The Dragon
They don’t really start until second grade. The memories. Everything before that is jumbled up. Fuzzy, confused. But by second grade I finally get some little shine of clarity from the dang things. I was in class at the time. Not sure what was going on outside of my head, but that’s not a big deal, the inside is what’s important. Inside my head, flapping its wings and floating right in the middle of the classroom, is a bipedal skeleton dragon. An evil, dark, giant skeleton dragon. I curl my hands into claws, slap the base of my palms together, probably give some sort of inarticulate shout, and out from my hands bursts a massive light blue laser beam. In a flash of light, with a scream of beastly pain, the dragon is completely atomized, never to walk the earth again.
I just killed myself. For the second time, actually. I wasn’t terribly creative with names in the early days, so my arch-nemesis was named Dark Scott. Dark Scott was me, but he was evil, and he was a samurai. The only reason I even remember he exists is because I doodled a little picture of him when I was younger, labeled “DS1” for clarity. But I do know that he died a horrible death. I wonder if I had enough conception of irony at that age to slice him in half with my twin swords. Probably not. I probably just vaporized him with a giant laser beam. However he died, it left a big gaping hole in my villain roster. Every superhero has to have an arch-nemesis, after all, and I’d just murdered mine. Thankfully, this was an easy problem to fix. Dark Scott II was better than Dark Scott I in every way. Dark Scott II was me, but he was evil, but he was also a giant dark skeleton dragon that shot red lasers from his mouth.
The Dragon really represents the beauty of the early era. He doesn’t have any drawn out origin story, no character beats or driving motivation. He was me, which makes absolutely no sense considering that he is a dragon, and I am not. But explanations are for chumps, and I am not a chump. You can tell because I am currently fighting a dragon. Whenever class was at a lull, or I was following my parents around the supermarket, or I was tucked in but not ready to go to sleep, there was the Dragon. Being evil, and just begging me to beat the crap out of him. So I obliged. I sliced him, I kicked him, I burned him with fire, or punched him with rocks, or transformed into a monster and ripped him apart, or got really angry and ascended to my rage form and mega-annihilated him. Then the Dragon would die, then he would come back as something else. Anything was fine, as long as it was cool to fight. Dark Scott III looked exactly like me, but in a broken mirror sort of way, Dark Scott IV had a bunch of stretchy tentacle arms. There were less important foes back in those days too, but they’ve all passed from memory. Gone the way of all weekly Saturday morning cartoon villains, I suppose.
‘Dragon Explosion’ is the closest I’ve gotten to a true blue origin story. In truth, I do not remember a time when I chose to have superpowers. It just happened at some point, and I’ve been living the life of an imaginary superhero ever since. Tale after tale, fight scene after fight scene, all told to myself, and no one else. For decades. Because I genuinely enjoy it. Sometimes I look out at the world, and I wonder how many other stories are out there. Ones like mine. Hidden away, never to be revealed, only leaving a person’s mind in the tiniest snippets. Even if those stories are bad, it troubles me that they will be lost. So much of my own story has already been forgotten.
So, think of this as a very particular type of review. I’m one of your nerdier friends, and I’ve arrived at your house lugging around a tome of unending text, packed with my thoughts on an extremely niche anime that has never been translated or marketed to a wide audience. Most of my ‘review’ is really just me painstakingly detailing my favorite scenes, then saying “Yeah, I love that one, it’s my favorite!” while you blankly nod along and wonder how much free time I have on my hands.
Stick with me though. I’ll try to offer something more substantive on occasion, and there’s definitely room for some unique insights here. Stories are not typically crafted for an audience of one, and they aren’t usually told by the same person, as a collaboration between his seven year old self and his twenty-five year old self. Stories are different when they are thought, rather than committed to paper or film. And I mean come on. I murdered my dream dragon self when I was in elementary school. You’re bound to find something creative and interesting in here.
The Unbreakable
Middle school serves as the quickening for everything to come. Elementary was a time for goofing around. Superhero-ing was the same as a dozen other imaginative activities that I regularly engaged in at the time, which is a big reason why I’ve forgotten so much of it. It was all momentary playtime, fun for the moment rather than the long run. The shift from kid-time play-time to life-long secret-hobby had to come from somewhere, and middle school is exactly the time when most people let their imaginary worlds drift away. So, what led me to hold on to mine?
