Overview
50,000 years ago, seven magicians destroyed the entire human race.
This is their story.
Format
Among The Chosen is portrayed In Media Res. In many respects, no quarter is given - beyond time, location, and chapter title captions, there is no narrative text. There are no bullet points, no footnotes, no "as seen in issue #3!" reminders. Information is conveyed and repeated naturally - by people who may or may not know what they're talking about in response to people who may or may not know what they're asking about. The author's professional background is in video production and the comic plays to that strength. No character is favored, no arc is favored- everyone and everything has a part to play, and the "camera," within production constraints - switches between situations as the 'Overplot' dictates. Sometimes at the expense of the 'Immediate plot.' While the third volume of the story has been rewritten to address several contextual concerns, be assured - not everything will be explained. Not everything needs to be.
That last line isn't a cop-out - the cosmology has been worked out in fine-grained detail. A fine-grained explanation of it, however, is almost entirely irrelevant to this story. The work has been done, and the story is ultimately stronger without the distraction of a "world-building" narrative.
Structure
The finished story will consist of seven books. Some are more thoroughly planned than others. At present, Book Three is complete, Book Four is on hiatus, and Book Two is in production. These Books form the early middle of the story - Books One and Five through Seven are all technically 'tentative' and may be deployed with an entirely different look and feel, pacing, and creative team than the rest of the work. The author intends to be the majority force behind books two through four and is, given the time the story has already consumed, willing to work with others in order to midwife One and Five through Seven into existence.
Book One (Presently untitled, code-named "Crash" in production notes) : January, 1968 - a spacecraft crashes in Cambodia. American special forces and Soviet-backed NVA troops contend with the Tet Offensive and the ships' defenses as they fight to stake a claim. "Crash" features Thad's father, John West's father, and a young Ivan Kursk (aka Greymalkin), depicting humanity's first contact with its long-lost relatives - one of many key events that occurs between the past and present incarnations of Jason Whitehouse, protagonist of...
Book Two - Dead City Radio : Summer, 1997. Failing art student and thriving social engineer Jason Whitehouse experiences a series of vivid, tactile hallucinations - experiences a ghost tells him are a form of past life regression. Has Jason gone mad, or is a the target of a vast galactic conspiracy that he conceived to initiate before he was born?
Book Three - The Dualist : Spring, 2002. Five years after the events of Dead City Radio, the vast galactic conspiracy arrives in earth orbit, sieging psychological defenses, awakening Thad and initiating a massive magical convergence that splits souls and ultimately defies physics. The Dualist is a story of cause and effect - a study of the results of a single decision made at the climax of Dead City Radio, and the effect that decision has across several distinct groups of individuals. The butterfly effect causes paths to intersect, tangle, and ultimately tie together - with unpredictable, unpalatable consequences for all parties involved.
Book Four - Transitional Voices : Sic transit veritas. A pair of backwoods Americans are thrust into an interstellar human society that's been building space stations since the 14th century. Hilarity - and insanity - ensues.
Books 5-7 exist in outline, and retain a great degree of malleability. While six and seven are reasonably firm, five could easily become a "decompressed" ongoing or limited series under the proper conditions - greatly expanding the scope without impacting the endgame. As five will ultimately determine six and seven, planning for these books will not be progressed beyond a flexible outline until books two and four are complete.
Cosmology
The story takes the following precepts as given. While they may be explained - often inaccurately, inadequately or incorrectly - by a character with some knowledge of the subject in response to a question posed by a less enlightened character, these precepts are not otherwise addressed in any meaningful way within the existing work.
If this is your first look at ATC and you're in the mood for a Big Damned Epic, then read this before you dive into the story.
1. The Human Will is an exertable, measurable force, subject to (and occasionally able to supersede) Newtonian physics and the murkiness of quantum mechanics. According to Aleister Crowley, "Magick" is (paraphrased) the act of causing change in ones' environment in harmony with ones' will. Magick, thus defined, is a cornerstone of Among The Chosen- indirectly, as a core focus of the work is the inability rather than the ability of certain characters to excel in this discipline. The Holt-Rischmann Device (HRD) is the sole piece of manufactured technology capable of measuring the exertion of Will against the Ambient Energy Index (see below). That the Human Will is a force is obvious; the notion that the exertion can be accurately (or even adequately) measured is a key story element, and the chief qualifier for the work's description as "occult science fiction."
