Story
I am trying to develop a story that I can tell in comic-book format. Here is the outline, so far...
Premise: In the far future, the environment has finally recovered after a large-scale nuclear/environmental disaster. There are two major human civilizations: people who survived by retreating to high-tech underground tunnels, and people whose ancestors barely scraped by in the post-apocolyptic world after the disaster.
One day, a little girl in the underground world finds a sealed jar that contains all the divine force of the world. She opens the jar and the spirit escapes into the surface world! Because the spirit has been trapped, nobody in the world has experienced any sense of spirituality for thousands of years, so all religion and mythology has died out in human culture. But as this spirit travels around, taking different forms and possessing animals according to its random whims, the people who witness it experience a sense of genuine religious wonder, and then mis-interpret the spirit's actions to create new beliefs and religions.
A few years later, the girl who released the spirit isn't allowed to get married until she recaptures it. So she goes to the Surface in order to follow its trail. Meanwhile, two princes from the capital city of the Surface World are sent to find out more about the Underground World's recent forays to the Surface. They hear about this divine spirit, and want it for themselves - one to use it to control the population in a religious dictatorship, and the other to reach enlightenment. The story follows the adventures of all these people as they travel around amazing landscapes; meet different villages of people and find out about the ways their society is transformed by sudden mythology; and fight against each other to capture what is basically God.
Story Format: I want to try to make this a comic book with no text. That's because I don't think I'm great at dialogue, and I don't want everything to be taken up with explanations. I want it to be a bit of a mystery, and I want to try to communicate with gestures and exchanges. That said, there might be speech bubbles containing pictures, and there might be textual labels on objects. I am considering actually having text in the form of one character's travel journal, where he takes notes on the situations he encounters, and the comic looks at this journal sometimes.
Each miracle will take up a full page.
Characters:
All names are placeholder names, until I think of more meaningful or original ones.
Luc: 50 years old. When he was a teenager, he was the first member of the Underground society to venture onto the surface, when everyone believed it was still full of lava, radiation, disease, etc. He discovered that it was actually a beautiful paradise of healthy forests and rivers, and that people lived there too. (By the way, the setting of this story is totally stolen from what I remember of "Surreal 3000", which you can read about towards the end of this page: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/read-up-on-it/015020-5003-e.html) Luc is not really important except as background info, and a bit of a mentor to Jenny.
Professor Jones: Despicable, curmudgeonly guy who has a hoard of antiques, including the jar that contains divinity. He doesn't know what it is, but exploits its divine power in some way I'm not clear about yet. So when it's stolen, he's pissed off and bears a grudge about it.
Ethan: Professor's son or grandson, but a genuinely nice guy. Really good-looking, and Jenny's boyfriend. He's a couple years younger than her. They were friends as children before Jenny opened the jar of divinity, and afterwards not allowed to talk to each other any more (but they still do). He stays behind when she goes to the surface.
Jenny: A spunky child who accidentally releases the Divine Spirit into the world. As an adult, a successful young scientist - she invents a device that can detect and analyse biology with some kind of ray, and provide information about it on screen. She thinks she's so smart. She's crazily in love with Ethan, mostly because he's good-looking. Kind of sheltered and immature before heading out into the world. Very brave and daring. Not street-smart, not good at dealing with other people. She treats outsiders with condescension, and solves problems by shooting at them, or using her superior technology. She's amazed at the natural beauty of the world when she finds it. She plays an instrument. Goes through character development through the story, and ends up doing good deeds for others rather than being simply selfish.
