Bleached Wasteland - Plot and Setting
May 23, 2012 13:06:09 GMT -8
Post by zoi on May 23, 2012 13:06:09 GMT -8
[Summary]
The old ways have been long forgotten and People who were once one have divide into three; Shinigami, Rukon Citizens, and Hollow. Though war does not plague the land, constant conflict does. Hollow reside in the wasteland but often venture into the Rukongai in search of clean drinking water and a quick meal. Though the Shinigami help greatly to protect the first and second districts as they provide goods that the Shinigami need, many Rukon Citizens are discontent with what help the Shinigami give them and rebellions, especially in districts three and four which are less guarded, have been known to occur. All the while an unknown presence watches over them all.[Setting]
TimelineWorld was created - 50,000 o.w
First animals created - 40,000 o.w
Single Awareness became collective - 25,000 o.w
The collective Awareness split and made the first People - 15,000 o.w
The original Awareness released a virus upon the People - 5,000 o.w
Some infected People became Hollow while others died - 5,000 o.w
A fully immune third generation born - 1,000 o.w
The offspring of the People form Seireitei and call themselves Shinigami - 1 n.w
Recorded history began - 1 n.w
Dissent among the Shinigami causes some to split off, forming the Rukongai and calling themselves Rukon Citizens - 500 n.w
Shinigami form the Gotei 5 - 1,000 n.w
A horde of unknown creatures engages Shinigami, Rukon Citizens, and Hollow in the Third District of the Rukongai - 2000 n.w.
Current Time - 2,001 n.w
o.w means 'old world'
n.w means 'new world'
The setting for AK is a self-contained world that does not follow in the path of real world history. However, to make imagining the world easy for us, there are a few points of comparison. The style of clothing, names, food, structure, and customs are mostly Japanese, similar to that in the 1400s of our actual time. However, there are western influences from around the same time period; middle ages if you would, such as the portcullis which raises Seireitei's gates and some structural influences, food, clothes, and for those who wish, names.[History]
Aside from basic mechanical applications, such as the portcullis mentioned above and farming tools and the like, there is no real technology to speak of in this world. This is because technology takes away from the feel of fantasy which this world strives to impart and often just complicates things. Animals are typical for what you might find in the real world, with livestock being the most common. The same could be said about plants and crops. For things to be easier, months are standard real world months, January through December, and seasons follow what is common in the western hemisphere; spring is March through May, summer is June through August, autumn is September through November, and winter is December through February. Unless there is a timeskip, time passes in normal time.
The landscape of the world changes based on the area. Seireitei is all that a city of the time would be; a mix of stone and dirt streets, large buildings, a market place, two residential areas full of houses, and a recreational area that boasts flora and fauna, as well as small farms, ponds, gardens, and a hot spring. District One of the Rukongai has farm lands and everything you'd expect to go along with that; fields for animal grazing, crops, ranches, ponds, the works, while District Two is covered in forests, caves, lakes, and streams; the wilderness if you would. The Third District is nothing more than a settling of businesses, cleared of nature with the exception of a few trees here and there, while the Fourth District is mostly rubble of old buildings. The wasteland is just that, the earth is cracked and dry, water is scarce, and plants are twisted and as dry as the earth, it has a lot of cliffs, caves, and the like as well. There are insurmountable mountains which ring around the wasteland and beyond that, a sea which cascades over the edge of the world, which is flat and round.
The world was new fifty thousand years ago. No one knows how it came to be. It simply was. The land was covered in forests, meadows, and lakes of deep pure waters all encircled by towering mountains that kept the sea at bay. There was only one land amidst the large sea for the world was flat, both in shape and variety for there were no living beings to populate the landscape. Instead there was an Awareness. An Awareness that could effect the environment around it. For several years, thousands in fact, the Awareness was content in simply being, but soon it had contemplated everything around it into such fine details that the Awareness grew bored. So bored that the Awareness manipulated the land, sea, and air into living beings; the first animals.
For a time, the Awareness was content in simply existing amid a more exciting world where the animals all roamed free and interacted with another, but again as time passed the Awareness had taken all it could from how the world was and it had grown lonely watching the animals in the company of one another. So the Awareness split itself into multiple identities. These identities reveled in the fellowship of Awareness for hundreds of years, and though the collective Awareness was content now, the individuals became bored and envious of the animals. When several thousand years had passed from the origin point, the individual identities rebelled against the collective. Like the Awareness had once done with the animals, these identities manipulated the land, sea, and air into living beings, but these were bodies which the individuals claimed for themselves.
Though they gave themselves forms and true individuality, the former collective also bestowed mortality upon themselves by accident. They were the first People. Though they could live forever in theory, their physical bodies could now suffer from diseases and injuries. Still, they flourished and over time developed a functional society by utilizing all the knowledge they had gained as part of the Awareness. Despite what knowledge they had retained, the People lost the full power to manipulate the world around them. Instead it manifested as various individual abilities.
Even though the People were doing well for themselves, the original Awareness watched over them discontent with the situation. The Awareness had been abandoned and it knew from watching the animals that peace could not last. To prevent the People from killing one another, the Awareness once again manipulated nature in order to produce a deadly virus and unleashed it upon the world through toxic pits which opened up in the earth like infected wounds. Many of the People died and just as many mutated into horrible monsters which preyed upon the People who had not died immediately from the virus.
These monsters were called Hollow by the People because they felt nothing of the ties they had once had with the People. Because of their imminent extinction as the virus slowly ate away at those who resisted, the original People began to record what they could of their knowledge to pass down to their offspring who had been born after the infection, granting them partial immunity; it was the grandchildren of the People that would be the first besides the mutated Hollow to be fully immune. Eventually the threat of the virus passed though reminders of it remained in the form of the toxic pits and the Hollow who now roamed the outskirts of the land which the original People had cultivated.
The offspring of the People gathered inside the center most of their land and began to fortify it with special and rare stone along with normal materials mined from underground caves. They named the new area Seireitei and began to call themselves Shinigami, Gods of Death, because they had survived and overcome despite the virus and Hollow. Like the first People, the Shinigami started to form a new society, rebuilding the population and trying to make up the information that had been lost when the first People had died. The confinement of the city made many Shinigami less than happy and tension began to rise between two groups; those who were content within the walls and those who wanted to take back their land from the Hollow.
Eventually, the latter group split off from the Shinigami and began to restore many of the former villages around Seireitei. They called these clusters of villages the Rukongai and proclaimed themselves Rukon Citizens. They formed four districts; the district closest to Seireitei was suited best for farming and raising animals, while the second turned out better resources such as building materials. In the third, more of the less moral characters settled down and established bars and businesses that didn't deal in goods, but rather, services. The fourth district was never fully restored though some who prefer isolation live there between the wasteland of the Hollow and the safety of Seireitei.
Though the relationship between the Shinigami and the Rukon Citizens was strained, the latter traded resources to the Shinigami in exchange for additional support against the Hollow who often invaded the Rukongai in search of a meal or clean water. To make assigning security duties easier, the Shinigami formed a military government called the Gotei and created five divisions within it. Overtime, though the relationships between the Shinigami, Rukon Citizens, and Hollow have not changed, other things did. The separation from one another led to each faction developing unique skill sets which they pass on among their own kind along with the very different societies in each section of Soul Society, what the first People had fondly called the world.
