Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Prologue I


I spent some time re-explaining to Iris and Arky the context of their existence, and why I wanted a main race (for relatability to the readers).

I drafted them to come up with an idea for the species main race while I visited my therapist.

It is to be noted that we had already created a human-like race at this point, but there was not that much distinction between the amount of thought in the human race and the amount of thought in animal. That is to say, there was no way we were putting humans in charge of the planet.

By the time my fateful appointment with my therapist had finished, they had come up with the idea for a race of creatures that was much like them in structure, but incorporated a lot less thought. But by a lot less, I mean about three times that of the other creatures, which is probably a million-fold less than either Arky or Iris.

We called them the shadowkind, since they acted directly on the qniverse for the most part, and thus most of the other creatures perceived them as nothing but a shadow unless they chose to manifest themselves in some form or another.

We made about 20 shadowkind to begin with, and charged them with the task of overseeing the planet, subordinate to only Arky and Iris.

I never communicated directly to any of the shadowkind, but gave them instruction them through Arky and Iris.

We gave them a few days to get used to the things they could do, and figure out a system of rule. Arky and Iris went around helping build various towns for the other creatures during this time.

The shadowkind elected their strongest, Loost, as their leader. They established a system of rule by distributing themselves around the planet, and reporting back to Arky and Iris to resolve disputes and other problems.

Our world didn't have a currency, all creatures relied on barter of one form or another. I had already warned Arky and Iris about the dangers of currency. I told them that creatures with less thought would often forget that their currency was only a representation of actual value. They would make decisions based on the perceived value of something that was merely a stand in for actual worth. Both Iris and Arky vowed to watch carefully over any such system that developed.

Arky made quite a few human and animal friends as well. Iris was a lot more shy than I had anticipated, but in time Iris grew to have friends among the lower creatures as well.

This all happened within about the scope of a week for me, which I suppose in retrospect was good.

It gave me enough time to start the world running before I told Arky and Iris the bad news.

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