The brothers: They are princes from the main Fortress of the Surface World civilization - not quite the next in line for rulership, so they're sent on a mission to find out more about the threat of Underground people colonizing the fringes of Fortress territory. I'm still kind of fuzzy about which traits each one has, but here are my notes:
Keith: The older brother. He's strong, a warrior, very loyal to his tribe of people. He's homesick. He cares deeply about Jeremy, even though he rags on him a bit for being too nerdy. He is xenophobic, considering outsiders to be less worthy of humane treatment. Power goes to his head - he loves having country bumpkins treat him with awe and respect, as a representative of Fortress. At home he isn't quite so powerful. He is a lout and an asshole, but charismatic anyway. When he runs into Jenny he's attracted to her, but it turns out they're enemies. Possibilities: When he witnesses the power that the Spirit has over people, he wants to capture it and use it to control and exploit people as a tyrant. He becomes injured at some point, or maybe dies. He helps out with a resistance movement for surface-people who have become exploited workers of the Underground people. He definitely fights with his own brother at some point.
Jeremy: The Younger Brother isn't a warrior, he's a scholar. He carries around an old book about the cultures of the world. He knows many stories and he's one of the few people in the world who remembers or cares that mythology once existed. He's interested in human behaviour, but a bit world-weary, maybe disappointed with human nature and its flaws. His role in this mission is to make maps and take notes. He's kind of a spy. He can come up with clever schemes and disguises. When his older brother is lonely, he tells stories of their homeland and how it came to be (a story with no mythology, of course). At some point in their travels, he discovers an ancient book about eastern philosophy, meditation, and a moral way of life. Now his goal is to reach enlightenment, and he searches for the Spirit in the hope of accomplishing this. Despite not being a very compassionate person (he's kind of withdrawn from people, kind of studying them clinically I guess) he tries to take on this lifestyle, practicing meditation, and trying out good deeds towards strangers - which earn him more friendly derision from his brother. Someone may be interested in him romantically, but he has little interest in romance, especially since he wants to become a holy man.
Various Townspeople: On the surface, there are hundreds of tiny little villages with little communication between them, and different ways of life. The three main characters travel around and encounter these people.
Betty: A Surface-World woman who is the leader of a resistance movement of the agricultural workers against the Underground people. I haven't figured out much about her personality, besides being strong of course. Basically, once the Underground discovered the surface, they realised that the food up there tasted a lot better than the synthetic meals their high-tech computers were able to produce. So there is now a huge demand underground for organic, natural, sun-grown food. They started colonizing the land above, exploiting the surface people for their labour. I still need to figure out WHAT they offer the workers that they can't get on their own - I don't think money makes sense, so maybe technology, or medical care, or gems, or drugs. I'm considering genetic therapy - perhaps the surface people have inherited all sorts of mutations and deformities from the time of nuclear radiation, and the underground people have the technology to cure them, or have a bank of genetic material they offer, so that the mutants can have normal offspring.
The Spirit: Our story posits that there is a real divine force in the world, an omnipotent force that can be sensed by people. Any time someone has a vision from God, or hears the wind and imagines it's a voice, or speaks in tongues, or is inspired to create a fairy tale, or senses a power greater than themselves - it's because they are sensing the Spirit. It really exists, and people's brains have an ability to detect it. Every religion and myth all over the world was inspired by someone sensing or witnessing its presence. Every god and goddess was it. In our story, it has been somehow trapped in a jar for thousands of years, so nobody has been able to sense it during that time, and everybody is an atheist.
But it's amoral, and hedonistic, and doesn't care about people at all. When people are in its presence, part of their brain's reaction is to misinterpret the Spirit, and ascribe all sorts of meaning to the miracle they are witnessing. The morality, judgmental, narrative aspects of religion come from the people themselves, but they fervently believe that those aspects came from the God they encountered.
It's more like a trickster spirit. It just wants to have fun. It can possess bodies, possess inanimate objects and make them come to life, bend the laws of physics, split itself into two beings. (It is normally hundreds or thousands of different beings, splitting and merging and being different Gods in different places. Or it could even be in the form of a gas that blankets the whole planet.) I'm not sure whether dividing itself up makes it less potent - I think it does. It's immortal - its bodies can die, but it never can. It is NOT omniscient - in fact, it forgets things very quickly, and is actually rather naive. When it takes on a form, it usually takes on some of the personality and aspects of that form. So if it possesses a bunny rabbit, it will feel the fear of the animal. It does this out of choice, because to some extent, it enjoys negative emotions as much as positive. Its main driving force is curiosity.
