Free story idea – Wild Powers

I have a lot of ideas for stories.  Like, if I wrote a novel’s worth of them every month, I’d still most likely die before getting through them all.  I will admit that some of the ideas probably suck, but I think there are some that a good writer could make something of them.  I’ll just never get a chance to.  So, I give them to the world.  If you can make something of these, go right ahead.  And if these are the ideas I’m giving away, maybe check out the ones I keep.

Wild Powers

I was watching a movie where it was a world much like ours, but there were superheroes.  They had been around for several decades, but the world was still much like ours.  The movie wasn’t that great and my mind was wondering and I started wondering how history would have changed if people with superpowers had been around.  Like, if there had been super strong people who could pick up a rock the size of a bowling ball and throw it a mile that would have changed the course of military tactics.  If the Crusaders had some of these human artillery, could they have kept Jerusalem, altering the history of the Middle East?  Or what if when some European ships arrived at some place to pillage and enslave, a native who could throw fire stepped out and burned their ships to the waterline?  People with superpowers would drastically change history.

So my idea is that around the year 1000, people around the world gained superpowers.  It wasn’t so common like one out of every hundred people, but it wasn’t so rare like one out of every million.  These powers are rather basic: super strength, throwing fire, throwing ice, indestructible skin, and flight.  There may be others, but I haven’t really thought about it.  People only get one, and it usually shows up around puberty. 

At first, people with powers were hunted down and murdered for being demons or dark spirits or whatever.  Some manage to escape and become outlaws.  If they get some followers they may become warlords.  If they are successful warlords, they may carve out their own little kingdom.  And when a powered person becomes king three kingdoms over, you might stop burning yours at the stake so you could have some to defend your kingdom.  Over the centuries, you end up with new kingdoms with powered royalty.  And in Europe – which I know the history of better than other places – Christianity is reworked so that powered people are no longer seen as demons. 

The people at the time don’t understand the genetics of everything, but they quickly find out that if a powered person has a child with an unpowered person, there’s a 50-50 chance the kid will have powers.  But if two powered people have a child, then it’s more like 95%.  And there’s no telling what powers the kid will have: two fliers could have an ice thrower.  So what develops is the powered king has a powered queen so there is a powered heir, but there are also a couple of, usually powered, concubines to give other sons.  All the powered sons get training and equipment and become special forces knights separate from the common, unpowered, foot soldiers.  Powered daughters are married off to form alliances.

So that’s the backstory.  The main story starts in the spring of about 1400 in the middle-south of what would have been France, but is now split up in various new kingdoms.  There is a young woman I’ll call A who I’d prefer to be 18, but would more likely be a historically accurate 15.  She lives on a small farm on the edge of some village.  Her mother died years ago, and her father died over the winter.  She tells the villagers that before he died her father wrote to a cousin four or five villages over to come take over the farm, but he hasn’t shown up yet.

One morning A is going to the field when she finds – what she thinks – is a young man lying in the field who has a long sword cut on his back.  She takes him back to her hut and when she takes his clothes off to clean the wound, she finds that it’s actually a young woman.  This is B, and is about the same age as A.  She wakes up long enough to command A not to tell anyone she is there. 

When B comes to later, she says that since she is powered – she’s a flier – this peasant should just do as she says.  A isn’t thrilled with this, but can’t really do anything.  So they get on each other’s nerves for a couple of days, and then there’s a big storm.  Maybe A finally has enough and goes out, and B follows her.  A tree was blown over, and B sees A just pick it up and toss it.  A is a wild power.  B asks A why she never revealed herself, and A says that her father warned her against being some lord’s broodmare. 

Realizing A isn’t just some peasant, B tells her tale.  She is the princess of some small kingdom.  She was to be married off in some grand alliance, but then her father and brother both became ill and died.  So the crown went to her half-brother from one of her father’s concubines, a guy who had always creeped her out.  We’ll call him D.  D comes to B and says that if they were married, that would secure his position on the throne.  B doesn’t care for this idea, and D flies into a rage, rapes her, and then casually states that he poisoned the king and prince.  So B flees, but D sends other fliers after her.  One attacks her and cuts her, but she managed to stab him in the heart and fly on for another twenty minutes or so.  Her plan is to eventually make it to Sicily, and says that A should come with her.

