The Question and Answer Archive
To ask a question, post a comment in this thread. Below are the questions that have been answered so far.
04/19/2010 – 32 Unique Visitors the prior week = 3 Questions Available – 3 Answered
Question 1 by WA_Side – Can you give us any more back-story on Waldgrave and Terrina?
Answer – Waldgrave and Terrina seem to be a match made in dystopia. Though Waldgrave doesn’t seem to be physically abusive, it’s obvious from Terrina’s mental state that such restraint from Waldgrave does not hold true when it comes to verbal and emotional abuse with his wife. It has, perhaps, gotten worse since Terrina encouraged her daughter, Ada, to escape into the Deep. Or perhaps, Terrina simply could not handle the strain once her support line was cut.
Though we cannot truly know Waldgrave’s mind and his reasons for asking Terrina to marry him, Terrina had told Ada on more than one occasion that Waldgrave did in fact court her. Terrina had resisted at first, ashamed of her pregnant condition with no father in sight. Eventually she capitulated. To the end Terrina professed to Ada that Waldgrave was good to her and kept them all safe. Whether Terrina truly believed it or not, is unknown.
Question 2 by WA_Side – What about Terrina and Cedric? Can Terrina tell us a little about her time with Cedric?
Answer – Ada was told, when she was old enough to ask, that her father had kidnapped Terrina and kept her for ransom. Terrina said that in the brief month she was with Cedric, he raped her until she became pregnant. Terrina did not tell this tale to Waldgrave. However, as you can imagine, little can be kept a secret from the Genetics Council.
When Waldgrave discovered Ada’s parentage and Terrina was forced to send her daughter to the Deep, Terrina told Ada to go to her father because he could help her. When Ada demanded to know why she would seek out a rapist, Terrina finally confessed that he had not, in fact, raped her. She refused to say more, telling Ada that her father could explain.
When Ada finally found her father, her anger with him and her mother made it difficult for Cedric to explain. The brief explanation Ada allowed him to share was that Cedric had saved her mother from a gang of Transies after Terrina had gotten lost and entered the Deep. Cedric claimed that they’d fallen for one another, but when Terrina had discovered her pregnancy, she’d fled Cedric’s arms, afraid of raising a child in the Deep.
Question 3 by Eonknight – How about clarifying “prole”?
Answer – A Prole or Proletariat is a lower social class or the working class. In the case of the Deep Underground this is taken a bit further in that many of these people are considered criminals by the Normals and Descendants; even the Transies don’t have much use for these people. Proles were once Normals. They lived and worked in the City, but their behavior (i.e., theivery, adultery, murder, defiance of Genetics Council rule) got them assigned to live and work in the Deep. This began around two hundred years ago, around the time the Genetics Council came into power in the City.
The length of time that Proles have been sent to the Deep has resulted in many Proles being born, not in the City, but the Deep Underground. These native Proles are condemned to live in the Deep simply because of who their parents were.
The Proles, despite being criminals in the eyes of the Genetics Council and the Normals, perform a function in the Deep. They’re assigned specific jobs that they are required to perform, such as maintaining the foundations that keep the City on stable ground or ensuring the pipelines, which run gas, water and other chemicals and nutrients from even further underground, into the city are maintained. The Enforcers are assigned to over see these work crews and they keep grueling hours. Once a Prole’s shift is over, however, they can return to their assigned living space in the Deep. Some proles have managed to evade the work crews, but if caught by an Enforcer, they’re usually executed on the spot.
04/26/2010 – 51 Unique Visitors Last Week = 5 Questions Available – Two Answered
Question 4 & 5 by Eonknight – A little background on how the evolutionary and transitional variants came to be? That would no doubt be tied to the history of the Genetics Council, correct?
Evolutionary Variants or E.V.’s are the result of genetic experiments done by the Genetics Council. When the City was still young, a company by the name of Genome became a fore runner in biological experimentation. Initially the thought was to create the perfect soldier. Fearful of war, the City government took over Genome and eventually formed the Genetics Council in an attempt to apply Genome’s research to everyday people. The first to be experimented on were the wealthy and the high ranking members of the government.
The initial failures during these experiments were terminated or simply died on their own. As the experiments progressed, the results were minor, increased brain capacity, extended life, etc. Eventually, however, the Genetics Council succeeded in unlocking the correct gene sequence that would allow them to increase mental abilities to the point where subjects could affect their environment with their minds. Telepathy and telekinesis were just the first of many powers the subjects gained.