It can only affect an object when it is possessing that object. So if we had something like a magical ring in our story, it would mean that the Spirit is inside it. It doesn't leave behind magical residue of any sort.
It can be trapped in some kind of soul-jar (that is why it's been away from humanity, not causing any myths, for so long). I guess it's the one substance that the being cannot overpower. Or maybe it CAN, but being in the jar causes so much pure pleasure to the Spirit, that it doesn't want to.
Despite not giving a shit about humanity, it can be lured or pleased with burnt sacrifices that cause a pleasing smell, or by beautifully-played music. It might sometimes experience sexual attraction.
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Technology: This isn't really a story about believable, logically consistant technology. It's like those old books and comics where nuclear radiation can do any damn thing the plot wants it to do - although I don't have that type of nuclear magic in the story in that way.
The Underground society have a very comfortable and peaceful life. I guess they have some kind of amazing mineral they mine that can run their computers and air purifiers and food-growers and whatever. But there is nothing like oil or gasoline that can enable quick, long-range transportation like we have in our world. There is also no artificial intelligence, no human-like robots. I just don't want those things in the story, so there :P
They have a lot of data about the old world stored on computers, which they rarely consult. Jenny invents a device that can detect and analyse plants and their biological properties, then consults its database, and provides information on how it can be used (based on its stored data). This is meant to be useful now that the Underground people are venturing to the surface for farming - and it's helpful to her when she ventures to the surface herself, because despite not having even basic survival skills, it tells her what she can eat, how to prepare it, how to make medicine, what animals to run away from, etc.
She also probably has a stungun. Not sure if it actually kills people or just temporarily puts them into a coma.
Setting: Anyway, most of the story takes place above-ground, where you have to get around by walking mostly, and where nature has recovered from humanity's influence, since people almost died out, and only surivied in limited numbers and primitive societies. You can pretty much walk around and pick delicious fruit off a tree, or kill abundant small prey, although poisonous food and vicious animals are a danger. There are also some dangerous sites, like rivers that are still polluted, or deserts that haven't yet recovered, or places where radiation will make you sick. And maybe some rusting vestiges of old factories, cities and whatnot, all overgrown with vines and inhabited by animals.
Episodes: Some things that might happen:
Escape of the Spirit: As children, Jenny and Ethan are playing in the Professor's house. They're making creatures out of play-doh. Ethan makes a frog, based on a reference from a textbook about extinct animals. Jenny snoops in the Professor's secret room of antiques. She finds the Jar and sees sparkly dust inside. She opens it and dumps it over the play-doh frog, to make it sparkly and pretty. But the frog comes to life! It dances around a bit, and the children, delighted, try to catch it. It runs away down the hallway and eventually escapes. When the Professor comes home to find his priceless jar stolen, he's so angry he forbids Jenny to ever talk to his son again.
Proposal: Jenny is now 20 years old, and a Science student with great promise. At her young age, she has already created a device that can detect biological properties with a ray. She has secretly been dating Ethan, and she goes to his father to ask for Ethan's hand in marriage. She puts on a ridiculous formal outfit, and tries to convince Professor Jones that as a rising star in society, she would make a great partner for his son. But Jones still holds a grudge, since his own value in society has diminished since the theft of the jar (for some reason). He refuses.
Jenny decides she must go into the Outside World and recover the Spirit. She talks to Luc, the old man who, as a child, was the first from their society to venture into the outside world. He tells her how to find a new, secret exit to the outside (it's forbidden for just anyone to go). She researches what equipment she'll need to travel, steals it or uses a high-tech 3D printer to make it, and leaves.
Her initial adventures include: being amazed at the beautiful landscape; being poisoned by a plant and using her technological device to find out how to cure it using other plants; wounding a stranger she finds; playing her instrument to herself and finding that it attracts the Spirit; encountering and fighting with the Brothers, etc.
