Ok. This is my first post on this site and I'm very reluctant about releasing this game story lol. I really just want to display my ideas for a game I will be creating. Then if they work well, I'll post the storyline that goes along with it. Dormant Soul is really about the Earth and its people. The Earth is made up of 3 souls which make up its being: Light, Darkness, and Spirit Out of either of these, humans are born. Since they are born this way, they have a spiritual connection to the Earth, which means that the true heart of a human affects the core of the planet. Therefore, if everyone on the planet is evil, then the planet will die. If the people are all good, the planet will over-produce (I.E water overflows, volcanoes erupting much more, natural occurances that shape the planet) So, the Scales were created to monitor the hearts of the people in order to make sure that the balance between good(Light) and evil(Darkness) stays in order. Now I've talked about Light and Dark but what about Spirit? Spirit is the bridge inbetween these 2 souls. Example : There is the murderer (Darkness), The innocent killed (Light), and the avenger of the innocent's death (Spirit) The people of the world can stand on this bridge and freely move across it. Good people can become bad. Evil can become good but the balance between the 2 must be kept. NOW! How does all this play into a game? 5 bucks says you won't guess what I'm about to say next. At some point in time, people just go over the edge with evil. The Scales are tipped all the way towards darkness, but Earth has a backup plan. Born are 5 individuals directly connected to the core of the planet, who control the life assets of the planet. The "Elements" if you will. (Aha I got you there huh?) Each person, or Child of Life I plan to call them, controls a certain element to help tend to the planet and balance out the Scales once again: Air, Water, Fire, Earth, Shadow They MUST stay on the Light side of the bridge because if even one of them crosses over, the Scales will be tipped back into Darkness' favor. But, they are human and sometimes 1 or 2 may cross. So the Earth has to deal with it or they must be eliminated by the other Children of Life. They are born every 100 years by the way. Now of course..history has been thrown around by these people. Sometimes the Earth was in danger and sometimes it was good but my story is of the time when the world was really thrown into chaos. Utter chaos. There was a boy born one day, his name Gonith. He was a Child of Shadows. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way he got mad at the world. He kills off his fellow elementalists, finds the Scales and uses them to cross the real Spirit bridge, destroy it and become Darkness itself. Now..the world is in deep shiz. SO! I guess we have to kill Gonith now huh? Nope..try again. You're goal is to find the new elementalists after 100 years of Gonith's reign (he doesnt age) After that, you must grow your powers strong enough to fight off Gonith. He isn't a really hard boss. He's just unbeatable and you'll find out why in a minute. First off, normal elements won't work on him because Gonith is now what was a part of the *creator* of the elements. So guess what, you have to do the same. You must find the Light and become it. After that..you can try to kill him again I guess but that won't do you any good. Why? Because the last factor in this equation is still missing. The "Dormant Soul" if you will. The Spirit. Gonith destoryed the bridge, pretty much keeping light from invading his world. As the light, you must find the bridge hidden in a child anywhere in the world, and set it straight. Then you can kill Gonith. And the scales woul dbe tipped...but wait..wouldn't they be tipped into the Light side a little far maybe? Who knows, you'll have to check the Scales every so often and see. That's the basis of my storyline. In short, this will be a 6 game title. One game for each element. Trust me, it is that detailed for each character in my game. I'm hoping for one for darkness as well but I really need help with that. If any of you want to add in your crits, how I would make a man like Gonith, get that mad at the world to go off and destroy it. And I really mean tear it apart. He'll kill children, millions and I want the player playing Dormant Soul - Dark* to believe that what he is doing is right. This game will be gruesome. Now on to the personal stuff. I've been working on this since I was 12 (I'm now almost 16) I've revamped it 3-4 times including just last week when I made a real major improvement on the storyline (Scales, Child of Life name, etc.) I've been inspired by a number of TV shows and movies/games. The biggest one lately being AVATAR:The last airbender, because it gave me insight on how to control elements. I think this is a real improvement on the trend games have been taking. Most are good but not as intricate. Not detailed enough for me. Not enough twists in the storyline. What's even better about my idea is that, the other elemental game(i.e. Dormant Soul - Earth) are the characters aiding the main character on his quest while having quests of their own. But throughout all the games, you have choices. You don't have to follow the main chara. You don't even have to be a good guy. You can go off and kill people and tip the scales further into darkness. You can just decide not to help the main chara and go on with your own life/quests. But in one of the games, let's say Fire, you would HAVE to at least do 1 thing to set in motion a chain of events. Let's say, set Gonith's castle on fire. Then he would be pissed, go after the main chara and be killed. Not what happens but you get the idea. Also, I'm going to make a side game to this just to show what might happen if the Scales were too far into the Light side. I think it'll open some minds to a couple of possibilites of a *Perfect Ruler* lol. But I've rambled on long enough for 12:30PM with school tomorrow. Add input please. Thanks ~Aero

It sounds a tad cliched(sp?). I'm sure you've got it all sorted out in your head and it's bloody hard to express your idea properly (That's what happens with me, at least), so forgive me if I seem ignorant.

