Treating Sahara as ocean, legally and territorially AND NARRATIVELY

What do you suggest I go for now?

I'd like to make a plot outline, but I have no idea where to even start.

I have an idea regarding that, but it will take me some time to write it down. Basically, your avatar uncovers a conspiracy while the team is taking him back to civilization, and they consequently get detoured along the way....

Why don't you just do some character sketches, or some scenery/food porn? I find that usually inspires me with more ideas...

Freakin' avatar by the way...

edited 30th Jun '10 9:22:37 AM by DeMarquis

BOW before JESUS your LORD

I'm either a genius, or a babbling madman, you decide:

The hillside had collapsed into the ravine, obviously due to the unseasonal rains. The others had finished drinking, and were gathering upslope. Baradour stood at the bottom, looking down at the object he was standing on. It was a layer of cement.

At first, he didn’t understand what that meant. Idly, he followed the cement to the left, until it disappeared under a slope of wet sand. To the right, where it did the same thing. Wait, he thought, cement?

They were hundreds of kilometers from nowhere. There wasn’t a population center or a development project for days, weeks of cross country travel. CEMENT??

He bent over, reached down, felt the rough wet surface under his fingers. High overhead, the sun beat down relentlessly. But this was cool, moist.

Quickly, he dug forward, back, at right angles to the slope. He gradually uncovered more surface, under clear water. It was concave, sloping down away from him.

He sat back on his heels. Twenty meters below surface level. Wide, maybe… he glanced at the concavity again, estimating… maybe thirty meters. Containing water.

Baradour pulled out a hair from his head, dropped it on the surface. There could be ordinary explanations for this. Some old, abandoned construction project, perhaps from the oil era, maybe for drainage during the rainy season? Something like that. That had to be it. Because the other thing he was thinking, the other explanation that immediately occurred to him, was so crazy, so unreal, that it couldn’t be true, the water itself couldn’t be…

…flowing. He watched his hair travel slowly, almost imperceptibly, from left to right. The water was flowing. Holy Hell, he thought, it’s an aquaduct! An underground aquaduct!

He explained to the others, as quickly as he could.

“It has to be coming from the Niger river” he told them.

“The Niger is two hundred kilometers from here,” replied Nadeena, “Could it not be an artificial source?”

“What artificial source? Did you see a well-head anywhere near here? If it’s thirty meters wide and the water is flowing at one hundred meters an hour, that’s {Author: calculate amount} of water! The Niger is the only place it could be coming from! And all that water has to be going somewhere. Even taking into account evaporation, there’s still a huge amount that must be accumulating somewhere.” He thought a moment. “Lake Chad. That’s the only place it could be going. My God, do you understand what this means? Someone has constructed an underground irrigation system, over five hundred kilometers long, and no one knows about it!”

“Irrigation system?”

“Of course. Why else would it be open-topped? It’s intended to return water to the surface along the way.”

The others all looked at each other. The Cat was the first to speak. “So, someone is restoring the land. And they intend to push the nomads off, therefore the increase in raids recently.”

“Irrigating the Sahel region for what, farming? Who would want to live out here? How could you make a profit off it?”

“Employees, perhaps, for the solar power and wind turbine farms?”

“Could this be a Nigerian project, to transplant population north, and take over the region?”

“Look at a map. Even with water here, it’s hundreds of kilometers away from any populated region. It would cost so much to move people here…”

“What I don’t get is how they got away with it. Didn’t someone pick it up on satellites?”

“YOU PEOPLE DON’T GET IT YET!” All eyes snapped back to Baradour, standing ankle deep in wet sand. “Moving water here is completely pointless.” He mentally forced himself to slow down. “There’s no surface cover, no vegetation. Without surface cover, the water simply evaporates into the atmosphere, and eventually blows out to sea.”

“So? There must obviously be a reason…?”

“OK, I think I get it. See, this place didn’t used to be a desert. Back in colonial days, they put up borders out here and stopped the herdsmen from migrating with the rains. They forced them onto farms, so they could grow crops that would show more profit back in Europe. But during droughts, the farms blew away, and the water blew away with it. So this area, the Sahel, it desertified. Unless you change human migration patterns, remove the farms, and keep the herds moving around, you won’t accomplish anything.”

There was brief silence as the others absorbed this.

