Aucune réponse à ce sujet

[Maximillion46]

Oh man, I finally have a first version of this done:D Thank you: http://www.newground...o/listen/553001 FD - Moontears Pt. III

This is all subject to change as I add or change 'shifted' parts of it^^

Mass Effect Fantasy

I’m going to go over the intricacies of the switch as described below first, before putting the universe back together in its alternate universe form;) Hope you enjoy this little thought experiment.

This is a genre switch of Mass Effect from space opera to… fantasy opera, or something? If you don’t like that sort of thing, there’s the proverbial door.

I also don’t just change ‘it works because of *science buzzword*’ by ‘it works because of magic’ and leave it at that. No, the conventions of the new genre are taken into account and the consequences of these ‘differences’ are looked at and followed through. Don’t like that (either)? Well, that door sure is drafty… Close it behind you:D

So, you ready for this random idea I wanted to share^^ Let’s go!

I came across the idea of a multiverse in a book series (gonna avoid spoiling by saying its name or writer and if you know it, don’t spoil it for potential future fans, please) where multiple races came into one of the universes (which you can usually call planet/world as far as moving around goes, apart from the number of suns and moons) and decided to settle there, so you basically had a sort of justification for a fantasy kitchen sink, a throw-together of all kinds of fictional creatures and races. After all, in a multiverse with infinite possibilities and infinite worlds, any race or world you could imagine or not even imagine, could exist (at least, if magic is involved, no furry or Pokémon universes existing in a multiverse based on scientific principles, sorry).
So, what if you had a network of portals of ancient magic that connected all these worlds of races? In a sense, you would have the fantasy equivalent of Mass Effect (some might argue that vorcha are space orcs, asari are space elves and so on, so the leap isn’t that big to make).

But what is the most of fun about thought experiments like these, besides turning it into a story unfolding in a strange way in an altered world, is that you can’t switch things without some stuff not fitting or having a clear equivalent. So some modifications have to be made, while avoiding ‘it was done by magic’.

Example of things I personally found annoying while switching:

‘The weapon doesn’t fire because the heat builds up’ becomes ‘The crossbow can’t fire anymore because of too much magic’.

‘Running a current through the eezo generates a mass effect field’ becomes ‘Adding magic to the magic material makes it make a magic field’.

‘The lasers aren’t getting through’ becomes ‘the magic attacks aren’t powerful enough because there’s too little magic.’

But then, I thought… what did I think…

What makes most fantasy different from most sci-fi besides the characters calling the way things work magic or technology? Genre conventions, though which can also be summarily broken (Star Wars for an obvious example, at least according to me). So I pretty much improvised the ‘alterations’ that follow, though I think the altered forms retain the spirit of the original concepts, while providing an interesting fantasy equivalent of these games (yes, I’m aware Bioware has made both fantasy and sci-fi games (Star Wars games, with those fantasy influences to boot!) and it could be that they already did a game like the one I’m making up here, but never try, never fail, so…). A few things though: most technology had to be changed by crafting and enchanting, micro-organisms had to be changed to something a bit more mystical concerning the quarians’ weak immune system, the time of the setting had to be put back 1300 years to have humanity be a not yet technologically advanced race (why bother with real life canon and setting? Because limits make the mind thrive, dear reader).

Hm… I’m making it a story / codex entry thing, here goes *deep inhale*…

In 848, the Saracens destroyed the city of Leontini, but made an amazing discovery as they followed glowing blue runes to a cavern that went deep under the surface. They arrived in a large open space that seemed so large and awe-inspiring, that it should’ve collapsed under its own weight a long time ago. Instead, it seemed to have been in this state, untouched, for thousands of years. When one young explorer foolishly opened an amfora-shaped container, it opened and released a blue cloud, sucking him in. Decades later, he was found alive and well… on another world. For what the priests and scholars soon learned when examining the containers, was that they contained a miraculous powder that could bind two places together anywhere on Earth.

