More about S&C

This is a continuation of what was written here. If you would like to read everything story-related, go up to the The Story so Far tab and you can read from the beginning.


And just so you know, I have art to post, it's just a matter of getting it scanned in and editing it.

Once Marcus has Cate and her team signed up, he runs into a little bit of a problem.  The military transport he had lined up is going to be delayed for a month or more.  With the fall storms building, a months delay could make traveling north completely impossible.  Fortunately, Cate has a solution.  A friend of hers owns an airship, and she and the crew have been in town for the past few weeks on the off chance that Cate’s funding would come through and she could hire them to do the tracking, reconnaissance and general shipping and traveling of her and her team.  They’ve been pulling the small odd job here and there to make ends meet while Cate waited and have found themselves with time on their hands and not enough of anything to rub together in their pockets.  

Marcus jumps at the chance, only to discover that the “friend” is actually his sister - or sisters as the case may be.  Sisters who are kind of ticked that he and Matthias missed the last few (or six) family get-togethers.  But he turns on the charm and manages to squeeze himself (tentatively) back in to Elle and Sun’s good graces at least.  Sydra is another matter altogether, but he figures two out of three sisters on his side is better than none.

Besides, it’s Elle’s ship.  And it’s the ship that he needs.  

So despite Sydra’s protestations at the vague and undefined ulterior motives of the expedition, Elle prepares her crew for the trip.  

The trip north is as uneventful as might be expected; they weather a few early storms but arrive at their first destination in one piece.  While Cate and her team do some initial research forays, Sydra reaches out to her northern contacts to get a lay of the land.  Strange rumors abound.  Outlying shepherds and farmers and farmers have been steadily retreating back to the safety of towns and villages along the coast, chased away by some unknown creature that killed their flocks and destroyed their storehouses.  

The Beginnings of an Airship Crew

Goal 1 of 3 - DONE!

What's steampunk without an airship and it's crew of fan-freaking-tastic characters?

• Elle - The owner of a small, varied fleet of airships.  She performs a hodge-podge of services like shipping and delivery, long distance message running, sight-seeing, etc.  She's slightly spastic and usually stressed about something or other, but with her driven work ethic and the help of her crew she's developed a reputation for excellence and getting the job done - no matter the circumstance.  
• BT - Elle's engineer.  She's competent, capable and she can build or fix anything - out of anything - before you can spit.  All without chipping a nail.  She's kept Elle's ships flying through circumstances that would have crippled bigger and newer ships.  Her inventive offensive security measures have made many a merchant glad that Elle and her crew haven't turned to piracy, and many an air-pirate wish they hadn't.  
• Sun - an accomplished medic and Elle's younger sister.  She's a little spitfire - and her mouth is sharper than the needle she'll use to sew you up.  She's amazingly shrewd and she can ferret a secret out of anyone - if she has to.  If it's advice you need, she's the one to ask, because ten to one, Sun's already thought of it. 
• James - a kind of Jack-of-All-Trades, he's Elle's primary helmsman.  A fantastic pilot as long as you're not wanting to, well, dock or maybe land.  But you know what they say about any landing you can walk away from.  An eternal optimist, he can see the humor in anything and he's always ready with a joke.  He's one-half of a rather dynamic and fantastic duo with his friend Shep. Nothing is impossible with the two of them on the job.  
• Shepherd (Shep) - very much a renaissance man, Shep knows a little of everything and a lot of other things.  He works the communications systems for Elle, and he'd like to see anyone do it better.  He's a visionary with grand dreams.  If you have a moment to give an ear, you might find yourself caught up in his ideas, too.  Just don't get sucked into one of his and James grand and intricate schemes to track down the fabled and elusive Granny Mede's Shack of Snacks . . .

