Five Horizons is an illustrated novel with dark themes of heroes, governments, tragedy and survival.
Basic Overview:
On the world of Shell, a colony was founded to give humanity a new home. With the help of the Ibix, an alien race that had saved humanity from extinction of the dying planet Earth, technology was developed to terraform the new homeplanet so that they could start again. Five Horizons follows five different heroes through the five different Catastrophic Ages of Shell. Each time period saw a new tragedy befall the colony, and despite the hardships, in each age a hero rose up to defend the people. This is the tale of those five heroes, with illustrations by yours truly.
This is a tale I am working on collaboratively with SkieBorne, one of the co-authors of Storytime with SAS.
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The Age of Plague
Part One of Five Horizons
The first Age to befall Shell was the Age of Plague, when an unknown sickness swept through the human inhabitants of Shell, a seemingly unstoppable sickness that caused the body to decay and crumble while the host was kept alive untilt he bitter end. Unable to find a pattern in how the disease was spread, and with it decimating the colonists before any sign of a cure or treatment program could be found, it was decided to quarentine any infected Shellian.
Entire villages were sealed off as the inhabitants - whether infected or not - were forced to starve and die alone. One such infected Shellian sat with her family as each of them began to die in various gruesome ways, hopeless and hungry. However, she did not die. Somehow, for some reason, her body adapted, changed, became something new. As her skin sloughed off, and she emerged silver and blind, but with a perception within her mind of the events of time past, present and to come, an Enigma she became.
When a cure was finally discovered, in haste and without proper testing of the repercussions, the chemical was released into the atmosphere and washed down on all of the colonies of Shell. In the aftermath when the old quarantined quarters were again approached for clean-up, Enigma was found in the slums, somehow surviving and awaiting them.
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| Axiom |
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| The Age of Flood
Part Two of Five Horizons
The aftermath of the chemical used to end the Age of Plague caused serious harm to the terraforming and the natural ecosystem of Shell. Soon after it's implimentation, the acid rain began.
At first unprepared, many died of exposure, poisoning, or were horribly scarred by contact with the elements. The government implimented a warning system, called the Red Lights, which were mounted along with sirens on the corner of every street. The Red Lights were connected to barometric sensors high up in the atmosphere that were programmed to detect the presence of the chemicals and relay that information down to give ten minutes' warning of the approach of rainfall. Shelters were built, more where the affluent were located, fewer ghetto shelters in the poorer quarters, and it was to these locations people would flee when the Red Lights began blaring their warning.
Of course, these shelters became the centres of work and living for those who could afford it, so that when the warnings were sounded they could easily and effortlessly protect themselves. The poor and the unfortunate were not so lucky, and so many who could not get to the shelters in time still perished out in the streets when the rains came.
A street-worker, registered name Axiom, had been out turning tricks when the warnings went, and knocked out by the client he had been pleasuring, was left for dead as the client ran for shelter. Waking up as the rains began, Axiom waited for his death. But rather than burning beneath the acid's touch, he found it evaporating in the air around him, absorbed, nutrilized, and clean, safe water ran from his clothes and skin.
Every time the Red Lights blared after that, he walked the streets, looking for those who could not obtain shelter, and using nothing but his own body, wrapped them up in his arms until the rain abated. His name became known among the urchins of the streets as a protector, a ghost untouched by poison, a hero of the poor. Soon the powerful began to hear tell of this man who was immune to the toxins, and they began searching for him, and for answers. After all, there might be some connection between those few who lived through the plague, between the prophesies of Enigma, between the chemicals int he sky, and a possible solution...
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The Age of Drought
Part Three of Five Horizons
The length of time that acid was falling to ground, a great majority of the vegetation of Shell was killed off. The natural root structures of trees and plants was decimated, and land began to slide. Mudbanks turned to dustbowls as the absorptions and evaporation of the forest canopies fell. Drought began to take hold. Crops died off, deserts spread, and the colony fell into a period of sun-baked decay.
As always the weathly managed to ammass their resources, protecting and safeguarding their centres of operations, but for many of the working and unemployed poor, there was no option but to give up their homes and return to a nomadic way of life in search of food, water and safety. The networks and organizations of the Wastes formed in order to protect the caravans of Shellians leaving the colonies. There were dangers in the wilds of Shell beyond just the harsh climate, and despite the dangers the wild beasts and untamed lands were the only hope for resources the people had. Barter and creativity became their only way of survival, and the remaining organizations of the city had to adapt to prevent losing all control over the unorganized populous.