The Cat spoke next “And the raids recently, they are mostly against the farmers. Yes, I see.”

“You mean… someone is organizing herdsmen? It’s the nomads? But where did they get the money? The expertise?”

“I don’t understand it all yet,” said Baradour, “But nothing else makes any sense. Arnt you two” he looked at the Cat and bin Khabina “from a nomad tribe? Do you know anything about this?”

“When the foreign aid stopped coming, my people moved to the North” said the Cat “That was when I was a child. First we turned to farming, and when that didn’t work… other things. I know little about the people here. As for bin Khabina…” he looked at the younger man.

“My people have always lived near the coast, in the towns,” said Khabina, ” I have no relatives down here.”

“There have been reports of troubles,” said Nadeena, “but you expect that in times like these. What you’re suggesting, that requires a lot of sophistication.”

They all stared at the water for awhile. “Is there any way to profit from this?” asked bin Khabina.

“Not that I can see” said the Cat.

“In fact, it would have been better for us not to have learned these things, no?” As usual, Ruby had the last word.

As they trudged back toward the sandrover, Baradour looked over his shoulder, back toward the rain washed ravine. I don’t know how, but I’ve got to learn more about this, he thought.

GOSHDANGIT TO HECK! I could never come up with such a thing! Dude!

Fine, that does it. In three days, I'll have the motherfracking internets the flat I've just moved in in. PREPARE, for then I will get serious.

For now, however, I have to resort to stupid cybercafés...

BTW, I loved how you made the Cat and Bin Kahbina lose all nomad culture, and how you played with colonial effects on teh region. Super Duper Nice Move, dude!

Thanks. I want to add at least one more, where they meet the man behind it all. They end up working for him.

I see an episodic structure, where they have been assigned to help corporation A build something, and/or discourage corporation B from building something else, usually by blowing it up. All while keeping what the nomads are up to a secret. Lots of subplots as gangs of bandits, tribes of (unaffiliated) nomads, Mukhabarat agents, and corporate security goons get in the way.

Cybercafe's? You've been posting to TVT everyday using cybercafes? That's very impressive. You must be the best customer they've ever had... congrats on the new apartment...

No, no, I've been using a cybercafé only since Wednesday, and I'll have internet @ my new home as soon as wednesday.

I may be crazy, and I have no idea if this is useful to you or not, but this section just wrote itself. The team has finally found what they believe to be the man who is organizing the nomads. He is giving a speech to a village in Algeria:

Baradour looked around him, at those others gathered at this camp. Half a hundred pairs of eyes were raptly watching the speaker, standing near the center of the semi-circle, just before the great bonfire behind him. All around them in the darkness were the tents and buildings of the village, beyond that the desert, and above the silent stars. Five hundred people, all men, some elder, most of warrior age, sitting silently before the speaker. They had heard rumors of this man, now they were to hear for themselves the words that were spreading across the desert like waters of the flood.

First he reminded them that once before, in the time of their great-grandfathers, there had been no foreigners in the country of the Sahara, except by the permission of the tribes. This was when the desert was theirs, their land, their home, to live in and move in as they saw fit. Now the foreigners were everywhere, from the coast of the Atlantic to the shores of the Red Sea, from the beaches of the Mediterranian to the rainforests of the South. “It used to be that they left the center to us, because it was too dry to be useful to them and too distant to bother with. Now where in the Sahara do we not find them? First it was the Europeans, who established the borders of the nation-states and installed their puppets to rule over their colonies. Then the Americans came, to take the oil so that they could give weapons to the Jews. Now, it is new foreigners, who make the same claims as the old ones, that they are different than those who exploited us in the past, and made us dependent upon farms that do not yield enough crops to raise a family, or handouts that kept us in camps for refugees. But make no mistake, these new foreigners are just like the old foreigners, whether they are Russians, or Chinese, or Indians or Brazilians, they come for the same purpose, to take our land and suppress our freedom! Who here can place any trust in the so-called national governments, who claim to represent us but really serve the interests of whoever pays them the most? Has Cairo ever fought for the Nomad? Has Tunis, has Rabat? And now we see the encroachment of a new kind of oppressor, in the form of corporations, who tell us they want to develop the land but then take what they can and return nothing to us, except what we can beg from them at the gates of their complexes. Tell me, who are all these people? They are all the same, just foreigners who think they can tell us where to live, how to live, and what to believe. How long shall we continue to follow their rules? Shall we sue them and wait for a court to find in our favor? Since when has any court found in favor of a nomad? Shall we agree to join their development programs, and continue to watch as they import workers from the cities and the coasts and train them for the jobs they deny to us? Tell me why a nomad needs to work for a foreigner? What do we need foreign money for except to buy things we are better off making for ourselves?

