Genre
Third person action-adventures, in a Sci Fi world-setting with science-fantasy visuals; alternative earth.
Technological level
Scavenged space-age technology in a 1500s timeline.
Magic source
Remains of AIs and artifacts are like myth and magic for the people.
Theme
Redemptive justice; the lasting effect of one act of kindness that ripples through ages; piecing together a mystery about a civilization’s second fall.
Background
There was a previous civilization that entered the space age and collapsed; but before the fall, mankind had sent out ships on colonization and terraforming missions.
Bai is one of the artificial intelligences on a generation star ship. The celestials of Kun-lun mountain are also AIs monitoring the ship. The Kun-lun mountain is the crashed remains of said vessel. The two demon disciples are its remaining defence mechanism.
The star they crashed on it is a planet of water. The terraforming stations this starship has set up are like networks of gigantic aquatic plants. Early generations of the star-faring people have built cities upon those terraforming sites, and developed technology to use transmuted water to fuel their machinerys. Most of their AIs are in the form of creatures, think of them as metallic beasts placed in the stations like statues. But a major catastrophe happened, and caused the latter generation of people to sever the connection between them and the terraforming sites. I will refer to this event as ‘second fall’. After a long amnesia of the beginning of the terraforming civilization, all the historical events have become myth and legend. At the beginning of Xian’s story, the water of this planet has become scarce, and all the terraforming sites are dangerous ruins for Xian’s people. They called those sites old-empire ruins.
Social Circumstance and creation myth
With unstable weather patterns, and land crawling with artefact creatures, Xian’s people travel through the sky. They are sky-nomads who live in the air, and return to earth only in their death. In their myth, life came to the earth by the rain from the cosmic river above. They are all rain-drops at the beginning, but when their bodies sink into the soil, beasts and flowers sprout from the earth. Therefore, all lives are water reborn into their current forms through earth.
“Clay people,” this is what Xian’s family calls themselves, for they come from water, given shapes to by earth, and hardened by air.
Kun-Lun Mountain (shrines of the immortal mountain)
The Kun-lun mountain is the crashed remains of that starship. The two demon disciples are its remaining defence mechanism. Kun-lun mountain has its shield activated, therefore no one has ever visited this site after the ‘second fall’. The shield can be a gravitational force field, and forms a dangerous cloud barrier filled with floating debris around the mountain. This site is responsible for the disappearing water of this planet. The starship has been draining water to fill its engine, to prepare itself for leaving this planet and begin a new star voyage.
Cloud Chariot
An aircraft from the star-faring era that can penetrate the barrier of Kun-lun mountain.
The weapon Bai used to defeat the demon guardians of Kun-kun mountain
I can use this chance to develop a series of scanaveged star-faring age weapons.
Sacred herb
The core of the crashed starship. In this story, Bai is saving both Xian and her people, by disabling the starship and reactivating the terraforming stations.
Herb shop interior
A garden in the air. Where the sky people plant their grains and fruits.
Silver bridge
The shield and the floating debris barrier of the starship.
Xian
Xian is one of the sky nomads. She is a young woman who has dedicated her life so far to become the head of the family. Note that despite having no blood relation, all the people in their nomadic group are considered family, with a shared surname.
Xian is kind, determined, reliable, but secretly she is in conflict with herself about a past wrong-doing. She hides it well, because the revealing of such truth will mean that she will forever lose her chance of becoming the family head.
She has a striking resemblance with her ancestor, one of the original crew members of the crashed starship. Her ancestor has fostered a campanionship with Bai during their space voyage; she once broke the law (although it is never discovered) and unlocked Bai from her programming, just so Bai’s sensor can feel something other than threat level, just so she can feel some infinitesimal things like water fleeing from her palms. By some chance, this eventually saved Bai from being deactivated during the ‘second fall’, since she is no longer connected to the main system of Kun-lun mountain.
Bai
Bai is an artificial intelligence from the star-faring era. There are duplicates of her archetype, but most of them are destroyed or deactivated during the second fall of the civilization. She has a humanoid disguise and a creature-like combat mode. Her shape language should exhibit symmetry that indicates fine engineering, but also some addon-on element that breaks the symmetry. Disguise should also be a part of her character design.
