[Mkguild] Idea for possible jumping-off point

[Nathan Pfaunmiller]

Hey guys!

I've been doing a lot of story-related thinking lately, and I had an idea
recently that I wanted to propose to the general population of the list.

Last time I asked, there's some uncertainty as to whether the Starchild arc
would be going forward at its originally-planned time in either of its
forms, so I was trying to think of something else that might have the
potential for storyline inspiration.  The idea goes like this:

Somewhere near Metamor there is a small hamlet not governed by Thomas, just
outside of the reach of the Curse.  On the outskirts of the town is an
orphanage, a pretty well self-contained building in and of itself.  They
receive a young boy who had been living with his family a little while to
the north of the hamlet.  His parents are killed in a lutin attack, so he
was sent down as it was the only place they had that could take him for the
time being.  No one considers the Curse to be a threat to him, since he was
evidently too young to be effected while he was to the North, so he settles
down without that concern in mind.

After a few days, however, he begins to feel ill, and a longer, harder
change takes him.  No one knows what it is, even though the Curse is
suspected, but for a while, no one else changes.  As he goes on with his
change, though, some of the administrators start to change, and so they
evacuate the orphanage, and most people from the hamlet leave as well.  When
mages are called in to try to discover the cause, they discover that the
spell is identical to the Curse, and that the Curse's effective radius has
apparently expanded.  They inform the governor of the hamlet, who informs
his superior, and it eventually reaches the top with whoever happens to be
handy.

When word reaches the big man, a diplomat who had been sent to Metamor for
the Duke's wedding overhears.  Since he was not one of the men officially
invited by the Duke, he was not given the assurances or the bribes that the
other people took to keep quiet about what happened the night that Marzac
fell.  He explains to his Liege lord what had happened to him when Marzac
fell (although neither of them are privy to that explanation), and they
begin to speculate that it might have been an aborted attempt by Thomas to
gain more subjects.  With the expansion of the Curse, they feel that that
explanation is entirely reasonable, and so they start to operate on the
assumption that the Duke of Metamor is performing his version of a land
grab, and is trying to expand his territory.

The ruler starts pulling strings in an attempt to diplomatically isolate
Metamor, and when the mass exodus of diplomats comes to the attention of
Thomas, he begins to ask around and finds out, hazily, what is going on.
Cold war ensues, and Metamor has to walk on eggshells to avoid it breaking
out into outright hot war.  From there it would be, and is meant to be, very
open-ended, so the end result could be anything from a short period of cold
war that fizzles out, or having something break the ice and have outright
war break out.  For the latter of the two options, I would have to expect
that a large majority of authors involved would have to OK it, so I wouldn't
count on it, but there would still be a good bit of room to have some more
dramatic storylines emerge from the situation.

So, what do you think?

-LurkingWolf


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