Sixth grade is a strong contender for the moment I gained self-consciousness. I was a pretty outgoing, cheery kid prior to that point, but right around pre-pubescence I shut up like a clam. This had its downsides of course, but it did wonders for my interior life. It is also the first section of my life where I can point and say “Yeah, that’s me.” Gradually, in a trend which would continue throughout my teenage years, I began to treat my thoughts more and more as entities which I controlled, rather than things which happened to me. Wouldn’t you know it, that bleeds into my life as a superhero.
Fittingly, the process began with my greatest rival. By 4th or 5th grade, I was getting a tad disillusioned. You see, Dark Scott IV was… Alright I’ll say it, he was lame. Stretchy tentacle arms? What was I thinking? And I’d just killed him. Again! How many Dark Scotts are there going to be? What’s the point of an arch-nemesis that keeps dying?
And it’s right around here where I stumbled on to my first Really Great Idea. A thought that, once it enters your head, gets stuck there for a bit. Brings itself to a boil. Makes you really excited about what comes next. Sort of like solving a murder mystery right in the middle of the book. I decided that an arch-nemesis that keeps losing to me is no arch-nemesis at all. Which means that, if I want to make another Dark Scott, and really call him my rival, then he’ll have to win every fight we have. Up until the moment that I literally die.
It’s hard to properly encapsulate how many different ways this little resolution managed to revolutionize things. In an imaginary world filled to the brim with endless possibility, this was the first time I imposed a hard and fast rule on things. Now, no matter how much I wanted to, there was someone I wasn’t allowed to win fights against. A problem I couldn’t solve through the liberal application of big big laser boom. By accident, I now had a recurring character. Dark Scott Nil, as he would come to be known, now needed motives. What makes him my arch-rival in the first place? When he wins a fight, why doesn’t he kill me? When I manage to escape, or fight him to a standstill, how does he feel about it? I had to do a little better than “me, but evil”. I had to create someone different. This also encouraged me to add a little nuance to super-me. How do I handle constant debilitating loss? Do I learn anything from previous fights?
Making Dark Scott unbreakable completely overturned the previous dynamic of my superhero world. Suddenly, I wasn’t just here for a quick, fun, imaginary fight. I was in this for the long haul. I had created an arch-rival with more staying power than every villain from every story I’ve read during my life, combined. Who knows where things would go from here? What kind of ending will I want, when I’m on my deathbed? How can I make sure that ending will be as enjoyable and emotionally satisfying as possible in the meantime? DS0 gave me a reason to engage with my imaginary world more frequently, and more fervently, than ever before. The more I engaged, the more there was to enjoy, which gave me even more incentive to keep things going. Steadily, the world started to open up.
A regular cast and crew started to enter the picture. I made friends with a shadow creature named Sly, a plant creature named Vine. The President would send a helicopter to pick me up from class, then give me top secret missions. I entered my sci-fi enthusiast tech-phase, which meant I now had gadgets in addition to my innate superpowers. Combat became a more nuanced affair, with tricks, turnabout, and little Gotcha moments. Despite possessing seventy-bazillion different superpowers, I began to color my super-self as an underdog. Fights were won by the skin of my teeth, and I found myself getting impaled, crushed, shot and stabbed on a worryingly frequent basis.
I started explaining things. Filling out backstory. Where did my powers come from? Let’s say I had them since birth. Ooh, actually, let’s say I gained them at the exact same time as Dark Scott, but he was a teenager at the time, while I was a baby. That’s why he’s so much more powerful, he’s been honing his skills while I made poopies.
Continuity started shifting around, as I tried to account for all of my actions up until that point. The original “Dark Scott”s were no longer evil copies of me, but rather golems, created by Dark Scott 0 to harass me. My flippancy towards villain murder became a character flaw, a naive part of my early superhero life which I tried to atone for going forward.
Superpowers became baked into the world. Great strength and unusual ability would awaken within individuals. Sometimes from birth, sometimes during a moment of importance or struggle during their life. I adopted the idea that supers were sort of like chess pieces, put down in the middle of a game of checkers. Everyone was part of the same universe, but people with superpowers played by a different set of rules. They had their own personal laws of physics. Inventions they could create which no one else could replicate. Defying death by the slimmest odds was commonplace, and it is hidden knowledge that it’s far easier to knock a superhero unconscious, rather than kill them outright. Some theorize that this is mother nature’s compensation. The boon she grants, in exchange for a life of violence and strife.
