It's a science-fantasy setting, but at this point of the story, the reader will probably think it's fantasy. The subplot mainly revolves around two characters: a templar (Nuallan) and his daughter (Lliyah). Years ago, a really bad disaster happened. Whatever Nuallan did or did not do to fix the problem, in the process, he got his wife killed. The truth about what really happened is only known by few, as the theocracy does its best to conceal it, including raising Nuallan as the hero who fixed it all. Nuallan felt really bad about this event : guilty, a fraud, etc. He also feared that he may loose his daughter the same way he lost his wife. So, he accepted every campaign that allowed him to be as far away as possible. That way, he'd be sure nothing wrong would happen because of him. In the meantime, Lliyah is raised by the Temple. She's bathed in the legend of her father. She decides to becomes a templar (probably heavily influenced by the Temple). As she's pressured to be the best, because her father is a legend, she actually becomes quite good... and a ruthless devotee. Something the Temple can actually use both for her skills, obedience and for propaganda. So, the Temple supports her by making a legend out of herself aswell. Among the support she receives, she gets a sacred weapon that does weird stuff. Ok, now, what am I unhappy about ? What is actually the bad event that started all of this ? In my current iteration, this event is directly linked to the main plot, but I have a hard time getting satisfied by the details. In the main plot, we follow a girl (Occsan) whose civilization got ripped apart and had to wander until they found a way to escape through a black hole. Yea, she's basically an alien... Originally from another universe, as originally, the idea was "a civilization escapes heat death and gets stranded in a new weird universe, but they are scattered both in space and time". Scattered in space and time, because they go through a massive rotating black hole, and there's an area in these guys, called the ergosphere, in which space time is so distorted that theoretically you can even go back in time. Also because they're moving from one universe to another, so that's one spacetime to another, so there's no reason why both timelines should be linked. So, there is effectively two timelines in this story: the timeline of the old universe, and the timeline of the new universe. As long as you remain in a single timeline, things happen as usual: past event are in the past, future in the future, etc. But if you cross the line (the black hole), weird stuff happen. For example, if two persons A and B traverse the black hole, it's possible that B arrives in the new universe millennia before A, even if A entered the black hole decades before B. For the sake of simplicity, I'll call her civilization "the precursors", and I'll name different groups of precursors by the order of their arrival in the new universe. "First precursors" refers to those who arrived in the new universe first, "Second precursors" arrived in second, etc. These different waves of arrival can be separated by long periods of time. Occsan is one of the last precursors. By the time she arrives in that new universe, the first precursors were there long enough to have had time to rebuild a new civilization and see it fall apart. When Occsan arrives, the true history of the precursors is long forgotten. Only strange relics remain, feeding the popular imagination with immemorial myths and legends about the gods. There are few things that questions me regarding this main plot (mainly one of my friends, who thinks such an advanced civilization may not be a good idea). Back to the subplot about Nuallan and Lliyah. The wife of Nuallan (no fixed name yet, let's call her Raena) is supposed to be one of the precursors, one that arrived few decades before Occsan. Raena's also supposed to have some kind of family relationship with Occsan in the old universe (maybe her sister). Originally, the idea was that at some point, Raena got the hint that Occsan arrived, and she wanted to give her some direction regarding where to go. Such that, instead of wandering in space in a half-broken spaceship, she would have more chances to survive and they could reunite more easily. Occsan was really unsure about that black hole thing, so, in order to reassure her, Raena promised Occsan they'd reunite after they went through it. So, what caused the "really bad disaster" to happen may have been Raena trying to reactivate a beacon. In this new world, some of the big cities are build on top of crashed large spaceships. This is a fact that is long forgotten by most people, most of them would not understand what it really means, anyway. But this is something that can be discovered by precursors with the help of some clues. Raena realized it, and when she got the hint regarding of Occsan's arrival, she decided to activate the beacon of the spaceship of the big city where she lived nearby. And doing so... She caused what people thought was an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. Afterall, she had to turn on the engines of the spaceship in order to light up the beacon. Thing is, when Raena did that, she was already the wife of Nuallan, who's not a precursor at all, he's just one of the descendant of earlier precursors. So he doesn't have more clues about what's really going on here. And Nuallan was already a templar. The Temple may or may not be led by a precursor, but in any case, it's actively trying to recover precursor's artifacts to increase its own power and influence over the whole world. So, the Temple is at the very least a little bit more knowledgeable about the precursors, but whoever leads it wants to keep this precious information for themselves. When Raena lights up the beacon, causing what appears to be a natural disaster, and unearthing parts of the spaceship, the Temple must have considered she was threatening to reveal something to the population that they wanted to keep hidden. So, they convince everyone involved (including her husband, Nuallan) that she's a witch and get Nuallan to kill her. Does that makes sense to you ? Is there anything you find that may be problematic ? Plot holes, or things that just don't work ?
I think this is s really cool concept! I'm afraid I don't have nearly enough physics knowledge to comment on plot holes surrounding the logistics of traveling through a black hole. But from what I read it sounded internally consistent to me.
These two things are immiscible: Nuallan's logic doesn't quite balance, given what happened. Perhaps he's worried he's gullible enough to fall for the same trick twice...