Spirit Discovers Itself: After a long time imprisoned, the Spirit can't really remember its capabilities. It's in the form of a frog, and above-ground. By instinct, it catches a fly. To its surprise, now it sprouts fly-wings from its frog-self. It has become a hybrid of both animals. Then it sees some other creatures having sex, so it splits itself into two frogs, and has sex with itself. It morphs back into one frog. An animal comes along and eats it. After that animal takes a shit, the shit decomposes into the ground, and a holy tree grows, which gets out of the ground and walks around, or does something else unusual. The tree is burned up in a fire, and the smoke is holy, and causes hallucinations among people. Stuff like that. At first the Spirit can't really control its transformations, but it learns to do so.
Miracles: What kind of conflicts does the Spirit cause? For example, there is a society whose way of life - let's say fishing - has recently become impossible, due to their water source being dammed for agriculture. A person is walking through the forest and witnesses the Spirit trying out the form of a beaver, grawing down a tree. He is affected by the divine presence, and believes he has seen a sign from God (which nobody believed in till now) that their culture must now become loggers, and sell the lumber from the forest. He leaves, and meanwhile, the Spirit decides to become a bear, who hunts and kills a squirrel. Another person from the village sees this, and interprets that they should be hunters, and sell furs for their livelihood. This starts a schism in the society, with each side believing that their way is the divine truth.
Another example: The spirit is a rabbit, being chased by a tiger. It runs and runs, enjoying the chase, til suddenly it leaves the rabbit and morphs into a gigantic rock. The tiger conks into the huge rock, and is like, "WTF?" Now the rock is rabbit-shaped, and the people who witness this chase now have a story about how the rock came to be there. Maybe they think that the tiger was the divine one, a god in the form of a tiger trying to rape a maiden, who ran away until another god turned her into a rabbit-shaped rock. Like Apollo and Daphne, except they don't remember that specific myth.
Also: The Spirit possesses a cherry tree. As a funeral procession is passing through the woods, a cherry blossom falls onto the corpse. The person comes back to life again, possessed by the Spirit (and runs away and jumps into a lake or something). Now the cherry tree has holy significance for those people, and is a symbol of reincarnation. The lake is where they now bury people.
The Spirit goes into a stream, an virgin or infertile woman drinks from it and becomes pregnant. She gives birth to a divine child, embodied by the Spirit.
Things like that.
Brothers: The Brothers make contact with a village. This village is in Fortress's traditional territory, but is so far on the fringe it hasn't had any contact with them in ages. The people will only acknowledge the authority of the brothers if they pass some trials, like an arrow-shooting contest (Keith has superior weapons and might), a drinking challenge (they present the brothers with a disgusting concoction - Jeremy drinks it politely, Keith spews it out but everyone laughs and they all make friends), and Jeremy gains their trust by telling them the story of how their village came to be. Or he tells jokes. Not really sure here. Basically a way of showing characterization.
And Keith does something dastardly, something cruel for no good reason: stealing a child's toy, killing and eating someone's pet, impregnating a girl and then leaving her, something to show he's a bastard.
There's also a point where they're camping, tired, and arguing, but they start calling each other ridiculous names and end up laughing together.
And at some point, Keith sees Jenny bathing in a waterfall and is charmed by her, but she zaps him with her raygun.
There is a village near an abandoned, polluted, industrial site. In Jeremy's text about the world, it's noted that people know it is an ancient factory site, and that it's dangerous. But as they travel to find it, it turns out that now the people nearby have a mythological explanation for the crazy minerals in the water, that they never did before.
Revival: Keith has captured the Spirit in some form, and can control it to create miracles, like healing the sick. He is in front of a large crowd of people, demonstrating this, and trying to make them obey him. But Jeremy disagrees with this method, and defeats Keith's intention by bringing a form that the Spirit desires more than the one it's in. Turns out it wasn't really trapped after all, just comfortable in its form until it saw the more desirable one.