2. Reincarnation, past life regression, and the notion that the abilities and attainments of a previous life can be "unlocked" or "regained" at a faster pace than the acquisition of "new" knowledge are accepted and experienced fact within the story, if not scientifically proven. The mechanics of past life regression are explored throughout, most notably through the actions and experiences of Jason Whitehouse and Judas Lang.
3. Life out there began here. Approximately 52,000 years ago, a large number of Homo Sapiens and a broad variety of terrestrial flora and fauna were removed from the Earth by entities unknown via methods unknown. The "emigrated" organisms were genetically augmented to withstand higher levels of radiation and the long-term effects of microgravity to a far greater extent than modern Terrestrial Humans. Following a massive "Technological Extinction-Level Event," non-Terrestrial Humanity has re-evolved to the level of an interstellar society, with a technology level roughly ten years behind to five hundred years ahead of their terrestrial counterparts, a lead extended almost a millennium by the advances Heirotus has made since the 1950s - game-changing technologies that at the time of the story are limited in availability. The Human diaspora inhabits dozens of worlds and thousands of star systems, the nearest of which is several thousand light-years from Sol. While a detailed comparison of the genetic records of stellar Humanity and its "meta-Human" offshoots has conclusively proved a single point of origin for the species, at the time the story begins this sought-after "homeland" is thought to be long lost to the "Apocalypse," with no conclusive point of origin established.
4. Ambient Energy - a sort of Quantum Aether that acts as a multiplier for the exertion of Will as a measurable force. The "Ambient Energy Index" is inconstant - strong in some areas of space, weak in others. Ambient Energy has a measurable impact on Will-based disciplines, notably the practice of the magickal arts (the exertion of Will as a Force) and the ability to transition matter into Am (also described as the exertion of Will as a Force, with a different set of caveats). Ambient Energy is also a factor in certain Will-derived technologies, most notably the Biomagnetic Transfer System and its "fuel" source, the Transition Core. Areas of low AE are considered a hazard to navigation. The origin and inconsistency of this "meta-stellar medium" remains a mystery - and frustration - to Human science. Holt-Rischmann hardware includes algorithms capable of giving "real world" numbers for recorded Will, regardless of the impact AE has on the exertion thereof.
5. Am. The colloquial (and historically incorrect) term for a "condensed" meta-reality, accessible by certain life forms and organic technologies. Am is a form of "hyperspace," the realm in which meta-relativistic travel and communication occurs.
6. The Veil, a localized "membrane" linking the prime material plane to "Pocket Universes" or "Annexed Realities." Long the subject of research by Stellar Humanity's best and brightest, the Veil is a sort of "reverse Am," or an "Am above" the "Prime" material plain. Localized in the gravity well of seemingly random planets and moons, "Veiled" planets give way to an entirely different universe when a "transition" is attempted. While in this reality Am is only accessible outside of the immediate mass influence of a stellar body, the Veil is only accessible WITHIN those bounds - more importantly, within the accessed "pocket universe," Am, in totality, ONLY exists within that specific gravity well. As all moons and planets with a Veil exhibit some evidence of a Human presence, it has long been assumed that this "sub-fracturing" of reality is somehow related to the Technological Extinction-Level Event. That some planets have multiple "chained" Annexed Realities is offered as further proof of this, though a theory that adequately explains the mechanics - how an "annexed reality" could lead to another - has yet to be put forth. While the vast majority of annexed realities are barren wastelands, some show signs of long extinct habitation, and some - a small number - play host to a Human or meta-Human presence. Some 85% of the Human-habitable planets discovered or inhabited by Stellar Humanity have at least one Annexed Reality; some 5% have at least one more accessible "above" the "2.0." While the ability to Transition to Am is genetic, the ability to "Transition" across the Veil can be learned, and plays an important part in books One, Two, Three, Five and Six. Veil Transitions are depicted extensively in The Dualist, and the fracturing of reality is (or will eventually be) a major component of the story.