Now you will tell me that we cannot compete with the foreigners, or with the governments who sell themselves to them. We are weak, because we have no money and lack the skills they have. This is true. But why are we weak, and why do we lack the money we need or the skills that foreigners have? There is only one reason- it is because we are divided! Just as a single twig may be broken when a bundle is strong, just as a single fiber is easy to snap when a woven rope can carry a great weight- just so a single tribe is defenseless while a confederacy would be powerful and strong! What divides us? What has always divided us? Why does Berber fight Tuareg, and Tuareg fight Sahrawi? It is because we fight over the scraps left us by those who want us to think we are not a proud nomad people but dependents of the nation states. Who here thinks they are Algerian? Is there a single Algerian here? Yet Algeria would have you believe that your duty and loyalty is due to them, and not to your brothers and sisters a few miles away, across their so-called borders. When you starve, do Algerians come and feed you? When you are hurt, do Algerians come and heal you? Think! Who is your real enemy, the Berber who starves next to you or the dogs of the foreigners who eat well? Think without prejudice of what I have said and it will become as clear to you as the summer sun why the sands themselves cry in pity for us.

Shall we calmly wait until outsiders become so numerous that we disappear altogether? The ursurpation of our common country must be stopped or we, it’s rightful owners, will be forever destroyed and wiped out as a race of people. Shall we wait to be destroyed without making an effort worthy of our people? Shall we give up our homes, our country, bequeathed to us by Allah, the graves of our dead and everything that is dear to us, without a struggle? Never!

Shall I tell you secret? A secret whispered to me by the spirit of the desert itself? There are no tribes. There are no tribes! There are the oppressors, and the oppressed! Join me now, form one body, one heart, and defend- to the last warrior- our country and our liberty!

We must give up the new ways, and return to the lifestyles of our ancestors. Herdsmen must be free to cross the false borders, and corporations should pay a tax to us- in the form of things we can use, like electricity and water. Above all, we must form an alliance, an alliance of ten thousand men, to confront these foreigners and their lackeys and peacefully if possible, but by war if necessary, demand our rights and assert ownership of our land!

Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps I am deluded as some of the Sheiks and the Imams among you say. But tell me this, if I am wrong then how is it that I know of changes that are already occurring? Is not the land to the south becoming green again? Without rain, without wells, foliage is growing for our animals to eat, and water is welling up from the earth. It is a sign- a sign from Allah, that the time is now for all of us to stand up, and become one people!”

Here, at last, the speaker encountered strong resistance. The Sheiks present didn’t like all this talk of unity and “foreigners”. It seemed to them that this brash warrior was intruding on their territory and leading their people into conflict as a way to undermine their authority and promote himself. The Imams didn’t like this talk of “signs”- it seemed he was claiming the power of prophesy. But most of the crowd were warriors, and the warriors stood up and screamed their approval. Baradour found, to his great surprise, that he was one of them.

...to be continued.

Internet not installed yet, though should ahve been on monday. Company bastards. Will try to post something tomorrow.

Idea: Let us introduce old, veteran gnagster, ex-geek, Ascended Fanboy. Like Barkey in Real Life, like Kick Ass and The Crimebusters and Eric Cartman, a guy who was a geek and decided to go and live the real thing and abandon civilization. Is now very battered and sly, and his knowledge of memes is kind of outdated, but he still comes up with crazy plans, And It Worked!

Write 'em up, cowboy. You are unimpressed with the speech?

Actually, I was having a severe headache because of an asshole teacher (I didn't know types like Snape existed in college too...) so I felt reading it in that state of mind would be counterproductive.

Read speech. Not bad, but not outstanding either: interesting, precise, and to the point, but either public might be aware of situation and have already decided to accept it, so might either ignore him or react negatively. Need trigger: discovery of new data that puts known facts into new light. Requesting permission to process a little.