Revolt: The Underground people have subjugated some villagers and turned them into oppressed agricultural workers. Keith joins their resistance movement, and starts genuinely caring for people who aren't from his elite Fortress. Not sure exactly what happens here; maybe he uses the Spirit to help accomplish this.
Enlightenment: Jeremy finds an ancient book about eastern spirituality. He starts trying to live a monk's lifestyle, which his brother thinks is ridiculous. He performs good deeds even as he withdraws from society. At some point, he catches up to the Spirit, and tries to join its presence to receive enlightenment and transcend the sinful earth. But it doesn't work that way. The Spirit possesses him (maybe one of the rare times it takes over a person) and does something ridiculous instead. Jeremy realises that enlightenment cannot come from the divine. Not sure what the resolution of this episode will be. Dissatisfaction, most likely.
Climax: All three people are trying to catch the Spirit. It changes form quickly, evading their attempts, like that scene from The Sword in the Stone where the wizards transform. Eventually, it finds a reason to laugh at the antics of the brothers, and the laugh that escapes the creature's mouth contains the Spirit itself. Jenny catches it in the jar, incapacitates the brothers somehow, and returns to her underground world.
Resolution: Jenny returns triumphantly, and presents the jar of captured Divine Spirit to Professor Jones. BUT, Ethan is in the room also, and through an amazing transformation, his beauty leaves his body, opens the jar, and re-joins the rest of the Spirit! It turns out that when they originally added magical dust to the play-doh frog, some of the dust got onto Jeremy's skin (he was holding it), and he was possessed by a tiny amount of Spirit. That is what made him so good-looking and attractive. Now that the spirit has left him, he's rather plain looking. Jenny doesn't recognize him, or doesn't like him now that he's not beautiful (yeah, she's a bitch because of this), and runs away in tears. She leaves her underground society to become a doctor living in a hut on the surface, curing people who come to her with her advanced technology.
Premise: In the far future, the environment has finally recovered after a large-scale nuclear/environmental disaster. There are two major human civilizations: people who survived by retreating to high-tech underground tunnels, and people whose ancestors barely scraped by in the post-apocolyptic world after the disaster.
One day, a little girl in the underground world finds a sealed jar that contains all the divine force of the world. She opens the jar and the spirit escapes into the surface world! Because the spirit has been trapped, nobody in the world has experienced any sense of spirituality for thousands of years, so all religion and mythology has died out in human culture. But as this spirit travels around, taking different forms and possessing animals according to its random whims, the people who witness it experience a sense of genuine religious wonder, and then mis-interpret the spirit's actions to create new beliefs and religions.
A few years later, the girl who released the spirit isn't allowed to get married until she recaptures it. So she goes to the Surface in order to follow its trail. Meanwhile, two princes from the capital city of the Surface World are sent to find out more about the Underground World's recent forays to the Surface. They hear about this divine spirit, and want it for themselves - one to use it to control the population in a religious dictatorship, and the other to reach enlightenment. The story follows the adventures of all these people as they travel around amazing landscapes; meet different villages of people and find out about the ways their society is transformed by sudden mythology; and fight against each other to capture what is basically God.
Story Format: I want to try to make this a comic book with no text. That's because I don't think I'm great at dialogue, and I don't want everything to be taken up with explanations. I want it to be a bit of a mystery, and I want to try to communicate with gestures and exchanges. That said, there might be speech bubbles containing pictures, and there might be textual labels on objects. I am considering actually having text in the form of one character's travel journal, where he takes notes on the situations he encounters, and the comic looks at this journal sometimes.
Each miracle will take up a full page.
Characters:
All names are placeholder names, until I think of more meaningful or original ones.
Luc: 50 years old. When he was a teenager, he was the first member of the Underground society to venture onto the surface, when everyone believed it was still full of lava, radiation, disease, etc. He discovered that it was actually a beautiful paradise of healthy forests and rivers, and that people lived there too. (By the way, the setting of this story is totally stolen from what I remember of "Surreal 3000", which you can read about towards the end of this page: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/read-up-on-it/015020-5003-e.html) Luc is not really important except as background info, and a bit of a mentor to Jenny.