Rather than have people as only one of the three, make it so their souls are a composition of all three. And make Light law, Darkness chaos and Spirit neutrality.

A healthy person is someone with a balance of all three. If this balance is upset slightly to moderately, then the person may develop some personality quirks or have different ideals. But if their soul becomes wildly unbalanced, things start to go majorly wrong. They may develop mental illnesses, become physically sick or, rarely, become an embodiment of that alignment. And rather than have the main bad guy as a dark-dominant only, make it so that there are two baddies: a Light-avatar (someone who's the embodiment of Light) and a Dark-avatar (the baddie you mentioned before).

There are good and bad sides to Dark and Light. Dark people are more likely to listen to emotion and be compassionate, but they tend to be violent and irrational, bound by no law but their own. Light are the opposite, ruled by reason and logic, thinking things through and abiding the law. Spirit people are apathetic and detatched, deveoting themselves entirely to their duty. The earth likes Spirit elementalists.

The elementalists, the planet's guardians of balance created by the planet in times of need. They are faster, smarter, and stronger than the average human. Guided by the spirit of the planet, Gaia, their mission is to keep the Scales of Life balanced at all times. Elementalists need to be either all three or spirit, or else they become dangerous to the cause and are hunted down by the other elementalists.

And make it so Gonith didn't kill his bretheren because he WANTED to, but rather because they hunted him for turning Dark. He was, by far, the most powerful member of the group. He's quite a likeable guy, and tends to do what his heart tells him to do, which slowly made him Dark.

He grew up without many friends, and the elementalists were his Horrified at what he had done to his friends, he goes partially insane. The only thing he desires is to be left alone to wallow in his own misery. He finds the scales and, as you said, uses them to cross the actual bridge of spirit residing in his soul, and hides within himself, in the process becoming the single greatest source of darkness on the planet, sending the scales out of whack.

One other elementalist survived, however, and he followed Gonith and watched as he dissapeared into his own soul. The elementalist (Who I shall call Nameless for the moment) knows what he must do and uses the scales to go into HIS OWN soul, but becoming Light instead of Dark, balancing out the scales once again. However, what Gonith and Nameless did made them something...inhuman, changing them utterly into the personification of the Light and Dark.

The two creatures, the two gods of ancient times sealed away by Gaia and transformed into the souls of humanity, sense the presence of each other and begin to fight, as they once did before the universe began. The struggle continues for 100 years and eventually the two gather followers to their causes. This is where the game begins. The Earth, realizing that if either one of the gods gains the upper hand it would mean the end of life as we know it, does what it has always done in times like these: create her loyal crusaders - the elementalists. The war between Light and Dark is fought in the shadows, however, and the majority of humanity knows nothing of it.

But these new elementalists have problems of their own, ranging from things as petty as love troubles, to as earth-shaking as rescuing one of the main world leaders. And their leader, the sixth elementalist with control over all five elements, starts to wonder if what he's doing is really right, and whether there is a fourth pathway through these chaotic times.

Then there's that other elementalist, the mysterious man who calls himself Odin and seems to know both Gods intimately.

Nameless and Gonith are still there, though, lost in the sea of power that is their current selves...ever watching...ever waiting...ever hoping...


For the game itself, you could make it so that every character has three (instead of merely one) levels: Dark, Light and Spirit. During the game, depending on your actions and how you fight, you can get Dark exp, Light exp or Neutral exp. Battles don't really give you much exp.

Your levels determine your characters personality, stats, abilities and alignment. You also have a moral alignment, Good, Evil or Neutral. All enemies are a combination of the Spirit alignment and Moral alignment (eg Evil Spirit, Neutral Dark etc). Certain moral and spiritual alignments are more effective against other moral/spiritual alignments, eg Good Light easily bests Evil Dark. Kinda like scissors paper rock.

As you go along, other characters (not necessaily elementalists) may team up with you and help you in battle. These allies have set alignments which cannot be changed. This adds a bit of strategy to combat.

And your choices in the game send you on different pathways through the game. There is a 'true' way through the game, and if you follow this path you get the best ending. To learn this path, you have to observe what the other elementalists do and say when you meet up with them, and mimic these when you play as that character eg Bob (fire elementalist) may notice Nikki (Water) jump out of a window and land in a dumpster.