Oh yeah, and aliens exist. Like, lots of aliens. Plant aliens, ice aliens, dark sunlight aliens, suit-of-armor aliens, cloaked guardians-over-the-stability-of-the-universe aliens, you name it. Basically every alien species is more amazing than humans in every way, with one notable exception. Humans, for whatever reason, have a crazy high rate of superpower acquisition. In a universe where having more supers on your team means you get to win the battle, this has allowed Earth to persist as an independent, culturally isolated, technological backwater; despite possessing a fairly central, strategically useful location in the galaxy.
Looking back on the middle school era gives mixed feelings. There wasn’t anything especially notable or interesting that happened during that time, story-wise. No big event, or great battle, or shift in power, or culminating character arc. The crowning achievement was the introduction of Dark Scott Nil as a character. Which, given that I’d already introduced four Dark Scotts prior to that point, doesn’t seem all that impressive.
Fittingly, it was a time of awkward transition. The success of the era comes from its shift in perspective, rather than the individual details which accompanied it. A superpowered world is cool, but not terribly special. Aliens are also cool, but nothing really sticks out here. There’s definitely some potential in the idea of a villain that lasts a lifetime, but it really is just potential at this point. However, I think it’s important to assess these things within their proper context. Most people do not create elaborate imaginary worlds within their mind. They don’t map out storylines, or create characters, or speculate on the mechanics of superpowers which they personally created. It is entirely possible that I would have joined most people at this stage of my life, but something about the middle school era managed to hook me. I could think up a new alien species, or experiment with a new superpower, or chat with an imaginary person, or create new rules which governed the universe in a way that made my fight scenes more enjoyable. Eventually, I came to enjoy the alien creation, fake conversation, and world building just as much as I enjoyed the fights. The value of the era was found in how it affected me, what it pushed me towards, rather than what it produced.
Sometimes I wonder if the way we approach art is too geared towards the present. We look at a painting, or watch a movie, and decide whether it is good or bad, then call it a day. In general, this is a fine way to judge art, but as we enter the age of social media—where even your average Joe has a substantial say in whether something ought or ought not exist—we should occasionally remind ourselves to plan for the future. Sometimes the most important question is not whether something is good or bad, but whether the creator will continue to create. Whether they will have enough courage to share their creation in the future. I don’t want painters to tremble every time they pick up a paintbrush. I don’t want essayists to doom scroll, then vow to leave the internet. I want them to make more things. To improve, even if it’s only in their own eyes. I don’t want to lose something excellent in the future, because it is mediocre today.
I’m glad my mediocrity was confined to my own mind, back in the day. In secrecy, I learned to love the act of creation.
The Ascension
I broke the Taj Mahal in high school. And Mars. And China. But in my defense I fixed China, please don’t get mad. Oh wait I broke it again.
The War of Five Armies was the first worldwide event to grace my little mind, and it seemed fitting to go all out. Beast-like, orange furred aliens invaded in the north, while a mad genius and his robot army poured out of the Sahara. A superhero organization which I’d had a few run-ins with finally decides that they aren’t getting the respect they deserve, and starts destroying famous landmarks in order to prove their point. Meanwhile, a group of highly skilled rune makers (aliens) have embraced the forbidden sigil, and their crazed champion has been devouring planets on his way to Earth. If all of that wasn’t enough, a group of under-men blow up their home in southeast Asia, dropping China by ten feet in a fit of jealousy, before swarming over the surface to claim their rightful inheritance.
If middle school was the time for building a big new world, high school was when I realized that I could do whatever the crap I wanted with it. Large groups began to feature more prominently in my fiction, while fights expanded to a more grandiose scale. In a twist that is a tad eye-rolling modern day, but was enjoyable enough at the time, it turns out that Dark Scott was behind the sudden coalescence of Earthly hostility; subtly nudging the five armies to attack at the same time through various bouts of politrickery. The under-men were the only ones which never played ball though. Too overeager. They jumped the gun on dropping China, which makes DS so mad that he ascends to his rage form, tethers himself to the broken edges of China, picks it up, and then plops the sucker right back where it belongs.
Awfully nice (or petty) of him, but it culminates in his first symbolic loss. Exhausted by the strain of picking up a big chunk of continent and forced into combat by a feisty, powered up super-me, the fight ends in a titanic explosion which leaves me unconscious, Dark Scott gravely wounded, and China bearing a diagonal scar comparable in size to the Great Wall.