7. Language is an inducible, transmissible construct. Building on Will-as-a-force and a strong body of research into remote viewing and "telepathy" (defined by stellar Humanity as "The accurate reproduction of one individual's 'broadcast' thought by multiple unrelated parties."), stellar Humanity has developed a "lowest common denominator" language, with a grammar and syntax that can be accurately "injected" by skilled practitioners using a combination of visual, physiological and quantum stimuli. Transitional Voices will address the mechanics of this process in detail, as will the first book of the story. Stylistically, Rhdodhe (the spoken and written language of stellar Humanity) is written as straight american english to date, and the story has been deliberately cut and paced to separate english-only speakers from multi-linguists. In the interests of readability and enjoyment, language will not become an obstacle for the reader until it becomes one for the characters.
Production Notes
Production of Among The Chosen began in early 2003, with what would ultimately become Chapter Two of The Dualist. Chapters Three, Four and One followed, after which production switched to CG-heavy backgrounds and slowed considerably. Work on chapter one of Dead City Radio progressed irregularly in parallel with the second half of The Dualist. In 2008, Chapter One of Transitional Voices was created and Chapter Two of Dead City Radio entered production. In late 2008 it was decided that while much of the art was useable, the formatting of The Dualist was wrong and the existing script was, in a word, "shit." After extensive meditation, most of the existing pages were re-tooled, a few new pages were created, and the entire story was rewritten from the ground up. Real life factors stretched the re-creation into a roughly sixteen month slog, after which Chapter Two of Dead City Radio was resumed and brought to a successful completion. While previous chapters met with a continuous stream of fixes and tweaks, the vast majority of The Operative entered the world ready to read.
While it's taken quite awhile to get there, and while the artwork is ultimately a bit inconsistent, the author's opinion of the work has shifted from an uncertain embarrassment to a cautious optimism. The time has been invested, the work has been done, many of the worst mistakes have been corrected. The ATC you read today is not the original ATC. It is, in every way, a vast improvement over the "learning work" of 2003-2008.
Any further changes to existing pages will be brought forth by a publisher-assigned editor.
The Creative Team
Daniel H began development of what would ultimately become ATC in November, 1994. A 1999 graduate of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Dan spent ten years creating multimedia and editing video in the Exhibits department of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History before embarking on a career as a freelance jack-of-all trades. Web design, 3d modeling, video compositing and illustration are all spheres he inhabits - some for fun, others when necessary. When he's not working on engineering contracts, doing effects work for independent filmmakers, bringing science to a wider audience or updating his EVE Online skill queue, Dan is working hard on comics - usually ATC, though early 2011 brings with it an attempt to work on a couple of projects that haven't become sluggish with the weight of high standards and personal expectations.
Chris Bodine modeled the Daedalus and Loki from inaccurate doodles provided by Dan. The Daedalus appears in The Dualist and Transitional Voices, and the Loki is slated to appear in all books of the series. Chris provided exterior geometry for both vehicles, and UVW coordinates for the Daedalus hull.
Chris Smith provided the beer labels and many textural bits used throughout the story.
Xenothaulus (who has a "Chris" somewhere on his driver's license) provides inconstant proofreading support in the form of 'typornography.' He's caught more typos than the rest of the readership combined, is the creator of Ornix, and co-developer of the Thad/Ornix backstory and many of the elements of the 'Waking God Protocols.'
Mike Hinder is the author's point of origin for 'Biomagnetics,' one of the core concepts of the ATC cosmology.
Bryan Horstmann-Allen convinced the author to do this thing as a webcomic. He provided early art direction, insisting that the initial batch of pages sucked and needed reworking. He owns the ATC domain name. Prior to the domain registration, the comic was briefly hosted on a subdomain of Mirrorshades.
Eric Pree is ATC's current webhost and, along with Vai and _Lasar, occasional web ninja.
Ben Barnett has provided long-term editorial and morale support since pre-production began in the spring of 2003. His solid, well-reasoned critiques have prompted art revisions, informed story structure, and contributed heavily to the 2011 revision of the websites' descriptive text. Dan and Ben are presently collaborating on Ouiji Bordello a short comic set to be produced in Q1 of 2011, tentatively scheduled for an April release.