Welcome to Boulder (A series by moejoedame)

[moejoedame]

I have actually started writing a new series of chapters for a story. Attached to this post is the introduction to this series. For this series I'm just writing whatever word vomit I come up with before I have time to overthink it. I'll be far too critical of myself and scrutinize everything if I take too long. The chapters will all be posted here in this thread as I finish them. Feel free to offer and kind of advice, criticism, or opinions you have on it.

[moejoedame]

Welcome to Boulder
Introduction

Welcome to Boulder. At first glance, based on the name, you might think this place is drawing a parallel to a sweet town in Colorado, nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Trouble is, you’d be wrong. That town is ancient history. Boulder also happens to mean a big fucking rock. That paints a much more accurate picture of the locale; a big fucking rock floating out in space.

Most people who call Boulder home never did it intentionally, and even fewer plan on staying any longer than they have to. This rock is a veritable spacecraft graveyard. Examples of anything from the earliest tin cans to the latest in interplanetary technology somehow find their way here, and never in one piece. Amidst a deep brown red landscape of dust covered rock lies heap after heap of twisted metal.

The populace of Boulder is probably about what you’d expect of such a place, roving bands of desperate scavengers, each one getting more depraved and ruthless as time drags on. Some people say some of them managed to get off this rock. Funny how nobody can claim to have witnessed it happen.

Boulder doesn’t exactly have days or nights. It has a light side and a dark side. The light side stays somewhere near “hot as hell” most all the time while the dark side is pitch black and so cold, nobody has ever survived it for more than a few minutes.

This backwater couldn’t be any closer to hell if it tried, but somehow some people scrape by. This is the story of one such girl.

Alyssa wasn’t born here, but you could say her life ended here even as she was still living it. She came from a family of traders. Her father, Roald, could sell glasses to a blind man, and her mother, Francesca, managed the bookkeeping. When their freighter crashed on Boulder, their lives came crashing down with it.

The family survived the crash relatively unharmed. Maybe a few scrapes and bruises, but nothing severe. This could be considered a pretty rough run of bad luck, but that was only the beginning.

The freighter, the Charles, crashed on the light side of the rock. Any new arrivals always attracted a lot of attention, fast. Alyssa’s father, Roald managed to adapt to the situation, and the mob of scrappers, quickly. Although they were unarmed, he did manage to buy himself and his family some time with his goods. Eventually his commodities were thinned down to scrap from the ship, and lastly, their provisions.

Roald always took pride in being able to provide for his family so well, now he was reduced to desperation as his wife and daughter had no food and no water. Perhaps it was the blow to his pride, his sense of purpose, that drove him mad, or maybe the hunger and dehydration, but Roald decided to attempt to bargain with the scrappers, only he had nothing to trade….or at least….nothing he was willing to trade.

Once they realized Roald had nothing more to offer, the scrappers turned on him in no time. Alyssa was tucked away in the wreckage of the Charles when the bandits came. Her father attempted to stall them before they could get to the ship (and his wife and daughter). Before he could even finish a sentence, he was on the end of a spear. Alyssa’s mother was waiting in the wreckage for her husband, but the sight of his sudden and brutal murder elicited a loud scream from her. The bandits quickly subdued her.

The bandits took turns having their way with her while they tried to beat the location of her daughter out of her. Through all the brutality, she still wouldn’t talk. The bandits threw her on the ground next to her husband’s corpse as they hoisted it up on the spear.

Alyssa had only seen pieces of these horrifying events taking place as she avoided the bandits tearing through the wreckage to find her. As time passed, the bandits seemed to grow tired and they once again gathered outside the ruined ship. As the last of them had their way with her mother, Alyssa saw the broken woman stand up, approach one of the bandits, and force his blade through her abdomen. She crumpled over on ground next to her husband in a pool of blood.

Alyssa was only 13 when she lost both of her parents. Her old life as the spoiled daughter of a professional trader were over. You could say her life ended when she crashed on Boulder, but that was only the end of the old life. The new one had just begun.

Coming soon: Chapter 1: A Child of the Sand

[NefariousNerdette]

It seems really interesting so far, ya left me at a cliffhanger, I need more.

[moejoedame]

Chapter 1 has been a lot more slow going. Instead of diving right in and just going all over the place, I've actually planned out a roadmap for where the story goes. Now I have a premise for the entire plot, start to finish. The challenge now is making sure that each chapter has enough content, but not so much detail that it doesn't flow well.

Originally, i planned out the world and its origin before the characters for this particular story. The idea being that anybody who exists in this world could have an interesting story.

[NefariousNerdette]

Nice, that is awesome. From what I have gathered from Boon creating a roadmap is what he does and then he fleshes it out from there.