When you play as Nikki, however, you'll get to a situation, say you're in a room surrounded by enemies, you notice a window, but you're seven stories up. It would be suicide to leap out of it...or is it? This is actually the point when you watched Nikki jump as Bob, and if you jump out the window you'll be on the 'true' pathway. However, whn you jump, you hit the pavement with a splat and die.

This is because you didn't know you had to push the dumpster into place because you hadn't seen Nikki do that while playing as Andrew (earth).

I'm finding this hard to explain, but I'm sure you get what I'm trying to say here.

[Edited by - GairenKarrandeas on August 21, 2006 8:03:56 PM]

Yeah I get it, and I thank'ee highly for it.

started off with the cliche, yeah...It's always been like that since I first started, so I try to expand on it and make it more detailed. More humane instead of block fantasy. I have about 25% of my ideas written down because there is absolutely no way I can see it without making it myself in 3d renders.

The soul thing. I had just came up with that a couple hours before posting here at my gaming clan forums. At first, my story was like...

Gonith gets mad and seeks out darkness, which is an old man sitting in the middle of a void with another old man, being light. He kills off the dark old man and absorbs his powers. Mortally wounds the light guy. That was bland to me...So in the process of writing down a character history for my boss, I figured I needed a "Temple of Time" type thing. Scales come into mind. From then on it kind of evolved.

Maybe the story of the boss will help. If you can add or edit it, I might be able to go from there.

Gonith is born to the emporer who's influenced by his Head Advisor/servant to build a wall around the Palace Grounds(couple of square miles). His mother is extremely beautiful and sweet. She sings him a lullaby of the Elements everynight. She's killed by invading Mongols who were let in through a weak spot in the wall. The Head Advisor betrayed the emeperor to show him how much the wall was needed, so through this, the Advisor coaxes the emperor into finishing the kingdom Wall. Gonith...he's pissed, but it doesn't take him over, he kills the people who killed his mother thus staying on the Bridge (The Avenger). But his father wishes to unify the country, including the mongols. Gonith doesn't like this (influenced by the Head Servant) and goes off and kills the whole Mongol village which was on the verge of becoming a staple town with help from the emperor. His father banishes him. Gonith creates a deep hatred for his father for what he did for the Mongols and what he did to him. He also takes jokes frm the other Elementalists for being a *weakling* way too hard. He uses a book found at the Mongol Village to learn the dark arts of his Element ( the book being planted by the Head Advisor a day before Gonith killed everyone)
So after 5-6(?) years, Gonith returns to the palace with a huge demonic shadow army. Kills the Elementalists because they were in his way to his true goal. Power. Enough power to rid the Earth of those who didn't belong there. To run the country the way he thinks it should be. With brute force, bringing in the states with strict laws. So...he kills his father and finds the portal leading to the actual Scales. Stands on the Darkness side and goes into the Darkness below. Comes out with a new body and mind, corrupted by the evil.

Just a short summary but maybe itll show you kidna where I'm going with this, although I'm not too sure anymore lol.

Also..I like your story idea. But it's more of a....under the covers battle you have going. My story was more like a World War against Gonith. Bioterrorism in the Ancient times and stuff lol. He'll kill children just to prevent the Elementalists from returning. He sends out a Dark Miasma to suppress their powers when he realizes that the children have been born. The Miasma has side effects and starts to poison/kill humans. When he killed the elementalists, his powers forced their powers out upon the Earth to wreck havok because they were no logner contained. Huge blazing deserts with sand dragons resulted from Fire and his own shadow spreading out across the death place of the Fire Elementalist. Same with the other elements. Haunted forests, troubled seas, etc. The Earth will truly be in deep chaos and some of the people will be just as evil or more. I wanted it to be a really, really dark depressing game.

Also, it wasn't as if each character had one level on the Scales (Light, Spirit, Darkness) but they were more inflenced by their current one. Things they would do could switch them over at any time. In any of the games (Except Wind, who will become the light) and definately in Fire, you can pledge your alliegence to Gontih at any time thus putting you on the Dark side and pluging the Earth into more chaos. Or you can just go around killing people for no reason, rendering the same result. Every once in awhile, you'll have to check on the scales to make sure the earth is in order. If not, you have to try hard to balance it out as best you can.

It's still rusted and complicated. Once I get it all out in story form and take good comparisons, it'll even out more. I've made drastic changes to this everytime I start up on it again.




Now....your idea is like...perfect for a sequel, which I am planning on doing. I planned on this to be like Final Fantasy, almost the same stuff but a diff environment, storyline, characters, world etc. But for this one, WORLD WAR WITH DEATH DESRTUCTION AND LOTS OF SEX!
I'll work on it more. Maybe post the *begginning stories* of each of my characters. Their origin and sorts, like Gonith's above so you can see how they blend together. Thanks for your help.

~Aero