BTW, setup is good, description of foreign forces at hand is interesting. Will do research myself on chinese neocolonization and brazilian and indian interests and methods, in order to give the speech more specific complaints. Will have to make up stuff and risk Zeerust: as it is, discourse would fit in 2020-2030 as of late: we set at 2060, perhaps introduce completely unexpected players, perhaps madeup new country. Have great doubts on preeminence of Israel at that point in time: no oil normally means it becomes almost useless, so either it blends in with its environment and learns to behave or disappears. In order to avoid offending readers, should remain ambiguous on this particular.

Would also like to add more rethorical (stylistic, rythmic, etc.) elemtns to the speech to make it more compelling, and more conventional Meaningless Meaningful Words and applause lights to make it more palatable and realistic, politically.

Speech is great opportunity for worldbuilding. Thankful to you for coming up with it.

Bahadour was a member of the debating club of his univeristy, so he's no stranger to rethorics: might be more interesting to see him Awesome by Analysis decorticating the ambiguities to the speech and speculating on the intentions of the speaker with his friends as an aftermath, than gettting overtly carried away, unless he has reason based on previous experience to trust on the speaker and believes in both his intentions and competence. Maybe he has worked for him, maybe he even had partial responsibility in setup. Avoid Mighty Whitey at all costs: Bahadour's party are Selfish Good Selfish Evil normally and Reluctant Hero at best and when really fired up. No Training The Villagers and no Going Native, but an exchage of knowledge and experience and skills and services. No matter what happens, the party always tries to take the best part of the deal.

Do you play World Of Darkness? Just bought the sourcebook, could use the storytelling system as a source of charcterization and interaction ideas.

Don't worry, Baradour may get carried away by the passion of the moment, but did you catch the lie I embedded into the speech? Baradour did, and he will play it when the time comes to confront this speaker (by the way, can you suggest a name- I'm drawing a blank). Baradour wants to find the party that is backing this guy, the team just wants to get paid, and get out alive. The paranoia doesn't end here, just gets more subtle. Baradour has more than a little Harry Potter in him (the methods of rationality version).

I just realized I didn't make it clear who the speaker was. He is a Saharan nomad- one of them. And he stands a good chance of organizing quite a force.

By the way, the speech itself is semi-historical. It's partially inspired by a similar one made by Tecumseh.

Agree on Israel, not so sure about India and Brazil, esp India. A nation thats been around over 2000 years isn't going away in a mere 50.

edited 12th Jul '10 6:33:48 PM by DeMarquis

Interesting! Martin Luther King lifted speeches from other people all the time! If anything, this makes this speech even more authentic.

I still think we should add "suprise powers", such as Russia and United Korea (I don't see NK lasting to 2060) and (perhaps) South Africa coming back and Black.

I need to look it up, but I remember SK had some interesting plicies regarding the rent of foreign land...

If Nigeria ever gets its act together, they would be huge, esp in this region. A Russia-India-Iran vs. China-Turkey-Saudi rivalry sounds plausible and interesting. Another natural alignment is Australia-India-South Africa. Brazil lends it's weight to whatever side it wants to have the advantage and Egypt (gateway to the Sahara) gets to play coy.

Who paid for the aquaduct? That's the question. Doesn't have to have been a nation-state...

What does "to play coy" mean in this context? To play all parts against each toehr, nonaligned-in-Cold-War style? Or more like what Morocco was able to do to stave off colonization until the Conference of Algier?

I mean, Egypt and India were the great leaders of the Non Aligned movement during the Cold War, but they only had two blocks to choose from. The world we are drawing, on the other hand, is a mess. Maybe we could use some of the Sengoku Jidai and Romance Of The Three Kingdom tropes that come when there are many parties fighting and competing togther, with alliances going back and forth in a hardly predictable mess?

I still can't really figure out the point of the aqueduct, and how it could have been built unremarked under the massive satelite surveillance (at that point, wars, smuggling, and other stuff will be done at night, and generating the least heat possible so I imagine a resurgence of bilogical transportation... if we want to see successful nomad fighting, I suggest we have a look at Israel VS Hezbollah in 2006.