In this alternate history of Sicily, the warlord who took over the island was a woman.  She was a fire thrower and took part in many battles.  This gave her the idea that men and women – at least powered ones – were more equal than genuinely thought at the time.  Given that the other kingdoms in Italy and around the Mediterranean weren’t too keen on this uppity woman with her radical ideas, Sicily was attacked and invaded several times.  So the Sicilians fortified the island and they really worked on their human artillery to the point any strange ship that got within two miles of the shore would be pelted with fist-sized rocks. 

Over the centuries, a sort of Cold War has settled over Sicily and the nearby kingdoms.  To stay strong, the Sicilians become a big merchant power, with ships trading all sorts of goods all across the Mediterranean.  It has become widely known that any Sicilian ship is bound to take any powered person who asks to Sicily, which has been portrayed as a haven for powered people.

Once B fully heals, she should be able to fly herself and A to the coast, in short hops.  Not knowing exactly where Sicily is, B doesn’t want to fly there, so they’ll have to find a ship.  At first A isn’t all that sure, leaving her home and all that, but B asks what happens when this “cousin” never shows up.  A doesn’t know, and reluctantly agrees to go.

A day or so later, A is in the field and someone comes to the hut.  B says that she’s a cousin come to visit, but isn’t feeling well.  The man says that he’s the tax collector, and B says that she’ll let A know.  But when A comes back, she says that it’s the wrong time for the tax collector to come around, and figures they are looking for B.  They hurriedly pack some stuff, and start walking to the coast. 

But before they get too far, a couple of fliers bring in D (he has impenetrable skin).  He ignores A and starts monologuing to B.  But after he tells her all the horrific things he – and his henchmen – will do to her, A steps up and just snaps the fliers in half.  B then grabs D and flies him straight up half a mile or so, and then drops him.

The struggle of flying rips open B’s wound, so A carries her through the night to get away from the bloody scene.  Unsure if they’ll be followed, they spend the next several days running at night and hiding by day. 

There is a chance that one rainy day, while hiding in a barn maybe, they snuggle together for warmth, and one thing leads to another.  It’s possible that B – basically destined to just be a concubine – had been instructed on how best to please a man.  And probably instructed on how to please herself once the man was asleep.  Not a necessary part of the story, but you can’t go wrong with lesbians.

Anyway, after a long journey they make it to a harbor and find a Sicilian boat.  At some point on the journey, B realizes that she’s pregnant.  You can go wrong with a pregnant, incest, rape victim, but this might be a necessary part of the story.  I only have like the first half of the story, where it actually goes will depend on who finishes it.

So they get to Sicily and A is sent to train.  I have the image of an old, battered ship sitting in a field somewhere and the trainees are a mile or so from it throwing rocks.  They throw ten rocks, then a bunch of young fliers go in to pick them up and bring them back.  I see two teenage fliers with a harness flying these rocks back as practice for when they’ll fly people.  Once A can hit the ship nine times out of ten, they’ll start working on increasing her range and stuff.

The idea I had is that Sicily isn’t as great as it sounds.  There are still some unpowered people there, but they are a second class citizen and they’re being breed out of existence.  A couple of generations ago, the ruler had the idea of instead of just having powered knights and an unpowered army, what if they had a powered army?  So they bring in any powered person they can, and the idea is that in a decade or so they should have enough to storm the Italian mainland and forge a Sicilian Empire.  Maybe there’s a place in this for a bastard, incest, heir to a small French kingdom?

And that’s my idea.  I’m sure I could think of somewhere to go with this, but the point of these Free Story Ideas is to put them aside and work on things I can actually get to.  One last point I will make is on the issue of how convenient it was for B to land in the field of another powered person.  But what if it wasn’t?  What if, it was more 50-50?  What if there were a lot of powered people out in the country that just didn’t want to deal with all the powered crap, so they stay hidden.  Sometimes, powered parents would still have an unpowered child.  For some families they might still find a role for them, but others might just kick them out.  They wander around, maybe settle down, and their grandkids end up as wild powers.  Which might mean that the unpowered foot soldiers the Sicilians expect to fight, won’t be as unpowered as they thought.  Something to think about.  And if you have an answer, then congratulations, you have an idea for a novel, or series of novels.  Get writing.