Bai has been wandering through the earth ever since the ‘second fall,’ with a corrupted memory bank and without a goal. She no longer has a record of her friend(Xian’s ancestor)’s name, but still has image recordings of her. This AI still holds onto the imagery remains of someone who died long before the start of the second fall, but does not understand why. As for the second fall, Bai only has a vague recording of the event; her archetype has played a part in it, but her own role is unknown; Bai also knows there is something wrong with the starship site, but she does not have access to it anymore. During her wandering, Bai learnt to disguise herself, so she can visit different human settlements. She travels aimlessly across sky cities, cliff cities, and some repurposed ‘old empire ruins’.
Bai is curious, and has a composed manner; she is a character who moves with a guileless grace. Her combat mode can be something of a serpentine form. It will also be interesting that her archetype has become a malevolent creature of myth after the second fall, and been recorded on potteries and tapestries.
As an AI, Bai is locked out of almost all the accesses from the terraforming sites. To access the system of those sites, she will need a human companion. In this game that will never be made, the player will need to switch between Xian and Bai to unlock the puzzles of the old empire sites.
It will be funny if BAI stands for something like ‘biomimic anthropopathic instrumentation”.
Hai
Hai is one of the elders of the family. Fahai’s ire towards Xian comes from his grief. His daughter is killed in an event in which he thinks Xian is responsible for. And ever since that incident he is hostile towards Xian.
Fahai is wise, and has an air of knowing authority around him. He is old and imposing, but the imposing part comes from his judgmental look. It will be a bonus point if his visual-language also conveys grief.
Notes on original tale of the white snake:
Fahai
This is the character with the most plot hole. There are two possibilities for his motivations. 1. His motivation is to solely uphold his sense of justice. He is determined to save Xian from the demon snake no matter what has truly transpired between the couple. 2. Or it could be interpreted as jealousy: for someone who has committed his entire life to extinguish earthly desire, the love and commitment from Bai towards Xian is something he can never have.
His character can be interrupted as a contrasting character with Bai: a person without mercy, sympathy, with only a relentless goal of pursuing his own explanation of justice, is worse than a demon.
Bai
Bai is the contrasting character with Fahai. As a demon who is kind, sympathetic, and is capable of love, she is no different than an actual person.
Bai is also a very romantically-charged character. She is someone who has waited hundreds of years to repay one act of kindness with love. In eastern values, love is patience, it is commitment and sacrifice.
However she is also very obsessed in this sense. Xian is clearly not that person who saved her hundred years ago; that part of him is but a silver of an old soul remaining atop of a new one. Her act of fulfilling her own gratitude has violated Xian’s own path of life, therefore leading to tragedy.
This dynamic reminds me of a 880s CE poetic essay looted from Dunhuang. The front side is an essay written by a master to his samaneras, about ten types of desire to eliminate in the pursuit of enlightenment. One the subject of love, he wrote 暂时因缘，百年之后，各随六道，不相系属 (roughly translate as ‘love is temporary, after a hundred of years, each party will enter the six ways of samsara, therefore they no longer has any relation with each other). However it is dubbed “Dunhuang love letter”, because of an anonymous love poem written at the back of this essay. The love letter written at the back says 日月长相望，宛转不离心。见君行坐处，一似火烧身 (roughly translate as‘sun and moon watches each other through eternal separation, however their orbit locked them in an eternal half embrace. When I see you on the praying mat, so stately and still; I am restless as if on fire).
The romance between Xian and Bai is like that ancient love poem written at the back of an essay on the futility about earthly love. It is immoral, but also quite beautiful.
Xuxian
He is not a well developed character from the original story. Xian can be summarized as someone whose kindness brought him rewards. But he is also easily swayed by rumors. One can argue that Xian’s mistrust and betrayal with Bai has led to his own demise.
However in some sense, the tale of the white snake is perhaps about Xian and Bai saving each other. Xian saved Bai in the past, which led himself to be saved in the future. If someone is thinking about doing a sci-fi retelling of the white snake, time traveling and the completion of a causal time-loop can be a good theme.
Story beats:
-Herb shop story.
-Fahai swayed Xian to feed Bai wine that is poisonous to demons.
-Bai showed her true form and scared Xian to death.
-Bai stealing the sacred herb from the Kun-lun mountain.
-Bai resurrect Xian and live happily ever after (although the most well known version ended in tragedy, with Bai being sealed under the Leifeng tower, and Xian becomes a monk just so he can stay under the tower, to sweep away the fallen leaves and kept Bai companied till he passes away in old age) .
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