However, I'm still perpelñexed as to how Saharan Nomads can deal battle in the broad, open Sahara plains (not to suggest all of Sahara is broad and open, though). Therefore: how can "warriors" still exist? Unless they're a conglomerate of terrorist groups, bandits, and tribal self-defense forces?

Obviously the heart of the war will be fought through diplomacy, Gunboat Diplomacy, The Propaganda Machine (i.e. the Media). At that point, especially if Europe or the USA get involved (but at that time I doubt China, India or Turkey will be far behind), they won't even use soldiers: they'll use automated drones and Mini-Mecha. I can still see many ways in which the desert-dwellers may use the terrain to their advantage, given circuitry's sensitivity to heat and its husge dependence on power sources, even if somehow they have their own iltra efficient solar panels (we'll have to look up the expected power of those).

Again, if there are highways, railways and electric power plants all over the place, that makes stuff a lot easier for the invaders. Except we could play with that and say that, despite inflated numbers, the desert is HUGE and most of it is still vast, barren emptiness.

Some combat scenes with droids coud be played for massive amouts of horror (especially if we play with the more insectoid sort and if they attack at night: movements, lights, vibrations). Comedy too: robots are among the dumbest creatures ever, and have the bug-things bug, especially in life-threatening situations, could be played either for massive hilarity or huge frustration, depending on the POV.

...

Do we melt the polar caps or do we not? To what extent? With what consequences? Which countries are flooded? Which have built dykes?

What about the war on WATER?

Dammit, that's the problem with world-building: it's HUGE. Should we go the Masamune Shirow way and keep vague about the huge stuff and exhaustive on the details? Add lots of surface instead of a little depth?

What do you have in mind for our characters? You've got to keep me updated: what's the outline of the plot as you see it (as far as it goes)?

edited 14th Jul '10 10:01:28 AM by RawPower

"Play Coy" means sell access to the desert off to the highest bidder- taking care not to give it all away to just one alliance or world power. More like Queen Elizabeth. Actually, that time era isn't bad if your looking for parallels. Another would be the "Warring States" period in ancient China.

They (whoever 'they' are) escaped satellite surveillance through bribery. The US and Europe aren't watching the Sahara anymore, and the new world powers outsource that stuff to private companies (Future Google?).

The point of the aquaduct is to un-desertify a large section of the Sahel. Someone want that area to re-populate. As Baradour explained, that means a return to herdsmen.

The Nomad Warrior-Speechmaker is cannier than he appeared to be just from the speech. He actually knows that a force of nomads cant actually take on the nation states and win. He just wants to change the balance of power in the region so that they can open the borders and restore their traditional way of life. Ultimately that will result from diplomacy like you said, but he believes that without the credible threat of armed force there isn't any reason for anyone to listen to them ("Peacefully if possible" he said, "but by war if necessary").

Don't think of desert nomads as running around on camels. The quality of their equipment may be behind that of, say Egypt, but Lake Chad is far from Cairo, and someone is providing money for this whole thing, so light trucks, man-portable missiles and artillery, and even their own primitive drones aren't out of the question.

They get electricity by stealing it. Those huge solar power farms are very hard to protect (that's what the team has been doing up to now). Infrastructure like power plants and roads aren't all over the place, but they are beginning to crop up in areas far from the coasts and population centers, which is what has the nomads up in arms in the first place, they are getting pushed out (again). And they don't necessary need to control their own sovereign territory, just a fair piece of the action.

Combat scenes with droids- somewhere Barkey I think posted this 'thing' from DARPA that looks like a giant metal insect, and hums like one too. Nightmare fuel.

Global Warming- shoot, I dont actually know what's in store for the Sahara in 60 years, one of us should do the research on that one.

Plot- here's my take: Barradour is the sole survivor of a zepplin crash deep in the desert. He's rescued by the team, who decide to return him for the reward (times have been tough). While watering, he discovers a secret underground aquaduct, deduces a conspiracy. At the next village, he deliberately spills this to village sheik, in order to observe reaction, team barely makes it out alive (cue semi-humorous action scene, esp. the aftermath when they discover what Barradour did). They are forced to pursue clues to figure out why people are now trying to kill them, leads eventually to our desert speaker. Barradour joins up as a technical advisor, and the team (ironically) ends up working for him, going undercover to gather info on various development project, usually getting jobs as security. Often end up blowing up said development project, and blaming it on some other corporation. This would serve as the basis of future episodes. Barradour's actual agenda is to discover who is really behind it all (the aquaduct builders) and maybe take over the project for himself. This will never actually happen.

