Ideas for Tropica- post 1

KEI'S BACKSTORY

-Kei was kidnapped by the Ko tribe during their raid on the Ku'Ono village when she was a young adult. She and Mahi had been friends for a while, which makes their reunion all the more momentous.

The Ko, who had an iron grip on most of the island back then, would often take young women as "offerings" from the other tribes on Moa and give them to royal members of the Ko hierarchy as brides. Kei was chosen because she was the only young woman of the Ku'Ono, despite her weight.

Kei was placed on an enforced regiment, basically starvation, to get her to a more "acceptable" size. This nearly killed her, but another of her husband's handmaidens snuck her, along with other women the Ko royalty had enslaved, out of the isolated city and back to their villages. Kei was finally re-united with her birth mother, sans 200 pounds, eager to regain both lost time with her family and her lost weight.

This is all told in flashback sequences in the beginning of the story, and will be explained in more detail later in the series.

The actual story begins with Mahi and Kei, five years later, going out to explore an islet they've always wanted to visit, which happens to be the home of the Shrine of the Tempest Phial. They reach the islet, are chased by a saber tooth cat into a sea cave, Kei finds the phial and gets her powers by drinking it, they fight off the Ko guards who are also after it, yadda yadda, they're captured. Kei meets the shadow leader of the Ko, Elder, who tries to take the phial from her but finds it to be drained of power after Kei's use. They are thrown in prison where Kei's traumatic memories of being enslaved by the Ko come back

Her experiences moves someone in an adjacent cell to tears. Kei and Mahi meet Kumu, Elder's younger brother, who identifies the phial and Kei's powers. Kei is able to control water, to become like water and to meld with water. He suggests to Kei that she may be the most powerful entity on the island. This brings Kei out of the traumatized state her flashback memories put her in and she comes to the realization that she could help them all escape. Her confidence slowly returning, they formulate a plan to escape...

To be continued.

SETTING, PLOT POINTS AND MOAIIAN POLITICS

Politics are very important to the story, but they shouldn't overcrowd it. It is a fantasy comic first and foremost.

-Moa is a gigantic chain of islands, which, combined, are about the size of Greenland. Kei and Mahi belong to the Ku'Ono tribe, which is nestled in a bay on the largest island. While there are tribes which go by different names, all of the separate islands are called Moa, and have no individual names, as no one has ever felt the need to separate their territories… that is, until the Ko tribe suddenly industrialized an island for themselves and separated as Moa's first city state. It now sits like a beacon, converted into a giant city with no plants or trees and looming over the rest of the island like a fortress. Very few non-Ko have entered the city and left to tell the tale.

-The Ko is secretly led by a sorcerer named Elder. He uses a puppet leader, the stout and menacing Kalu, to enforce his rule while he pulls the strings from the shadows.

-The Ko control most of Moa's other villages by taxing them for "protection" (with no real protection from anyone, as the Ko soldiers are used to collect taxes), while abusing the villages, kidnapping people to put them to work for the Ko and attempting to destabilize relations between tribes. After Kei is returned to Ku'ono and tells them all of how people from Ko kidnap young women for slavery, Ku'ono rejects the Ko and refuses to pay them. Now, with superhero Kei aiding and protecting any village that refuses to bow to Ko's demands, Elder must take further measures to not only combat Kei, but restore his influence over them.

-However, this is not written to imply that taxes or taxing people are wrong, but rather that taxes should not fund a corrupt government. The Ku'ono people still pay tribute to their chief, but he uses those funds to buy supplies from other tribes, to help improve their way of life, and after Kei gains her powers, the emancipated tribes share taxes to help improve the quality of their own villages. This should be addressed at some point in the comic, and I think the perfect person to be corrected on it should be Kei.

-Elder's major plan is to enslave the people of Moa and return to his homeland to exact revenge on the kingdom that banished him to sea. He is skilled in strange and unearthly magic, and uses a combination of that magic and the colonialist skills of his people to ensure his adopted tribe, the Ko, stay in line. A potent mixture of brainwashing, distraction and propaganda are his most powerful weapons, some might say just as effective as the magic he wields.

-The Miako are a species of feathered dromaeosaurid with humanlike intelligence, who have been banished by the Ko into the volcanic caves of Moa. They have little contact with the Moaiian people and massively resent humankind, viewing the human settlers as unwelcome pests who have overstayed their welcome. In this universe's timeline, certain dromaeosaurids survived the KT extinction. The Miako are a tribe from an offshoot of those survivors that happened to develop sapience before humans. Their ancestors colonized Moa thousands of years before the humans. The fate of their mainland brethren is currently undecided by the author, suffice to say there ARE more out there.

-Elder is in a pact with the Miako. He doesn't like Nodak's anti-human policies but he is willing to use them to meet his own goals. After Kei has made it clear that she'll protect any village who separates from the Ko, he meets with Nodak to try and get him to attack the villages that have defected from the Ko by convincing the dinosaur that they're "weak and ripe for domination." When Nodak sends a team of Miako out to raid those villages, Elder sends Ko soldiers in to try and stop them, trying to convince the defecting tribe that the Ko is the only salvation they have. When that plan backfires and the raptor people just begin massacring the soldiers AND the village, Kei and Mahi save the day. Elder's original plan may have failed, but the ramifications for Kei and Mahi are disastrous. Now, not only does the Ko still pose a constant threat, but the Miako are now free from their banishment and pose an equal threat to the Moaiian separatists.