It was then the Wastes Patrol was created. WaPo was an organization of people who had been reclaimed from fatal diseases by replacing and augmenting a great deal of the natural flesh with robotics. These cybernetic hybrids had all of the cognative thinking and learning processes of a human being, but had increased strength, dexterity and speed, and had been enhanced to require very little water or food. Instead, they were fuelled, a resource that Shell was rich in. They became an essential tool of policing and organizing the wastes. Preventing the outlaws and vagabonds of the wild lands from terrorizing the nomadic caravans, and ensuring that an unhampered train of supplies was still brought into the last few remainging city bastions.
Helix was the start operative of WaPo, for she possessed not only the skills of her order, but also conviction. She was grateful for her new lease of live, and she believed in what she was doing. She lived to help people, to protect them, to do her duty. But duty is never far from politics, and the reasoning of one's commander is often only what his soldiers need to hear to operate to their fullest. If they cities wanted only a force to carry out their wishes, they should have stuck with machines. Helix could learn, and reason, and understand, and to such a being, manufactured as she may have been, the truth was a powerful thing.
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| Nimbus |
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| The Age of Famine
Part Four of Five Horizons
With the planet heating up, any vestige of its natural climate was finally swung off the balance. With a greater amount of reflection from the vast deserts, and with a lack of foliage to absorb and retain water in the atmosphere, the planet spiked into an ice age. In a short time, the colonies found themselves the victim of freezing temperatures, blizzards and ice storms. Their technologies which had relied on solar energy and dry environments were rendered useless and the development of the colony was set back to nearly neolithic standards.
Forced to hunt and scavenge for food, tribes began to cling to the most efficient hunters, those who could best provide for their people. Now the empires the wealthy had built meant nothing. Skill was all that mattered. And with skill came power. In this world, those with skill, with experience, with knowledge, these were the heralded leaders. These were the few that the increasingly savage people would listen to - for they meant the difference between survival and death.
The most successful of these tribeleaders was a woman named Nimbus. She was one of the fabeled decendents of the Plague Survivors, those who had mutated to adapt to their environment. In a world of ice, Nimbus has adapted an immunity tot he cold. She could keep her body's temperature stable at will, could even allow the ice crystals to adhere to her skin which she could use as armour or weaponry. He ability to survive out in the storms and blizzards meant that she could not only track the hardest game, lying in wait for hours on end, it also meant she could find those who had been lost in the drifts.
In a blinding, cold era, she was a beacon of warmth and protection, a mother to a bereft people. If there was a future for the people of Shell, it was in her arms...
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The Age of Eclipse
Part Five of Five Horizons
The Ibix who had created the programs that enabled the terraforming had never trusted mankind. They had been wary of entrusting a new planet to a race that had so blindly destroyed their homeworld. To the Ibix, a world lost was a precious heart forever broken. To destroy such a thing was unforgivable. Yet, they also would not condemn an entire race to die, so they had agreed to house the surviving humans on their colonies, places where many races and people could co-exist. Yet the humans were tenacious in their desire for a world to call their own.
So it was that the Ibix agreed to bestow upon them Shell, a new planet, a wild one of no sentient race to war with, a place similar in chemical composition to their original homeworld. They organized the terraforming, even sent some of their own to oversee the operation, to help.
The the ages of catastophe, the Ibix colonists too were decimated alongside their human compatriots. Although they were sensitive to different climate concerns than their human counterparts, through the varied dangers the ages offered, in the end, their numbers had been brought down just the same. It had been determined that if the colony was considered a failure - that was to say, if the patterns fell in line with the behaviours that had allowed the Earth to perish - it would be prudent to have a failsafe in the terraforming program.
The program would monitor the progress of the effort, and if a certain number of markers was passed, the program would enable the failsafe to terminate the colonization and so spare another planet from a terrible fate at the hands of man.
The markers had been passed, one by one through the ages. The failsafe was activated. Darkness fell over Shell. And from within it a mysterious force was created. Faceless, formless, known only as Zenith, a hero rose up to try one last time to set things right. Full of hope, of determination, of fierce belief in the potential of humanity, Zenith strove to show the Ibis what could be done. He strove to prove that wrongs could be righted, that humans could learn, could improve. Time to turn off the failsafe was running out, and he knew that alone he was not enough to sway their decision.
He needed more than just himself. He needed heroes... The heroes of the Ages of Catastophe: Nimbus, Helix, Axiom, Enigma... With them he could prove what all humans were capable if given the chance. With their experience and skills, perhaps together they could turn the tide.
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