This is the first and only time which Dark Scott has tasted his own mortality. I was moving too fast. Approaching victory over my foe just a couple of years after vowing to stall it. Dark Scott needed more power, and he craved it in concert with the writer of his story.
Soon to follow the War of Five Armies was a less explicitly combat focused event, though one that still followed the trend of growing scale. Superpowers had become a part of the natural world at this point, a mysterious yet highly consequential force shaping the universe, so I decided to take that concept a step further. What if the creation of superpowers ebbed and flowed? What if, as the universe ticked and the stars aligned, great power occasionally flooded the galaxy, weaving its way into the hands of an incalculably large number of people? The Great Awakening was my first attempt to shake up the world through methods other than my fists and a villain’s face. Something which was once exceedingly rare suddenly became incredibly widespread, and everything shifted as a result.
Pre-existing super-powered organizations splintered apart in the resulting power grab. Upstart revolutionaries had to be put down. I started experimenting with the idea of superpowered aliens, which hadn’t really been a thing up until that point. I mixed things up narratively as well, occasionally switching to alternate perspectives in order to introduce a new angle to the story, or explore something thematically distinct. Vine’s planet was cracked open by a planet eater right in the middle of the Awakening, and as every other member of his species drifted off dead into the depths of space, Vine found himself imbued with the collective power they would have received. The planet eater now drifts dead through the universe, an unfathomably large corpse, cut through and consumed by swarms of vegetation. Vine drifts about as a bit of a corpse as well, mourning his newfound power.
In a dark corner of the universe, one man breathes a sigh of relief. Fate had chosen well. He has been granted great power, for a second time.
The gems of power were an off the cuff invention, but one which served their purpose well. I had been playing around with the idea that bursts of mystical power could be found in bright colored gems for a while. Occasionally super-me would find yellow jewels on the ground which, when broken, teleported the nearest person to a place of their choosing. Or green ones, which transported the individual through time, albeit in a more chaotic manner. For the Great Awakening, I decided to introduce a new color to the mix.
Hidden away on every planet, there is a purple jewel, diamond in shape, shot through with stardust, and glimmering with strength. The ways which you can find it are myriad, but they always require you to be exceptional in some way. A great explorer who plumbs depths that no one else dares. A skilled puzzle solver, that solves the riddles and myth surrounding its location. Someone of great strength, to take the power they are owed, or someone of great cunning, to steal the things others wish to have, or someone of great leadership, to be given what they will use justly. This jewel is crystallized power. It contains all the strength needed to raze a continent within the span of a day. Permanent power. Once it is earned, it cannot be taken away. Once its energy is used, it will return with food and rest. Once Dark Scott obtains Earth’s jewel, he shatters it.
It turns out these gems aren’t confined in scale to planets. There are similar, greater gems which exist on the scale of the stars, the galaxy, and the universe. Each guarded by more impossible trials and hidden away by more faded and obtuse myth. In order to obtain a world-gem, you must be exceptional within the context of a single world. In order to obtain a universe-gem, you must be exceptional within the universe. Twice blessed with superhuman strength, wielder of Death’s blade, maker of golems, mover of armies and subcontinents, knower of great secrets, Dark Scott fits the bill. Breaking the world-gem is a gambit. It gives you a burst of strength, and sends you directly to its greater counterpart. You risk losing everything, and strive to gain so much more. His gambit pays off, once, then twice, then three times, and within the span of a short story arc, Dark Scott Nil has earned the irrevocable power to shatter a galaxy within the span of a single day.
By this point, DS0 has become characterized as a tad obsessed. He was borderline suicidal prior to gaining his powers, wrapped up in a meaningless existence. Once a rival enters the picture, he has something to strive towards. Someone to test his mettle against. Hope for the future, I suppose. As long as I keep increasing in power, he has to do the same, giving his life direction and counter-intuitively encouraging him to aid my quest upwards. But his recent jump in strength is too great. With power unimaginable to mortal man, incontestable by the stoutest superhuman, he returns to Earth to sever his rivalry. The Moon is gouged, a poetic speech is given, and super-me is found to be lacking in every conceivable way. Too weak. Too small. Never acting, only reacting. His rivalry has died, and with it, every glimmer of joy in this universe. He has succeeded too handily. Penned his own eulogy, so to speak. Before annihilation comes, Dark Scott hears a story. He hears of a far-away place, unreachable by even the gods. A place of sorrow and loneliness, a flat plane of nothingness, disconnected from all reality. Where the most powerful beings are rendered helpless and afraid. Within the debris of the Moon, a small yellow gem floats closer and closer to the arch-villain. It shatters, and he is gone.
