Hi! First swc here and I have successfully missed both cabin wars and every single weekly and daily. I’m so sorry :.( This is Part 2. 1. Taurea seen from space. Pretty obvious. The swirly colorful material is the Mist, explained in parts 1 and 2 posted below. The city is on a mountain about the height of Mt. Everest, but the air isn’t too thin. 2. This is a drawing of how it looks in the Acadian forest from the surface, the animals are the Ridden (part 2) and the girl on the right is from the People of the Mist. The other girl is from the city but recruited into the PotM. 3. The world as the city citizens see it. Ask any questions in the comments. 4. The PotM see more of underneath the Mist, and mist biomes have actual distinctions other than “useless waste of mist” 5. Finally, as the Giants see it. (See parts 1 and 2) You can see that what they call the Sea of Neptune (which they call, directly translated the “setleft freewater” or the southern ocean) is way bigger than the humans think it is. The Deepen Mistfree is a legendary valley free of Mist that is the paradise and homeland of the giants. Many still live there. “Setleft” means the sun sets to the left of it. The rest should be pretty obvious. Part one: On the surface, this planet seems extremely similar to Earth. The people look like us, talk in Intersystem Standard, a cross between English and Chinese and the language of all the Earth colonies in the Solar System, and live their lives in surprisingly similar ways to us. This is Taurea, and the buildings are modern and sleek, poverty relatively low, and the population grown from 500 original settlers to over 10,000. Although this seems like a small population for a planet (or really a conglomerate of asteroids crumpled together over a thousand years, still peacefully circling in the now-sparse asteroid belt of our Solar system), a visit to the capital city of New Athena, named after the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, will reveal a landscape most similar to Earth in 2020. Although people crowd together without fear, and typical disease levels are low, colorful masks cover half of everyone’s faces. What could cause such a reaction without a rampant pandemic? At the beginning of the paragraph, I mentioned “on the surface”, but this is not to be confused as “from the outside”. Seen from space or low-planet orbit, the planet appears a cross between Jupiter and Europa, the icy planet of Titan. Swirls of light gray fog spiral across the surface, forming rings from the planet’s spin. At Taurea’s equator, New Athena, sitting on the tallest mountain on the planet, shows as a huge gray-and-green island sprawling as big as the Great Red Spot (proportionally, of course, to Taurea’s size). Other smaller cities have a similar look, at lesser and greater latitudes. All that so say (and just to add more words;), the swirling gray material, when caught in particular lights, transforms into iridescent colors that shift across the planetscape: soft blues, greens, pinks, and yellows. Of course, these different colors appear as large blobs only with normal vision from the surface, which is why they appear mostly gray from orbit. This is the Mist. The people and government of New Athena—and the rest of the registered population—say it is dangerous. After all: although the population has grown, it is now declining as people are mysteriously dying. This is correlated with the Mist because the deaths occur mostly in poor areas, where the small strips of Mist that encroach on the city aren’t well guarded against: buildings have no proper filtration systems and mask aren’t common. Even rich people who are particularly flippant with mask regulations, originally set in place against common illnesses to strengthen the planet, are far more likely to experience the strange symptoms. The illness carries through as follows: First, the person experiences light-headedness and a strange excess of energy. Winners of sporting events are watched with concern for several days afterward to make sure they didn’t get this energy boost. If they do die, the second place winner gets the prize immediately. In these cases, death is almost certain.
The next period of infection is exceedingly strange. The patient experiences strange abilities at first: some jump abnormally high when simply climbing stairs, some can run at Olympic speeds who have never run before in their lives, and others have a strange transparency about them. For this reason, hospital beds have colorful, contrasting patterns on the sheets for doctors to notice this symptom. These “powers” are not very strong, but at this point they disappear, and relatives receive a call that their loved one has been delivered to the hospital. That is all. The next call they receive from the hospital is a message that they are so sorry, but the person could not be cured. No evidence suggests that the illness is anything but the Mist, and all studies conclusively show it. It is clearly a result of the Mist. For the People of the Mist, it is their livelihood. What really happens in the hospitals is the people’s powers become stronger and stranger and they use them involuntarily more and more often, until they literally cannot stop doing what ever they are doing and suddenly die. The People of the Mist have learned to keep the powers from controlling them. They use them to do magic, to summon The Ridden, to fly, and to condense the Mist into beautiful gems with strange qualities. Reminder: these are completely human, they’ve just split of from the recorded population. For the Giants, it is life. They are natural to the planet, and unlike the ugly giant humans of ancient Earth lore, they look like the Ridden: strangely colored giant animals. But not really, because they are hundreds of feet tall and winged. The Ridden are… how much of the plot should I give away, actually? Interview: Q: What is the name of your world? A: Taurea. It’s a planet made from colliding asteroids in the asteroid belt of our solar system, and it’s a colony of Earth that rebelled. The year is 3012. Q: Right, right… so in (world name), are there any sports unlike those of our own? A: Some. There is a version of martial arts/wrestling in which the opponents are not allowed to touch each other but must make their opponent fall on their back. There is also a sport that involves doing a difficult but fast-paced obstacle course in thick Mist (a pretty poisonous fog when breathed, so they obviously wear masks) to reduce visibility. However, that’s only for the registered citizens of the city, or as the Giants call them, the Mistweaks. The People of the Mist, who have learned to live with this deadly mist and found that it gave them superpowers if they carefully used it. Just minor, classic superpowers like speed, invisibility, a degree of super strength. They also ride giant versions of wild animals which they call The Ridden, that are summoned to each child at age 13 or older recruit on arrival at a ceremony in which magic words known only to the High Chief condense Mist and summon this 8-foot-tall baby leopard, or wolf, or bird or something like that. With the Ridden and superpowers, they do have major sporting events in their city of Old Athena showcasing power and riding skills. The giants do not have sporting events, as they are so different from each other it would just be a genetic contest. Q: Are there famous people in your world – singers, models, world leaders, etc.? A: Yes. President Cynthia Norman has governed fairly for over 30 years now; Taurea has a system of government in which 100 electors are chosen every 5 years, then they act as congress and the court system, and America’s voters, selecting the President. It’s still technically a republic, since those officials are elected and they vote among themselves. There are superhero movies (I couldn’t stand putting my characters in a word without some form of marvel moviesXD) and spy movies and Revolution reenactments from different perspectives (the revolution from being a colony of Earth), those are some of the most popular. Yes, those actors are *very* famous and held in high esteem. There is no TV shows. But they do have music stars, who are less important unless they are also actors.