What do you think?

If we can depict Bahadour (I love how you keep changing the spelling: people have the same problem with my name IRL XD) as an Anti-Hero Type 1, then yeah, it could be very interesting. Having him lead the team successfully sounds like Mighty Whitey, but if he sucks at it and, while often brilliant, trips over himself both literally and figuratively, moreso now that he wears robes, it could be very funny and interesting. Especially if his teammates, instead of working as minions, question his authority at every occasion and don't hesitate to call him out on his shit.

However, should we make him an Anti-Hero that tries to do the right thing, or an Anti-Villain who tries to live by the Evil Overlords List? In both cases, Wrong Genre Savvy and Reality Ensues would be very interesting to play, especially with unexpected consequences!

Now, one thing I picked up from the RPG sourcebooks: Theme and Ambience. One of the things I didn't like of Cowboy Bebop was the lack of coherence and the severe Mood Whiplash... Being consistent on these makes the reading easier and tunes the rearer as to what tropes to expect and how to react to them.

For the Atmosphere, my idea is to make emphasis on the contrast between the brutal sun and the freezing darkness, the empty barrens and the bustling metropoli: the sunlight is almost blinding, the sun comes down, vertical, revealing all, casting an extremely mundane, evident, almost dismissive light on everything: all the defects are revealed, all the features are outlined so brutally they end up fading into the brutality of reality. Simultaneously the hot air makes you see mirages everywhere: while the lights of the open desert leave you nowhere to hide, they assault you with fleeting illusions, winds, and misdirections.

During the night, on the other hand, the air becomes so cold you could die frozen. The creatures of the desert, birds, reptiles, insects, that were hidden of the heat during the day (again, during the day, everything you see is exactly what it seems, but if you stir up the wrong stone, what you don't see can bite you in the ass and instakill you). The night is more forgiving: it is the time for travelling, under the guidance of the stars (so many of them), for sitting around the campfire and exchanging news and stories.

Given the nature of the desert, some (ambiguous but still ominous) Magical Realism might be hinted at. We could add some folklore for flavour, but my thinking is more on the lines of weird unexpected stuff happening, that's relevant to the plot, but whose causes cannot be investigated or are not worth investigating.

In the desert, there is a sense of loneliness, of awe and might, and of constant, pure, unadulterated danger: of getting lost, dying of thirst, having the vehicle malfunction, the animal die, and so on. Which would still be kind of offset by modern telecommunications, but I gather those would still be quite expensive (and not the best implement if you want to travel incognito).

In the oasis, there is a sense of community. Everything is shared, everyone has their place. Society is structured in a stable and fair way: the rich compensate the poor, and, all living together, cheats are useless. Nevertheless, such idyllic societies (for they really exist) can have their psychological horror too: it is a very smothering system, and deviants might suffer deeply. That is, if we don't add skeletons in a closet, but I feel American authors have turned this into such a cliché, I really wouldn't want a Dogville episode. The flavours are greeen and rich brown, shade and water abounds, plants bear fruit of all sorts. It is not sop much abundance as perfectly synchronized autarchy (and a constant struggle against the desert).

In the citiy, there is loneliness, like in the desert, but of a different nature, that we are more familiar with. While the elites go to foreign schools and live in huge mansions with swimming pools that make Beverly Hills look positively poor (seriously, Casablanca's posh neighbhourhood is just like that), the workers and middle-lower classes live in extremely ugly projects that look more like the spawn of the dreams of mad Daedalus, and the uprooted, literally dirt poor peasants from the rural exodus live in shitholes, hellish favelas that struggle to keep the strong sense of morality of the peasants, confronted with an entirely different lifestyle, environment, and scales of values. All these places are rich sources for drama and plot.

Everywhere, I think we need to insist on the senses. Smells, colours, shapes, textures, sounds, vibrations, the weight of light (photons have linear moment: sunlight wheights, and Sahara sunlight more so), but the desert also forces you to introspection in your efforts to endure the hostile conditions: blood pulses, guts wrenching, bones and joints cracking and aching, sweat surging... On the other hand, blushing disappears: people here either all have a tan or are red as crabs all the time. Third world cities also present us with a rich panaché of stinks, cheap air conditioners, car waste...