I hope I haven’t belabored you overmuch with the tale of Dark Scott the 0th. He had a habit of worming his way into every major event back in the day, and was by far my favorite character to fight. I’m a sucker for a good exponential power curve, and no character has quite managed to break the charts as quickly and memorably as my good old arch-rival. He also serves an emblematic role in the progression of my storytelling style over the years. What started out as a cool dragon developed into a great manipulator and manic obsessive, bent on creating meaning in a dull world through his passing bond with a child. Even silly, childish things can develop into something compelling and interesting, if given time to grow. When Dark Scott was around, occult beings were brought to life, and hidden knowledge came to light. But he certainly hogged the spotlight. With his banishment to the hidden plane, I was free to focus on the rest of the world I had spent time creating. A new world, now overflowing with superpowered shenanigans to get into.
The Empire
I believe it was 2012 when Goliath landed his spaceship on Earth’s surface, stepped onto solid ground, and then challenged every single superhuman on the planet Earth to a fist fight. First one knocked out of the ring, or knocked out, loses. Goliath was strange by alien standards, which is to say he wasn’t strange at all. Looked just like a human, but ten feet tall. Thick beard, booming laugh. Goliath isn’t even his actual name, he picked it up from the press and it just seemed to stick.
Goliath is a shapeshifter, but he doesn’t ever shapeshift. He has a soft spot for humans, “loves the simplicity” of how they look. He’s a fighter, a brawler, with a keen sense of insight that only reveals itself during a slugout. A few minutes trading punches with Goliath, and he’ll be able to tell you your deepest goals in life, how those directly influence your fighting style, and then go on to beat the living daylights out of you. He came to Earth on a bet. You see, recently, Goliath found something of great value. A shattered indigo galaxy-gem, still pulsing with fragments of power. Shattered gems behave a bit differently than whole ones, functioning a bit like rabid dogs rather than trained hounds. They provide immense power, but sporadically, and accompanied with bouts of intense pain. They can be stolen by the unworthy, and often sputter when needed most. But nonetheless, Goliath made a bet. He wagered that he could defeat every single superhuman on Earth, and here he is. Running his big yap, making fun of the entire human species day in and day out until the supers start lining up. Eventually, with the offer of a big enough prize, enough news coverage, and plenty of bored heroes itching for a challenge, Goliath manages to win his bet. There are a few supers that opt to stay home, and several that are off-world at the time, Super-Scott included. But by and large, with strategic usage of the shattered galaxy-gem and his own wealth of knowledge on beating the stuffing out of people, Goliath manages to knock a solid majority of Earth’s super-powered combatants clean unconscious.
Earth is conquered and subjugated to the Atryan Empire in under twenty-four hours.
Turns out Goliath is the acting commander of the Atryan military, and his bet was really a calculated gambit. He rightly recognized that the bulk of Earth’s defenses were a direct result of its massive superhuman population, and believed that the discovery of the galaxy-gem allowed the Atryan Empire an opportunity to test whether Earth was conquerable with relatively little risk. If Goliath is defeated, then the conquest of Earth would be too resource intensive to justify an attempt at war. He gives up a small amount of riches by galactic empire standards, and returns home to pursue other goals. But if successful, then Earth would have its entire defensive network crippled for several days, allowing Atrya to swoop in and set up the political and physical infrastructure needed to control Earth in the long run with relative ease.
This is where the modern era begins. Earth’s conquest by Atrya set the new norm for everything to come. Humanity was now a small part of a bigger story. Several attempts would be made at reclaiming humanity’s independence, with varying success. The Cerulean Rebellion in 2015 saw the overnight creation of seven towering labyrinthine cities strewn throughout the Americas, each declaring independence from the Atryan Empire and offering safe haven to any humans who were of similar mind. Unfortunately, the sudden death of the Architect led to infighting and a change of purpose for the rebellion, one which both lost them public support and brought about crippling military losses, soon followed by their crushing defeat at the hands of former allies. By 2019 or so there was a thriving underground network of supervillains aiming to undermine the power of the Atryan Empire and claim power for themselves, but that too fell to pieces when the Dread Pirate turned coat in exchange for the Emperor’s Dictat, personally killing or jailing every contact in his books.
