04-19-2013, 08:55 AM
Right so this ain't a short synopsis by any means. I felt the really short synopsis wouldn't have captured the feeling I want to put forward and I want to get crit on that as well as the overall structure. It's kinda like a synopscript or a scripopsis as I imagine much of what is in the text will become captions for the comic itself. I have also started the actual script to map it out properly, but figured this would be where I want to get the crit on before continuing...
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A small tribe wanders the desolate reaches of a vast desert. They are lead by the anointed one (a shamen) the finder of the way (a pathfinder) and tribemother (the matriarch). They are all old except the matriarch; she is the soul of the group. Every other “cycle” they undertake an arduous pilgrimage to the holy site and perform the obligatory rites of supplication and entreaty. They are lead by the tribemother through inhospitable terrain, a custom handed down to them from ancestor to ancestor generations deep.
The pathfinder leads the way; he follows a beacon built into the top of his staff that pulses brighter and quicker as they retrace the journey of the previous pathfinders. The desert here is harsh and offers them many hazards and little sustenance. They send out hunters on a hunt which is long and hard and yields little but a spiny creature (reptile-like? porcupine?). At night by the light of their cookers they enjoy their meagre catch. The matriarch reflects on how their journey has become harder each time. This time they have already lost 2 to the heat and water thirst. Once it was annual for decades and now it has dwindled down to once every 5 years, She considers making it once a decade or even stopping but she doesn’t want to face that yet.
The journey continues on with the new day. Looming up ahead is a large unbroken cliff face that extends to both horizons. The pathfinder points the way forward through a thin slit in the barrier and the matriarch urges them through. The gorge towers high above them. Shapes high on the chasm’s edge silhouetted against the bright sky jog distant memories of another past, another life, not this. They almost seem to move. A stone falls down the side of the walls echoing loudly and lands directly in their path. The ground starts rumbling and then larger and larger rocks start tumbling. They run through the gorge pursued by the deep roar and rocks falling all around them. They spill out of the other end of the canyon followed by a huge dust cloud. They are two fewer in number.
Resigned they continue on. The alien features of the landscape slowly begin to resolve into ruins. At night they huddle in the shelter of two large ruined towers around the brilliant but cold blue-green atomic glow of their burners. The tribe, never exuberant, have been especially subdued after their loss, so the matriarch beckons the spinner of tales to weave a song in tribute and to distract them. As he does so recounting the (myths of the people?) the matriarch watches the dancing lights and shadows against the ruin walls which bring life to the carvings and glyphs in (hundreds of?) languages, once uttered but since forgotten. For the most part.
Days pass and the ground grumbles as if lamenting its loss of them, chasing them. The anointed one is worried of the omens but the matriarch buoys them on. After days of trudging over the rumbling ground, eventually they ascend a rise and the vista of a ruined metropolis on the shores of what used to be an coastline long since dried up meets their gaze; spires still reach partway to the sky and shadow their path.. The city is now instead perched on the lip of a grand chasm the bottom of which stretches as far as the eye can see. They walk in dwarfed by the still huge structure. They head for the holy site, a section of the city at a higher point overlooking the once-ocean trench.
There they start the rites of supplication and entreaty. The matriarch has encouraged this, it brings them peace of mind and a sense of purpose and place and they have needed it. She has needed it. The tribe chants in a strangely hypnotic dirge. The matriarch takes the pathfinder’s oracle, no longer pulsing but glowing steadily, and places it into the control panel of the console of the communications relay station. The panel lights up and as the anointed one begins his chant of entreaty behind her the matriarch punches symbols on the panel and stares at it in earnest hoping for a response. When they left all those years ago, she was only little better than a child, and now she is still in that child’s body but several centuries have passed and made her something else. The advanced life extension therapy was only available to a few and she was one of the “lucky” ones before the world collapsed.
The ground erupts all around them and the grumbling that had plagued them rises to a calamitous roar of rage. The ground buckles and whips like waves of the water that have long since left these climes. What is left of the spires begins to crash around them.
When the earthquake subsides, the remains of the tribe gather around the matriarch now crushed and lifeless beneath a fallen piece of plasteel and concrete. . The pathfinder is also dead, his hand and staff poking through the debris in the direction home as if in a final directive. The anointed one wipes the dust from the tribemother's face and closes her unseeing eyes. They weep and wail for her as she is their only mother, the mother of their ancestors. She has been there all along. They leave her body under the rubble and head back across the boiled ocean back to their home.