Professor Jones: Despicable, curmudgeonly guy who has a hoard of antiques, including the jar that contains divinity. He doesn't know what it is, but exploits its divine power in some way I'm not clear about yet. So when it's stolen, he's pissed off and bears a grudge about it.
Ethan: Professor's son or grandson, but a genuinely nice guy. Really good-looking, and Jenny's boyfriend. He's a couple years younger than her. They were friends as children before Jenny opened the jar of divinity, and afterwards not allowed to talk to each other any more (but they still do). He stays behind when she goes to the surface.
Jenny: A spunky child who accidentally releases the Divine Spirit into the world. As an adult, a successful young scientist - she invents a device that can detect and analyse biology with some kind of ray, and provide information about it on screen. She thinks she's so smart. She's crazily in love with Ethan, mostly because he's good-looking. Kind of sheltered and immature before heading out into the world. Very brave and daring. Not street-smart, not good at dealing with other people. She treats outsiders with condescension, and solves problems by shooting at them, or using her superior technology. She's amazed at the natural beauty of the world when she finds it. She plays an instrument. Goes through character development through the story, and ends up doing good deeds for others rather than being simply selfish.
The brothers: They are princes from the main Fortress of the Surface World civilization - not quite the next in line for rulership, so they're sent on a mission to find out more about the threat of Underground people colonizing the fringes of Fortress territory. I'm still kind of fuzzy about which traits each one has, but here are my notes:
Keith: The older brother. He's strong, a warrior, very loyal to his tribe of people. He's homesick. He cares deeply about Jeremy, even though he rags on him a bit for being too nerdy. He is xenophobic, considering outsiders to be less worthy of humane treatment. Power goes to his head - he loves having country bumpkins treat him with awe and respect, as a representative of Fortress. At home he isn't quite so powerful. He is a lout and an asshole, but charismatic anyway. When he runs into Jenny he's attracted to her, but it turns out they're enemies. Possibilities: When he witnesses the power that the Spirit has over people, he wants to capture it and use it to control and exploit people as a tyrant. He becomes injured at some point, or maybe dies. He helps out with a resistance movement for surface-people who have become exploited workers of the Underground people. He definitely fights with his own brother at some point.
Jeremy: The Younger Brother isn't a warrior, he's a scholar. He carries around an old book about the cultures of the world. He knows many stories and he's one of the few people in the world who remembers or cares that mythology once existed. He's interested in human behaviour, but a bit world-weary, maybe disappointed with human nature and its flaws. His role in this mission is to make maps and take notes. He's kind of a spy. He can come up with clever schemes and disguises. When his older brother is lonely, he tells stories of their homeland and how it came to be (a story with no mythology, of course). At some point in their travels, he discovers an ancient book about eastern philosophy, meditation, and a moral way of life. Now his goal is to reach enlightenment, and he searches for the Spirit in the hope of accomplishing this. Despite not being a very compassionate person (he's kind of withdrawn from people, kind of studying them clinically I guess) he tries to take on this lifestyle, practicing meditation, and trying out good deeds towards strangers - which earn him more friendly derision from his brother. Someone may be interested in him romantically, but he has little interest in romance, especially since he wants to become a holy man.
Various Townspeople: On the surface, there are hundreds of tiny little villages with little communication between them, and different ways of life. The three main characters travel around and encounter these people.
Betty: A Surface-World woman who is the leader of a resistance movement of the agricultural workers against the Underground people. I haven't figured out much about her personality, besides being strong of course. Basically, once the Underground discovered the surface, they realised that the food up there tasted a lot better than the synthetic meals their high-tech computers were able to produce. So there is now a huge demand underground for organic, natural, sun-grown food. They started colonizing the land above, exploiting the surface people for their labour. I still need to figure out WHAT they offer the workers that they can't get on their own - I don't think money makes sense, so maybe technology, or medical care, or gems, or drugs. I'm considering genetic therapy - perhaps the surface people have inherited all sorts of mutations and deformities from the time of nuclear radiation, and the underground people have the technology to cure them, or have a bank of genetic material they offer, so that the mutants can have normal offspring.
