I need advice about how best to present this story idea

[Cyanna Cyril]

Hey everyone. So, I have this dilemma where I don't know whether the following storyline draft would better be presented as a game or as a story. It's only a draft at this point, so it's not perfect in the slightest. I'm looking for any opinions and appreciate any help. Thank you everyone!

A long time ago, there was a kingdom. It sat in the center of their world, surrounded by the elements all around them. To the north lay the sea, to the east lay a forest, to the south lay fertile plains, to the west a vast mountain range. The people of the kingdom were human. They lived as well as they could, building homes to protect themselves and gathering food and other materials wherever they could. In time, though, their way of life started to become corrupt. Droughts and floods caused farmers to become greedy and hoard the little crops they had managed to gather. Nobles hired mercenaries to steal from peasants and nobles and to kill anyone who got in their way. Fear and hatred spread throughout the people, and as despair and death grasped the kingdom in its clutches, a discovery was made. A hand of the king had discovered magic.

With this magic, the humans began to turn their hardships around. They found ways to make the lands more fertile, diseases were cured, and prosperity reigned throughout the kingdom. They expanded their territory to the edges of the mountains, the ocean, the forest, the desert, and the endless fields. Doing so led them to collide with the indigenous species of each land, who were all peaceful to the humans. In the mountains lived the goatmen, a warrior tribe who worshipped the phoenix spirit, and the giants, who ranged from little over 3 feet to 100 feet at the oldest. From the desert came the rabbitmen, whose agility and quickness and hearing compared to no other. In the plains were the shape-shifters, who could change their appearance and mimic the strengths of their mirror entity to nearly identical precision. In the forest roamed the free spirits, whose existence was entirely spiritual but any mage could communicate clearly with them to learn the ageless wisdoms. Meanwhile, the ocean harbored the spirits of unlucky souls who had passed away at sea, granting them a second life in a variety of forms. Peace flourished in the kingdom, and all the races coexisted in harmony in a golden

age of progress. This lasted until the hand of the king delved further into magic.

In its pure form, magic has the power to corrupt its user if used to too high an extent. There is a strain on the soul with every spell used; through training the user can build a tolerance, and perform more difficult and powerful spells. There are different affinities of magic: elemental, light, physical, and darkness. Performing magic changes the user. They become more attuned to their magic and start to display qualities representative of their magic. The king’s hand had attuned himself to the magic of darkness and his heart and mind became evil. With his power, he poisoned the lands between the forest and the ocean, enraged ancient monsters between the ocean and the mountains, summoned an ancient giant from the depths of a volcano adjacent to the plains, and wrought plague and scorching heat upon the desert people. With the kingdom in chaos, the hand tried to assassinate the king, but one of his guards slipped him away from the capital.

In his refugee state, the king traveled to the broken villages of the different races and heard their cries of misery. In an effort to reclaim his throne and restore peace, the king searched for the strongest warriors in the land to fight for him. He found four warriors whom he believed could defeat his foe. First was a rabbitman, who carried a giant axe and had the strength to split mountain and trees with a single cleave. Second was a human archer, who could control the elements on his arrows. Third was goatman, bearer of shields and a master of light magic. Finally, there was an assassin, whose understanding of dark magic was completely polar to the king’s hand. These four warriors were sent with a forest spirit to defeat the usurper in the castle, and his spawned villains.

They began with the giant of the volcano; the goatman used his shields to push the creature back into the fiery depths of the volcano and sealed him in the lava with a giant stone seal. Next they went to pacify the rivers between the mountains and ocean, where the archer used his mastery of the elements to pluck out the individual monsters from the raging waters. Then, the heroes sought out the corruption of the forest. The land was vile and rank with a living plague, sentient of its own right and able to create vicious abominations of darkness. The assassin shrouded the land in his own darkness and took out the heart of the creature in the midst of darkness. Last lay the desert. By the time the warriors had reached the land, most of the rabbitmen had died. The rabbitman warrior, brought solemn by the devastation of his people, set out to their ancient temple. Upon the alter he paid penance of blood for his failures to protect his people. As he did, a wraith popped out of the ruins and took the sacrifice. Empowered by the magic in his blood, the wraith took form and summoned an army of undead rabbitmen. Horror struck, the rabbitman felt the irrestible urge to flee. He attempted to slay his enemy in one slash, but only landed a glancing blow. Still, the wraith lost most of its power from the draining blood and the undead army fell silent again. The rabbitman returned to the company, believing he had accomplished all that he could. They set off then to battle the final foe.

The heroes set off for the capital. A hoirribly bleak and dark storm was brewing above the castle, and shadows guarded the town from opposition to the evil king. Despite this, the heroes marched forward. The shield-bearing goatman created a barrier around them to protect them from the shadows until they reached the castle. There he departed from the group and blocked off all the entrances and exits of the building to prevent anymore evil from endangering his comrades. The archer used his abilities to remove the weaker foes from the castle and to take out any aerial enemies. The assassin took up the challenge of distracting a creeping shadow, which refused to stop growing unless it was split apart. Finally, the axe warrior reached the dark king, ready to confront the foe. The dark magician, however, had a different plan. He tried to use the warrior as a sacrifice to bring back an ancient evil from long before history began. But, the attempt was thwarted through the quick thinking of the warrior. He managed to break the ritual seal before the evil could return, making the connection to this world unstable and causing the magician to lose control of his powers. In that moment, he attacked the magician, tearing his axe across the face of the man, before he was sucked into the darkness he had attempted to release. After this, the world fell still, and only four people remained in that city.

The aftermath was chaotic. The king was reinstated to power; however, the cult of followers of the dark magician demanded amnesty for their actions and a place on the royal court. Otherwise, they would have no choice but to use their magic against the king. Backed into a corner, the king had no choice to give into the request, but managed to have the assassin become the leader of this organization. Meanwhile, the people in general began to loathe magic and saw the king as a weak leader under the spell of magician overlords. As such, they retreated back to their lands to return to their own little cultures. The goatman became a voice of his tribe and would occasionally come back to the capital to help smooth relations between them and humanity. The axe-warrior returned to the desert where he served a vow of silence and worked as a hermit in the barren lands. The archer created a group to balance the dark magicians, a group of people who focused on living with the elements and only using magic as a small supplement to life. For centuries, the kingdom continued in this fashion. The darkness was gone, but the light was also missing. Some fear the return of the shadows and others believe if the were to return, the reincarnations of the four heroes would come back to fight the darkness.

This was a myth of the world, but now, there is a new darkness of our time.

[Strider]

I could imagine this as a fable based on the way it's told, and as such it would fit in with creating a world and developing it's history.

[pbood2]

In my opinion, this could work as either a game plot or a fantasy type story. It all depends on what you want and feel like doing with it. If you want to make a game, keep in mind it's a lot of hard work but I'm sure you can do it if so many others can .

Sorry if I wasn't much help in your decision but I can't wait to see what you decide to do with this.

[jacobml]

I would love to see this as a game, maybe like a side-scroller/platformer RPG, with hand-drawn backgrounds and stuff. That would be really cool!

[Ojama Yellow]

I'd say story. Writing the story -should- be less work than a game, and you can always make a game about it after the story has been fleshed out. Story has more chance of success, I think. Looks pretty neato, btw.