If humankind ever truly regained its independence, it was through an unexpected avenue. During the Great Awakening, humanity was blessed with a genius of a very particular variety. Someone who discovered how to artificially recreate the Awakening, and grant superpowers to anyone he pleased. He was soon killed, but not before giving superpowers to a huge number of people in the southeastern US, on the order of hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Through a convoluted series of events, these people would soon be faced with a choice: lose your powers, or lose your home. Those that chose banishment would leave Earth for the stars, going on to form the New Human Empire. The only empire in the galaxy which was exclusively composed of superpowered individuals, and soon to be a huge player in galaxy-wide politics.
But back to Earth. The Atryan Empire is popularly regarded as the old man of the galaxy. Long lasting, once respected, but past its prime and growing more sickly and irrelevant by the day. Over the past few centuries it has managed to persist through the steady exhaustion of a long line of political favors, owed from generations past. But those favors have dried up, and with them, any goodwill which Atrya used to enjoy.
The Atryan Empire is a dictatorship of unusual variety, led by the Emperor with a Thousand Faces. In all appearances, at all times, the emperor wears a specially crafted suit of armor. It is specifically modified to conceal every identifying aspect of the emperor, even something as obvious as species, and is adorned with artistic representations of the unique, overlapping anatomies of each of the empire’s alien denizens. Atrya is a collective, going out of its way to welcome new species to its growing roster of diverse life, taking the best they have to offer and making it into the strength of the empire. It has an extremely unique political structure, based entirely around what is essentially an anonymous leader. Transfers of power are often completely hidden from view, orchestrated by a small group of insiders, most commonly including the emperor and their closest surrounding advisors. This is a big reason why the empire has managed to last so long. Even when they are essentially leaderless, Atrya is always able to wear the mask, and present a facade of stability until things settle. Civil war cannot come, if no one knows the king is dead.
The most recent heir apparent was chosen by the leading military commanders in Atrya: Goliath and Chameleon. Chameleon is the strategic commander of forces, focusing more on overarching troop deployment, goal setting and tactics, rather than on the ground fighting. He earned the nickname Chameleon among fresh human recruits when they noticed his eyes moving to look at different things simultaneously. This is actually representative of Chameleon’s skill more generally, his species is excellent at following two simultaneous, independent lines of thought; very advantageous for crafting military strategies which your opponent is unprepared for.
Goliath and Chameleon are a one in a million pairing. Their strengths and weaknesses play off each other perfectly. The ideal combination of gut instinct and layered, detailed thought, which combine for extreme efficacy on the battlefield. Fortunately for Atrya, their complementary skill sets also made them excellent judges of both underlying skill and character. They were perfectly poised to choose the next great emperor. And they succeeded. The present day Emperor with a Thousand Faces was picked up from a slum world at the edge of the empire; a kid with enough guts, intelligence and passion to find Atrya’s fountain of youth.
It began with Earth. The unconquerable planet, broken within a day. Strategically located along major trade routes, within striking distance of several competing, weaker empires. Earth was to become the new capital of the Atryan Empire, and humanity was raised toward the heavens, representing the dawn of a new age. A proudly beating human heart was inscribed onto the emperor’s breastplate. The best that humankind could offer.
The Light
If the above all seems like a bit much, then I have very bad news for you. This sort of world building is the peanut butter and jelly of the modern era, and I stinkin’ love it. We are getting to the point where there is more story than I can reasonably describe without going off on a dozen tangents. For instance, I could elaborate on the five generals of the New Human Empire, go into detail about their election process and the individual traits and personalities of each, as well as their successors. Or I could explain the structure of the galactic council, the major coalitions and how they maintain a balance of power. I could talk about Super-Scott’s mentor, how he developed from a speedster into a highly skilled teleportation savant, a peacekeeper dwelling among the constant political tumult of the galactic council. I could describe a dozen unique alien species, or a dozen fellow superheroes, talk about their cultures, personalities, powers, alliances, betrayals. I could trace character arcs, follow a supervillain turned hero, turned information courier, turned cloaked guardian-over-the-stability-of-the-universe. There are eldritch horrors that worship you-know-who, and world breakers kept under perpetual anesthesia, and divine beasts of weakness, all twirling around like ballet dancers in my head, until they inevitably collide in spectacular fashion.