Even more, artefacts could enchant bows, spears, arrows and armor to make them fire further, pierce deeper and let projectiles pass clean through. But as they searched for more artefacts while using them to arrive at points all over the globe, they stumbled upon the greatest one yet, hidden in the ever shifting ice of the North Sea, the Borealis Arc. It was as wide as a hundred men standing next to each other and as high as well and in the stone arc a million runes were carved, seemingly to last an eternity, even as it was covered in ice, formed before the first human tried to made fire. When they activated it and the runes lit up blue, they had no idea what they would find or let in. The Saracens were not afraid: they had greatly expanded their empire across the globe with their enchanted weapons and armor and they were sure that whatever was on the other side of the blue ripples contained by the arc, they would conquer it. A brave noble was the first to step through together with his loyal 40 warriors and as soon as they stepped through, their eyes hurt and their lungs felt like exploding. After a few minutes, some stood up, others threw up. The brave noble, Ali Bassom, looked around and saw a whole new world, filled with creatures no man had ever seen before.

Soon, entire slave populations were sent through and the number of worlds they occupied grew with every passing month. Then, they encountered a blue ripple in the air. As Ali Bassom made his men stand back, out of the ripple strange creatures appeared that were very different from the docile wildlife they had encountered before. Birds that stood on two legs and wore armor, with a growl resonating in their cries as they attacked. They became embroiled in a war with another species that could think and more importantly, enchant. Seasoned warriors looked on, frozen in fear, as a select few of the armored birds bound their comrades to a tree in the air that they could not see, with bluish glowing rope they could not touch. Archers that had considered themselves to have become gods among men with their arrows that could lay waste to any armored foe while being untouchable like ghosts, now laid staring at their chest as they saw an arrow in their chest that had only passed through them halfway before it had stopped. But Saracens, absorbed by the empire or born, were not cowards that fled and ran when coming across an enemy they could not get crush in the first day. They fought hard, studied the enemies’ weapons and learned their tactics and enchanted ever more destructive weapons, enchanted by their scholars and priests, which would soon become one and the same.

But then, blue angel-like beings with crowns like the highest queens, appeared from the sky on ships that shone like glass but landed with the force of a steel battering ram, and quelled the fighting with the simplest gestures: an offer of peace… and advancement into a new age, the Golden Age. They led the Saracens to a world in the void where a castle built by the gods was tied to other dimensions through the arc effect, the power of the magic powder called stardust. Humanity quickly learned of other races along with the angels or asari, armored birds or turians, salarians, volus, elcor, vorcha, batarian, drell, hanar, quarian and krogan and joined this interdimensional community. But a threat loomed from beyond the dimensions, the cause behind all the worlds that wasn’t inhabited by sapient species…

Codex: Stardust and the arc effect

This mysterious and rare powder has the inherent ability to connect or disconnect points or dimensions, allowing enchanted spears, swords, projectiles fired from slingshots, bows or crossbows and other similar types of weapons, to go past armor to directly shred the flesh underneath.

Enchanted armor

Armor enchanted with stardust is able to use the arc effect to its advantage by moving the receiving end of the connection between points to behind the wearer, though most armors nowadays are enchanted as to move the point before were a normal arrow would hit and get shredded by the enchantment, since unarmored civilians or light armored squad mates could be standing behind the wearer and would otherwise get hit by the ‘ghost’ arrows and other projectiles. Both strategies temporarily weaken the enchantment however and if taxed enough, it might not work for a small, dangerous period of time.

