WAR PLANETS

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Fanfic Seed

    A while back, I gave some thought to what would have to happen to make a successful War Planets media tie-in...movie, live action TV show, cartoon, comic, whatever. I realized that none of the existing War Planets characters (such as they are) would make for good "viewpoint" characters, especially in a live-action project. The audience needs someone relatively human to relate to, and it's especially important if you can get a decent "name" actor that the actor's face be visible. But how to do it without changing the existing characters around? I didn't want to do what so many superhero movies end up doing, which is to spend most of the time on the non-superhero part of the character, relegating the heroic identity to almost backup status...so making, say, the Rock warriors into humans who occasionally put on the bulky armor would be right out.

    What I came up with is laid out below. If I weren't already swamped with other writing projects, I'd probably develop this idea into a fanfic. A guy who goes by the handle Triceraton has already started his own War Planets fanfic, if you want to check that out. And if you're interested in developing my idea further, drop me an email.

War Planets: Hold Back The Night

Auroran Background

    The planet Aurora was in the middle of an age of relative peace and prosperity, with only the occasional minor squabbles keeping it from being a true "golden" age. Auroran society had long ago cracked the secrets of the mind, the body and of spacetime itself, resulting in such wonders as artificial intelligence, customized genetics and artificial gravity and antigravity. The one original, natural race of Aurorans now lived mainly in the role of overseer and coordinator, as the Created Races performed the tasks once the responsibility of the Born Race.

    Mighty rock-skinned humanoids exploited the mineral wealth of the planet while their basaltic brethren tapped the fiery core for power. Specialized bio-constructs husbanded the ecological resources of the surface, and spindly insectoid lifeforms bred for the cold vacuum of space mined the cometary Oort cloud and the asteroids for hydrocarbons. Meanwhile, efficient mechanical lifeforms took care of the mundane matters of coordination and communication, thinking at the speed of light and talking with multihued lasers. Conflicts sometimes arose between these Created Races, for the Born Race had given them free will and the ability to think, but the parents knew how to keep their children in line, and there was peace.

    Then the Beast Planet came, a terrible sphere of black destruction. Its first assault caught the isolated Aurorans by surprise...with a near paradise on their own world, the Born Race had never been tempted to venture beyond the bounds of their own solar system, even while possessing the science to do so. The Beast Planet cracked Aurora into fragments, and the Born Race became the Dead Race...none escaped the planet in time, and none had the hardiness of the Created Races which allowed the engineered servants to survive the shattering of a planet.

    The Created Races scrambled to build a means of survival and, perhaps more importantly for some, revenge. Massive artificial gravity wells were adapted to collect the shattered pieces of Aurora into smaller spheres of moonlike size but planetary gravity. First among these was the Rock Planet, driven to destroy their traitorous former leader who now led the forces of the Beast Planet, these industrious workers became fierce warriors and assembled a new world for themselves from the remains of the crust. Next were the Ice survivors, who had fared well being hidden out in the cometary belt. Knowing the Beast Planet wouldn't stop until it had devoured all, they transformed a gigantic comet into a mobile battle station. The Fire faction found itself inheritor of a bare nickel-iron core, which was what they were accustomed to, but now the stars could be seen overhead. Uncomfortable in open spaces, they turned their massive cooling apparatus to the task of creating a new surface crust for their world. Meanwhile, the bureaucratic robots analyzed the situation and logically determined that they would be devoured as well if they remained passive...swarming over the twin of the Remora Planet, they conquered it from within, using their cybernetic skills to subvert the controls and slay the original warriors. Those of the Remora Planet hold a special hatred for the Tek warriors because of this. Finally, the biological "Bone" race, at first seemed destroyed with the Born Race, emerged suddenly one day, surprising everyone. A minor outer planet simply erupted with growth one day and started moving under its own power, the harvest of a secret project started generations ago by a long-sighted geneticist who had dreams of interstellar travel on a ship which was its own world.

    The War Planets had been born...but with the Born Race gone, they had no one to lead them, and sank into interfaction fighting which threatened to make them an easy meal for the Beast Planet....

The Human Element

    The year was 2272 as Mankind reckoned it. It had been nearly a century since the loopholes in Einstein's theories had been fully exploited to allow faster-than-light travel via the "Skip Drive," which let a ship "skip" across space like a stone across water. Colonization of nearby systems was well underway, and Mankind had yet to encounter any technologically-advanced life in its travels...very little more advanced than plantlife was found, in fact. As a result, Terran ships were geared for exploration and transportation, with the few "military" ships being more along the lines of a Coast Guard, to keep a reign on criminal activity in the spacelanes.

    The explorer ship Deep Star Five was in the final year of a four year hitch, having spent three years meandering outwards along the spiral arm of the galaxy, surveying planets and sending recommendations for colonization back to Earth via FTL communications link. The crew was just about ready to button up in hibernation chambers for the straight-line return to Earth when sensors picked up an odd reading from a star system a few lightyears distant. It seemed to indicate that a planet had been destroyed violently. With little still known about planetary astrophysics, the crew agreed to investigate the phenomenon before returning home. They felt it should be safe enough...after all, the explosion had happened years ago, once they skipped in they could examine the debris to see why the planet exploded.

    The planet had been named Aurora. The crew of Deep Star Five barely escaped an encounter with the Remora Planet, but not before giving away the fact that Earth existed. The Remorans told their brethren onboard the Beast Planet, and a fateful decision was made. Why expend the effort to devour planets which were fighting back when a whole series of colonized worlds without defenses existed a few hundred lightyears away?

    The race is now on. The Beast Planet's scientists are adapting Auroran science to the task of fitting FTL drives into its systems. Only the need for specialized resources to build these drives is slowing the Beast Planet down, and eventually it will jump to Earth and start the slaughter. Back home, Earth is aware of the situation, and is desperately trying to build a defense fleet where none existed before. Meanwhile, the crew of the Deep Star Five is tasked with the job of uniting the fractious War Planets in an alliance to destroy the Beast Planet before it can jump away...or to follow it once it does. Many former Aurorans believe that they should do nothing, and let the Beast Planet leave, but others know it will only be back stronger once it has had its fill.

    A band of explorers must bring a world back together, or another will be lost.

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