Catalyst Castle

Here's round two of my newest ongoing series of articles: Weekly World. The object of this series is an exercise in creative setting and plot building. The goal is to string the randomly generated setting and plot elements listed below into a workable premise for a story.

Here are the setting elements:

Setting: Mystical Orient
Tone: Campy
Things: Blood, Farm
Tech Level: Virtual Reality
Place: Lair

And here are the plot elements:

Opposition: Movie Monsters
Plot Action: Cover Up (Awkward) Animal
Plot Action: Destroy (Funky) Noble

Again, before you read further, I challenge you to take 10-20 minutes to develop these elements into a workable fictional setting and plot, and post your results in the comments below. After you’re done, you can come back and read my interpretation of these elements. If you haven't seen last week's Weekly World you can check it out here for ideas.


My Weekly World: Squatting Tiger, Bashful Dragon: In Virtual Land!

In the future, everyone spends their lives blissfully exploring Virtual Land, the persistent multi-user virtual reality game, while robots dutifully care for the more mundane matters of civilization. Virtual Land is a vast landscape divided into multiple regions, each hosted on separate servers and designed along different themes. In Mystical Orient, players can become powerful kung-fu warriors and test their skill against one another.

Recently though, a tragedy has occurred in Virtual Land. A player has hacked the Mystical Orient server! This results in a band of traveling kung-fu warriors returning to their home village to discover that all of the NPC farmers have been slaughtered by rampaging movie monsters. The heroes immediately set out to avenge the blood of their virtual friends. Their investigations lead them quickly to one of their own friends, a young boy who plays a kung-fu monkey with atomic fart attacks. In real life this kid is a crack hacker. When put under pressure, he admits to doing the hacking, but explains that he was blackmailed by another more sinister player. The heroes decide to save their friend from account termination by covering up his involvement while they search for the lair of the real perpetrator, a snooty kid who plays a nobleman with a funky hat that resembles a Chinese takeout box, so that they can destroy him before he causes more havoc.


What do you think? Be sure to post your own take on the elements in the comments if you haven't already.