Enchanted projectile weapons

Projectile weapons are enchanted to have the sending point of the connection be as close as possible to the business end so little to no speed is lost before the projectile buries itself in the enemy’s flesh. The accuracy of a projectile depends on the eye of the warrior and the weapon he uses, as the weapon is enchanted in such a way that it picks a point in the air the weapon is aimed at and the warrior is concentrating on, sensing what length the warrior thinks a normal projectile would need to cross. As a result, the limit of a projectile weapon is theoretically non-existent, but tied to the one launching the thing and its damage linked to the size, weight, shape and speed of the projectile. Luckily, now weapons have been modified to take literally anything one finds as ammunition, leaving the weakening of the enchantment due to overtaxing as the only issue. Additional effects including spinning the projectile, launching it with a greater speed, shredding it into smaller pieces that tear the tissue it is transported into apart.

Enchanted melee weapons

 Melee weapons are effectively turned into ghostly apparitions right before they strike the target so a part of the blade ends up in the flesh and since humanity (the Saracen Empire) has entered the golden age, they have started using swords, daggers and blades that are fixed in two places when not in use for convenience: one part being on their wrist and the other in a holster, the last part only being ‘retrieved’ through the arc effect when activated and then connected with a point In the flesh, while the part on the wrist stays fixed in place a few inches behind it on top of the enemy’s armor, as to not accidentally stab oneself. A side effect is the blade appearing as a blue rippling of the air while it is retrieved for a short time.

Runers

Runers are individuals of species that have exhibited a living form of the power of the runes and it is distinguished from the arc effect of the Multidimensional Arc Web (MAW). The origin of these individuals, at least in humans, was controversial. The first noted incident involving the uncontrolled release of stardust wasn’t the last and a series of accidents involving its use in carts pulled along without horses caused many disappearances or gruesomely torn apart bodies, but years later, children that had survived the massacres started causing new incidents, seemingly through the power of their mind, as they moved along objects, transported people upwards several feet in an instant and ripped apart armor, even when it was enchanted by the highest scholarpriests. It was later discovered that they could shred their targets between multiple dimensions, tie objects in one dimension to a moving one in another and use their targets always ‘falling’ against the ground under their feet to let them slip through one hole in the air and out into another above them. Persecution of these ‘witches’ soon followed and the Citadel Council, composed of representatives of races that had had centuries to accept these individuals and their powers,  still refused to interfere because it was something humanity had to accept or reject on its own. Almost thirty years later, scholarpriests have created artefacts to help control and even amplify these runic abilities. The artefacts are also called runefacts and are put into the brain through very delicate arc effect manipulations and allow Runers to enchant themselves like scholarpriests enchant armor to make arrows pass through or splinter in front of it.

Quarians

A race with great knowledge of crafting and the study of stardust and a large number of talented scholarpriests, they were purged from their home world three centuries ago by their own creations, stone constructions that managed to achieve sentience through an accumulation of arc effect connections between each other, effectively making unnatural brains. When they found out their servants, the Golem, had formed such an elaborate network, they tried to correct their mistake, but the Great Purge was the result, as every quarian left their home world and came to live in a flock of graceful wooden ships, drifting through empty dimensions, nomads not unlike the lifestyle of the forefathers of the Saracens trying to survive in the desert, including their style of dress. They slowly started to adapt to life in such an inorganic environment and after a few generations they found themselves dependent on their crafted and enchanted creations until they had to partially transform themselves into the golems that had driven them from their homeworld. Nobody knows what the quarians look like under the long robes, hoods and masks they wear, but many species can imagine that it would be nightmarish enough for the quarians to burst into tears whenever they see a reflective surface.

The Golem

So named because every mind of the creations of the quarians is effectively one mind, one entity divided in millions of moving stone constructions that serve their material needs, these reclusive beings that only attack when encroaching on their territory have little to no interest in the goals of ‘naturals’, those that aren’t considered ‘unnatural beings in existence’ like the constructions moved by the will of the Golem. A more politically correct term offered by supporters of unnatural life is ‘siliconites’.

Scholarpriests = Engineers

Practicers = Adepts

Bullrushers = Vanguards

Warriors = Soldiers

Ghosts = Infiltrators

(Uni)Versales = Sentinels