Ryk E. Spoor
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All-Patron Reward: Things I MIGHT Write 4: Hannibal Gunn
🕑 Added 2020-09-08 23:59:18 +0000 UTCI've been writing in the universe that includes Jason Wood, Demons of the Past, Phoenix, and others for a very long time. Besides figuring out the past, I've also outlined the future of that universe to a considerable extent.
There's one set of stories I have fairly clearly in mind which I may write, eventually, and that take place in the far future of that universe -- I think roughly 500-1000 years after Jason's era. They connect to events that go back that far and even to things that are key elements of the universe that have been understated (for instance, the reason that no one sane tries to make fully self-aware machines in that universe, or at least, not more than once). I generally think of them under the name "Hannibal Gunn", though that's a misnomer, since while Gunn himself is an extremely important figure, a lot of the stories involved don't involve him. The ... climactic sequence does, but it involves a lot of other people too.
The reason I put his name on it is because this is another example of my RPG hobby influencing my writing. Way back in... oh, must have been the early to mid 1980s... Kathleen (then not even my girlfriend) ran a Mobile Suit Gundam campaign, and in that campaign I played a stereotypical tough-talking power-armor-wearing Sergeant of Marines, Hannibal Bellerophon Gunn. (this was my first knowing exposure to anime in any form, although it would be a few years yet before I WATCHED any anime).
The early incarnation of Gunn was something of a munchkin -- wearing a power armor suit of alien origin that wasn't very far from an Iron Man suit, in a world where "power armor" was mostly "giant robots", not something you could wear under street clothes. But I developed something of a personality for him, and when later Kathleen started running Gundam again with me as a solo player, that personality started to develop more. While early-on the power armor was one of his two defining "standout" traits (the other was that he was a psi-null), as time went on a very different trait began to develop: he started collecting people in his crew, renegades, even villains, who ended up following Gunn because they trusted him, in a world where trust could be hard to come by.
A later incarnation, set in a version of the Gundam Wing series, solidified that character trait and dispensed with the munchkin armor. That game also sparked my understanding of certain events in my own universe, and Kathleen and I worked out how that future would come to pass. That included a pretty complex political setup, and undercurrents of two separate ancient powers that the regular star nations didn't even suspect until things started to fall apart... with a third power playing its own game back on Earth. All of these things come to a head during Gunn's era, and in a strange way I guess Gunn sort of is like his era's Jason Wood: everything connects to him in some way, even if he never appears on the stage for some of the stories..
I could just as easily refer to these as the Monolith stories, thought the Monolith itself really only plays a part in two; however, the aftermath of the Monolith events drives most of what comes after. Or they could be the story of Vaughn Reese, the ultimate product of the forces responsible for the creation of two other characters we've already met.
The reason it's only MIGHT for me writing these stories... well, there's two reasons. First, I really have to finish the stories that precede it, up through "The Grand Finale", as that's the sequence of events that make both the future of Hannibal Gunn, and the future that includes Legend, possible. Without that it would be hard for readers to understand how we got from here to there in the narrative.
Second... there is another important character in the later parts of these stories, a young man from a strange isolated country on old Earth... a young man named Jared Engelshand
His presence in the later stories is pretty much essential... but while working on Fall of Veils, Kathleen realized that Jared fit extremely well into a particular part of that world. So Jared now exists as a significant character in Fall of Veils (and is first seen in detail in Jamaica Blue Magic, releasing in a week or so!).
I'm not sure if I could, or should, write another story with basically the same character in a completely different setting.
But at the same time... I do want to tell these stories...