The Spirit: Our story posits that there is a real divine force in the world, an omnipotent force that can be sensed by people. Any time someone has a vision from God, or hears the wind and imagines it's a voice, or speaks in tongues, or is inspired to create a fairy tale, or senses a power greater than themselves - it's because they are sensing the Spirit. It really exists, and people's brains have an ability to detect it. Every religion and myth all over the world was inspired by someone sensing or witnessing its presence. Every god and goddess was it. In our story, it has been somehow trapped in a jar for thousands of years, so nobody has been able to sense it during that time, and everybody is an atheist.
But it's amoral, and hedonistic, and doesn't care about people at all. When people are in its presence, part of their brain's reaction is to misinterpret the Spirit, and ascribe all sorts of meaning to the miracle they are witnessing. The morality, judgmental, narrative aspects of religion come from the people themselves, but they fervently believe that those aspects came from the God they encountered.
It's more like a trickster spirit. It just wants to have fun. It can possess bodies, possess inanimate objects and make them come to life, bend the laws of physics, split itself into two beings. (It is normally hundreds or thousands of different beings, splitting and merging and being different Gods in different places. Or it could even be in the form of a gas that blankets the whole planet.) I'm not sure whether dividing itself up makes it less potent - I think it does. It's immortal - its bodies can die, but it never can. It is NOT omniscient - in fact, it forgets things very quickly, and is actually rather naive. When it takes on a form, it usually takes on some of the personality and aspects of that form. So if it possesses a bunny rabbit, it will feel the fear of the animal. It does this out of choice, because to some extent, it enjoys negative emotions as much as positive. Its main driving force is curiosity.
It can only affect an object when it is possessing that object. So if we had something like a magical ring in our story, it would mean that the Spirit is inside it. It doesn't leave behind magical residue of any sort.
It can be trapped in some kind of soul-jar (that is why it's been away from humanity, not causing any myths, for so long). I guess it's the one substance that the being cannot overpower. Or maybe it CAN, but being in the jar causes so much pure pleasure to the Spirit, that it doesn't want to.
Despite not giving a shit about humanity, it can be lured or pleased with burnt sacrifices that cause a pleasing smell, or by beautifully-played music. It might sometimes experience sexual attraction.
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Technology: This isn't really a story about believable, logically consistant technology. It's like those old books and comics where nuclear radiation can do any damn thing the plot wants it to do - although I don't have that type of nuclear magic in the story in that way.
The Underground society have a very comfortable and peaceful life. I guess they have some kind of amazing mineral they mine that can run their computers and air purifiers and food-growers and whatever. But there is nothing like oil or gasoline that can enable quick, long-range transportation like we have in our world. There is also no artificial intelligence, no human-like robots. I just don't want those things in the story, so there :P
They have a lot of data about the old world stored on computers, which they rarely consult. Jenny invents a device that can detect and analyse plants and their biological properties, then consults its database, and provides information on how it can be used (based on its stored data). This is meant to be useful now that the Underground people are venturing to the surface for farming - and it's helpful to her when she ventures to the surface herself, because despite not having even basic survival skills, it tells her what she can eat, how to prepare it, how to make medicine, what animals to run away from, etc.
She also probably has a stungun. Not sure if it actually kills people or just temporarily puts them into a coma.
Setting: Anyway, most of the story takes place above-ground, where you have to get around by walking mostly, and where nature has recovered from humanity's influence, since people almost died out, and only surivied in limited numbers and primitive societies. You can pretty much walk around and pick delicious fruit off a tree, or kill abundant small prey, although poisonous food and vicious animals are a danger. There are also some dangerous sites, like rivers that are still polluted, or deserts that haven't yet recovered, or places where radiation will make you sick. And maybe some rusting vestiges of old factories, cities and whatnot, all overgrown with vines and inhabited by animals.