Tell you what. Just, just indulge me a little longer. Another story arc, then we’ll wrap this thing up. Don’t worry, I won’t go into too much detail. Just the basics.
The lightborn are a hybrid-type of hivemind, driven less by the specific thoughts of their central leader, and more by the general ethos which they put forward. Each lightborn has their own thoughts and personality, but when their leader’s core ethos is to hug trees, that personality is sort of geared towards hugging trees. Some lightborn do it aggressively, some are kind of shy about it, others don’t hug trees at all, but provide food and shelter to the folks that are really good at tree hugging. That sort of thing. Over the past two hundred years or so, the lightborn have enjoyed a period of significant growth and stability in the universe, heralded by leaders of Growth, Wealth and Peace. Peace in particular has enjoyed a lengthy reign, somehow managing to live twice as long as the average lightborn. But, circa 2017, the herald’s light has finally flickered. The new ruler is forged over the span of the next week. The lightborn shift their light green hue towards a burnt orange as the next herald is named. It is a time of Conquest.
The Atryan Empire is the closest neighbor to the lightborn, and is currently starved of allies. A series of huge battles take place over the coming weeks, with each miraculous victory on the part of Atrya quickly overturned by overwhelming numbers of lightborn invading on every front. Given their unique light driven anatomy and similar brain structures, lightborn are capable of merging into more powerful, combat oriented forms which mix up battles quite nicely. Hulking great light golems intermingle with smaller, more nimble troops. The sixteen-light merge is a bit unstable, only possible to maintain for a second or two before splitting back apart. Usually lightborn just merge into the stable thirty-two light form before collapse occurs, but wartime technological advancements reveal that the sixteen form can actually be maintained for longer, using a merging method which is quite easy to learn. This isn’t necessarily desirable though. After about ten seconds, the sixteen catastrophically destabilize in a manner quite similar to a nuke going off, obliterating everything within a several mile radius, including themselves. The herald of conquest isn’t exactly high on moral scruples, so this catastrophic destabilization is briefly experimented with as a supplemental invasion tactic, but soon abandoned. The resulting environment is inhospitable even by lightborn standards, and the herald is not interested in conquering worthless territory.
One of the characters I haven’t had the opportunity to mention is a young army brat which came down with a case of the superpowers a year or two before the Great Awakening. He’s a troubled guy, clearly on the edge of good and evil, and Super-Scott is introduced to him in hopes of mentoring the guy towards the better path. He’s one of those characters I never bothered to give a name to, because it was easier to remember him by superpower/general aesthetic. Let’s call him Alexander, that should work. Alex has an incredibly simple superpower, but it still makes him one of the most potent threats in the universe: instantaneous teleportation to anywhere. No limits.
Super-Scott is many things, but he is not a skilled mentor. Always the type to lead through example, not through actual leadership. Alexander is arguably his biggest failure from the high school era. Through Scott, Alex is introduced to Dark Scott, who proves to be a much more skilled mentor. Skip a few years down the line, and Alexander has become a virtually untraceable assassin, one who casually steps into stories, drastically changes everything, and then disappears forever.
The herald of Conquest is dead. No one is quite sure who ordered the hit—pretty much everyone on the galactic council was antsy at the overwhelming military pressure of the lightborn—but it’s implied that the emperor himself paid for it in an act of desperation. A ceasefire is called in the war, and the new herald is forged over the course of a week, as the conquered sit in pained silence. Around half of the Atryan Empire has been occupied at this point, with entire worlds of civilians held hostage by the lightborn. Earth has managed to avoid conquest thanks to some brilliant maneuvering by the Chameleon, but only barely. The army is in shambles. The assassin has gone dark. Everything rests on the nature of the new herald.
The herald is born, and it is named Annihilation.
Within the history of the lightborn, the herald of annihilation has been birthed three times. In all previous instances, it was a quick affair. The herald quickly obeyed its own wishes, removed itself from this world, and that was that. The broader lightborn population might get a brief feeling of loathsome emotion, but it soon passed, and a new herald was forged. This time is different. The herald understands what it must do to fulfill its purpose most fully. The being persists for thirty three seconds before flickering out of existence. During this time, the sixteen shatters everything. Planets are made into ruin, innocents are made into dust, and aside from a pathetic few, the race called lightborn flickers away into nothing.
