? I don't know if you believe it, but it's pretty certain that the folks who sent you nosing around do."
"They're right. If you're attuned to a place with good feng shui, you get good fortune; things go your way. If you're attuned to enough of them, the whole world goes your way. So, everybody who knows the score is secretly fighting over them."
"Just to add to the fun, sometimes portals start opening from the normal world to here. We call it the Netherworld. You can usually find portals from the Netherworld to several different points in history, or junctures, as we call 'em. At the moment we've got five open junctures that we know of. What year was it when you left?"
"2066," said Song.
"Good," said the Prof, "You're still using the same calendar. Means I don't have to do the arithmetic. The other open junctures are to the years 79, 1860, 1936, and 2005. They all move forward in time at the same rate. If you're about to ask 'why?' about any of that, I'll save you the trouble: nobody knows."
"Now, the fact that people can jump around in time means that they can change history. Of course, it isn't easy. Feng shui is what matters. If feng shui's not involved, you can't make a change no matter how hard you try. But if a lot of feng shui changes hands in one juncture, you get a really big change to every juncture after it."
"We call that a critical shift, and we just had one. About a month ago, your juncture was completely different - a totalitarian police state built on twisted science, busy collapsing in a global civil war. Then, a lot of feng shui changed hands in 1936, and that never happened. Instead, the history they taught you in school happened, whatever that was. Nobody remembers them, and good riddance."
"Well, almost nobody remembers. Once you've been to the Netherworld, you stay the same, even when the world changes around you."
"I'd tell you about the current players, but that's kind of in a state of flux at the moment. Besides, there are no neutral parties in the Secret War, so the only thing I can tell you that you should believe is that you can't trust any of 'em...."
no subject
no subject