Stories after the final battle

To put it simply, what kind aspects should be in a story that takes place after the "Final Battle"? When the main characters return from the original conflict as the conquering heroes, what should they have to deal with afterwards?

I can't remember the name of it, but there's a fantasy novel by Roger Zelazny where, having accomplished overthrowing the evil wizard-king, the heroes now have to return or hide all the mystical artifacts that they used to defeat him, because if they don't the combined power will rip a hole in reality. But at the same time, they can't just leave uber-powerful objects/weapons lying about, and they can't make them too hard to reach in case they need them all again. So they split up, each taking off one item to find a safe/reliable way to protect it.

The Order of the Stick did that, too. Their whole plot has basically been picking up the pieces left by the adventuring party before them.

Spin-Offspring is an absolute must!!!!!

edited 20th Oct '15 7:58:52 AM by Faemonic

LOTR had the Scouring of the Shire. An enemy they didn't dispose of properly comes back for vengeance.

edited 20th Oct '15 11:07:33 PM by dvorak

IIRC some info can be found here: The Hero's Journey

After the Big Bad is defeated and the final confrontation is over.

• Refusal of the Return: At this point in the story, the Hero has mastered the strange world he was thrust into. He probably has earned a permanent place here, if he wants it. He may even want to stay, but usually there are forces at work that propel him home.
• The Return: Also called the Magic Flight; the Hero now has the boon and high-tails it away, with the villain or his forces in hot pursuit; while they engage in a battle of wits and magic (especially shapeshifting) during the chase. (See the Celtic story of Taliesin's escape from Cerridwen for a textbook example of this.) The Hero's escape may not require actual magic, but will require all of the new skills he's learned and new allies he's made. Or alternately he could realize the Awful Truth that he can't return home because sometimes Failure Is the Only Option...
• Crossing the Return Threshold. Sometimes a fight against the forces of the Muggle world, which the Hero wins thanks to help from his Muggle allies.
• Freedom to Live: The Hero grants the boon to his people.
• Celebration: A Dance Party Ending is often in order.

Taking down the evil empire is arguably the easy part of restoring a just government to the land.

Nope, tacking the visible part of a empire is the most easy part, having to deal with remanent of the evil empire, specially if the dragon is still around...

It should at least have an epilogue to wrap everything up. I hate stories that end immediately after the final battle where you don't even get to figure out what happens to everyone or wrap up loose plot ends.

edited 21st Oct '15 5:19:21 PM by shiro_okami

Not even.

Look at any successful overthrowing of the status quo in the last twenty-five years and see how well it goes for the attempt to make a new government.

Hope I'm not taking this off topic, but it would be awesome to see a story about a fantasy world going through something like the post-Civil-War reconstruction, complete with Fantastic Racism, trying to rebuild everyone's doomed hometowns and warriors from both the hero's and villain's sides struggling to get civilian jobs... Or one that has to struggle to keep from descending into Somalia-esque chaos after Emperor Evulz is deposed and leaves a power vacuum.

edited 21st Oct '15 10:21:46 PM by Wheezy

Have you ever read The Mistborn Trilogy?

Often the story of how the world moves on after a major catastrophe can be more interesting than the thing itself. For instance WW 2, the closest thing we've ever had to a traditional fantasy war, was immediately followed by the cold war.

God, yes. Look at all those people who returned to their homes in formerly fascist/Nazi countries, only to find that their homes had been claimed by someone else and they had no intention of returning them. Or all the places which are "at peace" but resentment from wartime is still festering nearly a century later.

I did have a couple ideas for the ending of High Fantasy story I want to write some day. While some plot threads are pretty neatly tied up (the apocalypse is averted, some characters end up dying after the final battle, while a few get together romantically and/or start helping to rebuild, the surviving leaders of the Evil Empire are put on trial), some are less certain.

For example, one of the nations that joins the heroes' alliance to topple said empire is a democratic nation that by the end is swiftly becoming the world's sole major power. As it turns out, the President/Prime Minsters/whatever you want to call her couldn't convince the portion of the legislative body to support such an alliance through normal measures (as a good portion of it is controlled by a nationalist political party that opposes her own), and she refused to just seize power through normal means (operating under what we'll call the Nick Fury Doctrine: "Until such a time that the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.") So instead, she negotiates with her opponents to get their support, promising to annex a territory that has long been disputed and whose residents fervently desire independence.

Basically, we end this country's part of the story with the question of whether she did the right thing, and the implication that they may become a big problem in the future. Don't know if I'd ever write a sequel that'd follow up on it, but I think it's a pretty good ending for that bit.

edited 21st Dec '16 12:37:15 PM by KarkatTheDalek