Writing journal

Originally, I had the idea to set the entire story within the same society, with a ruling class and a smaller, closed community living within it. However, I'm now toying with the idea of setting up at least two separate communities or political organisation that have equal power. I also want to have an enclosed geographical region I can manage.

The past

I'm thinking about a large continent island where a native community lived in the past. This community shared an ancestor with humans but evolved to have a special type of psychic power that allows them to share their consciousness. As a result, they cannot hide their intentions or lie. They live a communitarian life where feelings of ambition are rewarded only until they become dangerous to the community.

Some centuries ago, the invaders landed on the island. They found a pacific community that welcomed them and they started trying to communicate. When they understood the natives could “commune”, they got scared of what that power meant. The natives could never be fooled by double-speak or vague answers. They could read their intentions, and played by rules that were appropriate to such ability.

Soon, the natives became scared of the invaders because they had so many hidden feelings and motives. An inevitable conflict arose.

The invaders were better armed, but the natives knew the territory and could coordinate without effort. The native hadn't had a conflict in many centuries, and ultimately were not equipped to defend themselves not from a practical point of view, but because they lacked the strategic thinking and ruthlessness of the invaders. Even if their consciousness were bare in front of each other, they didn't always agree, and there was no leadership. They also had too much empathy towards these people they basically considered distant cousins, while the invaders just saw them as “others”.

It didn't take long for the invaders to virtually destroy the natives. The surviving natives eventually integrated with the invaders' society and mixed children were born, both with and without the ability to commune.

_note (to self)

I was going to make this longer and more complete and then realised there is absolutely no reason to do that. You know damn well you are going to review it a hundred times if it's a draft, but if you post it you post it and it becomes its own thing. Not final, just a thought-dump, as it should be.