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 !DSPAM:4c58e20641951804284693!