But then, that shoudl eb reseved to each scene.

I'll have the Internets installed tomoorow or the day after (at least that's what the seller assured me). I shall then start writing with all my might.

I keep changing the spelling? It was "Bahadur" in your original post. I dont know what a "type 1 anti-hero" is, but yeah, he sucks at leadership , even though he is very bright (Harry Potterish). Also, he isn't the team leader (thats Nadeena) he's the client. Very important distinction. He gets to assign projects, but he doesn't get to make tactical decisions. Nadeena negotiates contracts. The Cat kills people (there's your anti-hero). Ruby loves fucking with people's minds. Bin Khabina just does what he's told, unless it doesn't make any sense, then he comes up with his own thing.

"For the Atmosphere, my idea is to make emphasis on the contrast between the brutal sun and the freezing darkness, the empty barrens and the bustling metropoli: the sunlight is almost blinding, the sun comes down, vertical, revealing all, casting an extremely mundane, evident, almost dismissive light on everything: all the defects are revealed, all the features are outlined so brutally they end up fading into the brutality of reality. Simultaneously the hot air makes you see mirages everywhere: while the lights of the open desert leave you nowhere to hide, they assault you with fleeting illusions, winds, and misdirections." You could be describing an American Western, post-Eastwood. Sounds awesome.

"In the oasis, there is a sense of community. Everything is shared, everyone has their place. Society is structured in a stable and fair way: the rich compensate the poor, and, all living together, cheats are useless. Nevertheless, such idyllic societies (for they really exist) can have their psychological horror too: it is a very smothering system, and deviants might suffer deeply." Yep, thats how I pictured it. Same everywhere really. No need for secrets, the Nomads very strict code of absolute loyalty to the group should clash sufficiently well with the team's more decadent sense of enlightened self-interest, esp Bahadur's, which he got from reading about it. This will be a source of never ending tension between him and our desert speech-maker (I cant stand it anymore- lets call him "Abdul-Aziz").

"While the elites go to foreign schools and live in huge mansions with swimming pools that make Beverly Hills look positively poor (seriously, Casablanca's posh neighbhourhood is just like that), the workers and middle-lower classes live in extremely ugly projects that look more like the spawn of the dreams of mad Daedalus, and the uprooted, literally dirt poor peasants from the rural exodus live in shitholes" Sounds like Accra.

Looking forward to your next post.

Hey! This story you two are working on seems interesting to me, would you two be open to collaboration? (I've seen you've been posting alone so long, so I had to ask)

Anyway, I'll suggest sth. Wouldn't it be great to, at this point, try to summarize a little all this work you've done? Just to detect inconsistencies and so.

In my last experiences writing (you should guess, not in english), summarize once in 5 months has never been counterproductive.

Hello- and welcome! While I cant speak for Raw, I for one would welcome another perspective. As for summing up, I was trying to do a little of that in posts 67 on. I suppose we should do it in a more complete and structured way. But I want to wait until I see what Raw is cooking up- he may change things quite a bit and then it might be time to summarize more carefully. Do you have any ideas that you would like to share?

^^ Cullons, home, no podíes agafar un nickname més embolicat???

Today I'm making tyhe inscriptions for next term at college, but once I've done that I'll try to sum up all the stuff we've done so far.

What's Accra?

Have I misunderstood smth on post 54? As far as I had read, water has become a very valuable resource. If I were one of the team members, I wouldn't start thinking about where and why there actually is an aquaduct there before filling some canteens, or trucks maybe, of this expensive and appreciated resource.

I would suggest, too, deciding what kind of vocabulary should use each one of the characters there, 'cause maybe the speech on post 58 is in a vocabulary that, being realistic, can't be understood by any warrior there. In this same way I would like to specify even more on the education systems in the age and countries.

A part of it, I was impressed by the speech; really makes one feel as one sahara nomada more.

I'll be posting again on Monday, see you.

P.D.: After the summ I should be more useful creating either than destructing.

edited 16th Jul '10 11:26:17 PM by 4815162342

Totally oftopic:

Raw was asking for my nickname, If you two haven't seen Lost yet, you should. If you do you'll understand why 4 8 15 16 23 42 is my election