Cpt. Marcus' Men

I've already introduced Marcus and Matthias in the post A Quick Intro to Some of the Characters, but here are some of the other soldiers on his team:

• Bob - Bob is big.  And kinda scary - mostly because he's not too bright.  But he's got a heart of gold and he'll never back down from a fight.  Marcus would rather have him at his back in a firefight than anyone else.  
• Ericson- Ericson is the funny man of the team.  Once he and Marcus get started, they're hard to stop and they can keep a crowd in stitches for hours on end.  Yet for all his humor, Ericson has an abundance of deep wisdom that belies his age and his advice is worth his weight in gold.  
• Sam - Sam, Marcus and Bob went through training for the military together and were friends long before that.  Their paths parted ways for a few years as Sam pursued officer training, but the threat from the rift has brought the trio back together again.  He is brilliant and has studied under some of the foremost universities and worked with some of the most prominent generals of the ACS.  He's quiet, but don't let that fool you - if you find yourself glued to the outhouse seat one cold morning, it's probably Sam's fault, don't get taken in by that whole innocent face act.  He could convince his grandmother that tiny Martian men tried to abduct him and that's why he's late for dinner.  Really, he had to fight them off, he almost died!
• Ged - No comments on his height now; he makes up for it with sheer tenacious will.  There's no problem he wont tackle, no fight he wont take on.  And he's possibly the best cook in five states, so really, only comment if you don't want to eat.  

A Quick Intro to Some of the Characters

These are a few of the characters that will take the stage in this experiment.  The names have been changed of course to protect myself from future harassment by the people they are based upon.  This is fiction guys.  As the Law and Order franchise so elegantly states: "The following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event" (emphasis mine). I'm not telling who's based on who.  You can't make me.  No, Mark, I said I'm not telling . . . 

• Marcus - a career military man who now operates on behalf of several ACS governments to coordinate attacks and the gathering of information against the invading enemy from across the rift.
• Matthias - Marcus' younger brother, a mechanical and strategic genius, he works with his brother to defend the ACS against the people from the other side of the rift. 
• Cate - a longtime family friend of Marcus and Matthias, she's a brilliant scientist, but very unconventional; she loves to be in the middle of things and is fascinated by the world around her.  
• Andreas - one of Cate's research assistants, he's a quiet steady young man with an eye for detail who can fix almost anything.
• Kris - another research assistant of Cate's and Andreas' sister. As quiet as her brother and never without a smile, she has a boundless and fantastic imagination and the mechanical skill to bring some of her more fantastic designs to life.

Eventually, there will be posts on each character going a little deeper into who they are and the part they play in the "story" along with sketches of them and their attire.  There will be a lot - I have a big "family".

About S&C

Putting all of this together is (of course) harder than I thought.  Of course, I'm also a perfectionist and slightly OCD . . . so, really, you're lucky to be getting any updates.  

Every visual concept needs a back story, at least for me.  And while the main goal isn't really to completely hammer out all of the details of this particular story, I do want to start with a solid framework for all of the visual stuff that is coming along (and it really is coming, I promise!).  

The story takes place in an alternate universe (obviously) where the world is divided into allied city-states (ACS).  For years these small states have had to band together to fight against an enemy that travels to their world through a rift in time and space.  The rift is, in appearance, a constant inpenetrable storm located across the northernmost states.  It is impossible to navigate and very few have entered the storm to find their way back alive - or sane.  

However, the people from the other side of the rift have been sending companies of soldiers through the rift waging a slow, but unrelenting attack on the different states who might stand in their way.  No one knows why they come through the rift, what they want or the cause behind their tireless war on the ACS.  Technologically, they are far more advanced than the ACS - who for the most part distrust mass production because of some vaguely remembered tragedy from the far past.  Fortunately, the rift does not allow the invaders to cross with some of their more dangerous technology or with the massive number of troops they are capable of sending. This handicap has been the only thing that has kept the ACS from being overthrown.  

Because of this state of nearly constant war, many if not all of the city-states require their citizens to spend a certain amount of time in the military.  

Now, it comes about that something else has started coming through the rift - a creature that no one in the ACS has ever seen or heard of before.  Once the governments become aware of it they assign a young captain to put together a team of researchers and soldiers to investigate the creature and where it is coming from and why.  

The captain and his team enlist an old family friend to investigate.  She and her team, who were working on a project in the south have been stalled for quite some time because of budget cuts and bureaucratic red tape.  They jump at the chance to look into something new in the meantime and travel with the captain's team up north to the area where the rift is and the creature has been sighted.  

The captain's orders go a little beyond research, though. Information the government leaders have been receiving suggests that the creature is hostile, completely destroying anything in it's path. The groups main purpose - which he has not shared with scientists - is to find a way to destroy the creature as well as finding a way to close or destroy the rift.


So that's the foundation that everything is going to be built on. I'll post some more of the story as I develop more of the art.