As they disappear into the distance the control panel lights up “Incoming message”.
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Thanks for reading and be glad for any input.
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A small tribe wanders the desolate reaches of a vast desert. They are lead by the anointed one (a shamen) the finder of the way (a pathfinder) and tribemother (the matriarch). They are all old except the matriarch; she is the soul of the group. Every other “cycle” they undertake an arduous pilgrimage to the holy site and perform the obligatory rites of supplication and entreaty. They are lead by the tribemother through inhospitable terrain, a custom handed down to them from ancestor to ancestor generations deep.
The pathfinder leads the way; he follows a beacon built into the top of his staff that pulses brighter and quicker as they retrace the journey of the previous pathfinders. The desert here is harsh and offers them many hazards and little sustenance. They send out hunters on a hunt which is long and hard and yields little but a spiny creature (reptile-like? porcupine?). At night by the light of their cookers they enjoy their meagre catch. The matriarch reflects on how their journey has become harder each time. This time they have already lost 2 to the heat and water thirst. Once it was annual for decades and now it has dwindled down to once every 5 years, She considers making it once a decade or even stopping but she doesn’t want to face that yet.
The journey continues on with the new day. Looming up ahead is a large unbroken cliff face that extends to both horizons. The pathfinder points the way forward through a thin slit in the barrier and the matriarch urges them through. The gorge towers high above them. Shapes high on the chasm’s edge silhouetted against the bright sky jog distant memories of another past, another life, not this. They almost seem to move. A stone falls down the side of the walls echoing loudly and lands directly in their path. The ground starts rumbling and then larger and larger rocks start tumbling. They run through the gorge pursued by the deep roar and rocks falling all around them. They spill out of the other end of the canyon followed by a huge dust cloud. They are two fewer in number.
Resigned they continue on. The alien features of the landscape slowly begin to resolve into ruins. At night they huddle in the shelter of two large ruined towers around the brilliant but cold blue-green atomic glow of their burners. The tribe, never exuberant, have been especially subdued after their loss, so the matriarch beckons the spinner of tales to weave a song in tribute and to distract them. As he does so recounting the (myths of the people?) the matriarch watches the dancing lights and shadows against the ruin walls which bring life to the carvings and glyphs in (hundreds of?) languages, once uttered but since forgotten. For the most part.
Days pass and the ground grumbles as if lamenting its loss of them, chasing them. The anointed one is worried of the omens but the matriarch buoys them on. After days of trudging over the rumbling ground, eventually they ascend a rise and the vista of a ruined metropolis on the shores of what used to be an coastline long since dried up meets their gaze; spires still reach partway to the sky and shadow their path.. The city is now instead perched on the lip of a grand chasm the bottom of which stretches as far as the eye can see. They walk in dwarfed by the still huge structure. They head for the holy site, a section of the city at a higher point overlooking the once-ocean trench.
There they start the rites of supplication and entreaty. The matriarch has encouraged this, it brings them peace of mind and a sense of purpose and place and they have needed it. She has needed it. The tribe chants in a strangely hypnotic dirge. The matriarch takes the pathfinder’s oracle, no longer pulsing but glowing steadily, and places it into the control panel of the console of the communications relay station. The panel lights up and as the anointed one begins his chant of entreaty behind her the matriarch punches symbols on the panel and stares at it in earnest hoping for a response. When they left all those years ago, she was only little better than a child, and now she is still in that child’s body but several centuries have passed and made her something else. The advanced life extension therapy was only available to a few and she was one of the “lucky” ones before the world collapsed.
The ground erupts all around them and the grumbling that had plagued them rises to a calamitous roar of rage. The ground buckles and whips like waves of the water that have long since left these climes. What is left of the spires begins to crash around them.
When the earthquake subsides, the remains of the tribe gather around the matriarch now crushed and lifeless beneath a fallen piece of plasteel and concrete. . The pathfinder is also dead, his hand and staff poking through the debris in the direction home as if in a final directive. The anointed one wipes the dust from the tribemother's face and closes her unseeing eyes. They weep and wail for her as she is their only mother, the mother of their ancestors. She has been there all along. They leave her body under the rubble and head back across the boiled ocean back to their home.
As they disappear into the distance the control panel lights up “Incoming message”.
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Thanks for reading and be glad for any input.