Transitional Evolutionary Variants (a.k.a., T.E.V. or Transies) came about when the Genetics council attempted to unlock further gene sequences. The mutations were not life threatening and after the horrors that were inflicted on the original experiment subjects, the Council ruled it best to simply exile these experiments gone awry. In order to keep these mutants from mingling further with the Normal people of the city, and more importantly the Evolutionary Variants, the Council sent them to live in the Deep Underground with the Proles who already worked down there. Though, out of respect for the Transie’s ancestry the Council did not force them to work; the Transies were still exiled from the City and all records of their existence were erased.
It is speculated that the Council continues to experiment on people of the City, though they keep these experiments to Normals so as not to dilute or reduce the pool of blue-blooded Descendants. Rumor also has it that occasionally a Descendant child will be born normally, but later on, during puberty it’s said, the child will go through a shift that mutates their form. If such a thing were to happen, the Council would likely swoop in and remove the child and all traces of it’s existence. It’s unknown what may happen to the child after such an occurrence.
05/10/2010 – 46 Unique Visitors Last Week = 4 Questions Available – 3 Answered
Question 6 by WA_Side – Where and how did Ky learn his tattoo skills?
Answer – Ky was sixteen when he met a man by the name of Bombastic, a Transie crime boss who ran the Deep through scare tactics and a rather unique ability (among Transies) to read minds. Bombastic hired Ky for a job and liked his style, so in payment he taught him how to tattoo. It was a trade that was starting to become popular among the Transies, so it gave Ky a way to strike out on his own. Bombastic knew Ky wasn’t interested in edging him out, so he let Ky off easy with a light protection payment. This allowed Ky to work on his own but still call on Bombastic if other crime bosses were trying to pressure him.
Ky used his powers to manipulate ink for the first time when he tattooed Zare, giving him the ‘X’ on his tongue. This was around a year after he began tattooing and had finally come into all of his Transie powers.
Question 7 & 8 by Eonknight – Can you give us an idea of the social structure and a quick “who’s who” on The Deep? For example, we know some crime bosses: Cedric, Tomo, Bombastic and Seiza. Are there others, and how is the power balanced between them?
Answer – The Deeps social structure is fluid in that it’s a survival of the fittest type situation. The crime bosses emerged on top because they were the strongest or the most cunning. The current structure falls along sector lines. There are six sectors in the Deep; each has a crime boss that’s taken over. There are exceptions to this rule.
Tomo and Cedric are leaders of their own gangs, but they both reside in the Delta sector. Tomo, however, is more self-centered in his machinations as a crime boss. He simply wishes to maintain his status quo and keep himself high at all times. Cedric, on the other hand, fights to keep everyone in the Delta sector from starving to death and killing one another. He’s likely the most benevolent of the crime bosses. That is, except for Oe.
Oe is the appointed leader of the Beta sector. The people who live there, including the Proles, go to her for everything. Oe ensures they all help one another and she is able to see when trouble is coming for them so that they can prepare for it.
Seiza rules the Epsilon sector, though like Cedric he’s more interested in survival than actually gaining anything, unless that gain would benefit all of his people. Seiza is more ruthless when it comes to the Transies in his sector. And he could care less about the Proles.
The crime boss in the Gamma sector is named Pepper. Little is known about her at this time.
And finally there is Bombastic. If there were a boss of all the crime bosses, Bombastic would be it. His territory runs through both Alpha and Zeta sectors and he rules with an iron fist. He frequently makes forays into the Enforcer areas and into the Genetic Council’s domain, taking what he can before retreating. He’s been a crime boss for less time than all the others, but because of his bold maneuvers he’s managed to gain the most out of any of the bosses. Of course, that gain has also been riddled with the loss of Transies and Proles in his two sectors.
05/24/2010 – 53 Unique Visitors Last Week = 5 Questions Available – 1 Answered
Question 9 by Eonknight – Why does Waldgrave want to get rid of the Transies; merely blind racism, or something more?
Answer – Waldgrave is one of the greatest geneticists the Descendants have had among their ranks in well over a century. As a result he’s made breakthroughs in their technology that haven’t been seen since the beginning of the Genetics Council’s reign. The Transies have always been seen as failures. Waldgrave, in his hubris, seeks to correct those errors and to make them into what the Council originally intended. Whether those Transies would actually be accepted into “normal” society is of no concern to Waldgrave. He is not racist, per se. He merely expects perfection and takes it so far as to force perfection on those around him.