Somehow, amidst the catastrophic loss of life and territory, this is exactly the lucky break which the Emperor with a Thousand Faces was looking for. There is an old law written up during the third or fourth amendment to the galactic council’s founding documents which no one has quite mustered up the courage to remove. In any circumstance where a member of the galactic council loses a third or more of its arable land, declaration of war on the grounds of territorial expansion is allowable. This was intended as a concession to necessity back in the day, since any empire losing such a substantial portion of its food production would be forced to either starve to death, or expend its troops in a suicidal attempt to gain farmable land, and it was viewed as unconscionable to force a nation in such dire straits to starve.
War is mostly intolerable to the galactic council, which is a major reason why the Atryan Empire was floundering despite having an excellent military. Any unsanctioned invasion threatens retaliation by a full coalition of council members. Nations which are viewed as supremely powerful, or those with numerous well established alliances can sometimes manage to buck the common law, but the Atryan Empire is neither of those things. Through inconceivable loss, opportunity rears its head.
Of course, Atrya still needs the military strength to decisively win such a war, but once again chance decides to flirt with triumph in sorrow. On several shattered worlds, a previously theoretical substance is found. Grainy white crystal. Extraordinarily energy dense. To give an analogy, the world has just discovered fission, and Atrya owns the only uranium mines. The dawn of the Empire of Light is upon us.
The Wrap-Up
Alright I’m done. I mean, I could keep going, obviously. I could go into detail about the War of the Third Dragon King, or tie together all of the interconnected threads that brought about the Battle of the Living, or tell you the isolated Tale of the Frozen Circle, or explain the Freedom Crusade, or talk about the plans I’m spinning up for the next major story arc, but I think you’ve been patient enough with me. That was fun! Sorry for talking your ear off, I’ve never really shared this stuff before.
I suppose I should take a moment to address the elephant in the room, since we’re in the final stretch of things. This was pretty light on ‘review’, wasn’t it? My main purpose here was never to seriously criticize the inane ramblings of my imagination, I think that much is obvious. Doing that is kind of like criticizing a kid’s doodles. Some drawings are made exclusively for the person drawing them, and therefore the ultimate measure of their value is singular. Do I like my imagination? Yes I do. Then it’s settled, there is value here. I never told these stories to other people, because that isn’t who they were intended for. But now I have. Why?
If you enjoyed this little read, that’s great. If it was cringe inducing and dull, then yeah, I can’t really hold that against you. But judgment is a side-act. Some things are worth reviewing, not as an assessment of value, but as a means of showing people what can exist in the world, and in their own life. More than anything, I wanted to reveal something weird and unknown to you. The internal world of an awkward nerd. I want to make you consider something you’ve likely never considered before. You can make stories. Without pen and paper, without a camera or interpretive dance. Without any need to share or expose them to anyone. You can tell stories to yourself. And with practice, they will steadily morph into the types of stories you most enjoy hearing.
As I changed as a person, so did my stories. Throughout my life, they have bent towards my tastes, grown alongside my mind, and I will always treasure the product of my imagination just a little bit more than everyone else because of that. This is the strongest argument I can think of for urging people to create things in their life. You will always love your creation a little bit more than everyone else. When you make things, you shift the world just a bit closer towards a place that you genuinely enjoy. Maybe that means superheroics. Maybe that means multi-layered romance and intrigue in high society London, or time spent in the wilds of a foreign planet, or three donkeys telling each other knock knock jokes. You are the person most capable of creating weird things you enjoy. And I hope my story makes it clear, the more often you decide to indulge your creative impulse, the easier it becomes to grow the thing. Creativity makes creativity easier. If I want to start up a story arc nowadays, I have dozens of characters to pull from, all with well established personalities and motives. Once they enter a situation, the story often writes itself. Dramatic assassinations are much easier to stumble across when you have a trained assassin chilling on the sofa. Massive galaxy-spanning events are easier to create when you have a galaxy filled to bursting with competing factions. If you dare to create, soon your creations will do the job for you. And the world will become a slightly better place.
Half of me hopes that my little announcement isn’t even needed. Maybe I’m not as unique as I think. Maybe I’m surrounded by stories and worlds, spinning around inside everyone’s minds while they quietly chuckle in the shadows. If you are a fellow daydreamer, keep up the good work. Maybe consider sharing sometime, if it feels right. Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves are genuinely worth spreading, able to brighten the lives of people they never planned to touch. But every good story starts out with an audience of one. Start with making that person happy, and you can’t very well go wrong.