Episodes: Some things that might happen:
Escape of the Spirit: As children, Jenny and Ethan are playing in the Professor's house. They're making creatures out of play-doh. Ethan makes a frog, based on a reference from a textbook about extinct animals. Jenny snoops in the Professor's secret room of antiques. She finds the Jar and sees sparkly dust inside. She opens it and dumps it over the play-doh frog, to make it sparkly and pretty. But the frog comes to life! It dances around a bit, and the children, delighted, try to catch it. It runs away down the hallway and eventually escapes. When the Professor comes home to find his priceless jar stolen, he's so angry he forbids Jenny to ever talk to his son again.
Proposal: Jenny is now 20 years old, and a Science student with great promise. At her young age, she has already created a device that can detect biological properties with a ray. She has secretly been dating Ethan, and she goes to his father to ask for Ethan's hand in marriage. She puts on a ridiculous formal outfit, and tries to convince Professor Jones that as a rising star in society, she would make a great partner for his son. But Jones still holds a grudge, since his own value in society has diminished since the theft of the jar (for some reason). He refuses.
Jenny decides she must go into the Outside World and recover the Spirit. She talks to Luc, the old man who, as a child, was the first from their society to venture into the outside world. He tells her how to find a new, secret exit to the outside (it's forbidden for just anyone to go). She researches what equipment she'll need to travel, steals it or uses a high-tech 3D printer to make it, and leaves.
Her initial adventures include: being amazed at the beautiful landscape; being poisoned by a plant and using her technological device to find out how to cure it using other plants; wounding a stranger she finds; playing her instrument to herself and finding that it attracts the Spirit; encountering and fighting with the Brothers, etc.
Spirit Discovers Itself: After a long time imprisoned, the Spirit can't really remember its capabilities. It's in the form of a frog, and above-ground. By instinct, it catches a fly. To its surprise, now it sprouts fly-wings from its frog-self. It has become a hybrid of both animals. Then it sees some other creatures having sex, so it splits itself into two frogs, and has sex with itself. It morphs back into one frog. An animal comes along and eats it. After that animal takes a shit, the shit decomposes into the ground, and a holy tree grows, which gets out of the ground and walks around, or does something else unusual. The tree is burned up in a fire, and the smoke is holy, and causes hallucinations among people. Stuff like that. At first the Spirit can't really control its transformations, but it learns to do so.
Miracles: What kind of conflicts does the Spirit cause? For example, there is a society whose way of life - let's say fishing - has recently become impossible, due to their water source being dammed for agriculture. A person is walking through the forest and witnesses the Spirit trying out the form of a beaver, grawing down a tree. He is affected by the divine presence, and believes he has seen a sign from God (which nobody believed in till now) that their culture must now become loggers, and sell the lumber from the forest. He leaves, and meanwhile, the Spirit decides to become a bear, who hunts and kills a squirrel. Another person from the village sees this, and interprets that they should be hunters, and sell furs for their livelihood. This starts a schism in the society, with each side believing that their way is the divine truth.
Another example: The spirit is a rabbit, being chased by a tiger. It runs and runs, enjoying the chase, til suddenly it leaves the rabbit and morphs into a gigantic rock. The tiger conks into the huge rock, and is like, "WTF?" Now the rock is rabbit-shaped, and the people who witness this chase now have a story about how the rock came to be there. Maybe they think that the tiger was the divine one, a god in the form of a tiger trying to rape a maiden, who ran away until another god turned her into a rabbit-shaped rock. Like Apollo and Daphne, except they don't remember that specific myth.
Also: The Spirit possesses a cherry tree. As a funeral procession is passing through the woods, a cherry blossom falls onto the corpse. The person comes back to life again, possessed by the Spirit (and runs away and jumps into a lake or something). Now the cherry tree has holy significance for those people, and is a symbol of reincarnation. The lake is where they now bury people.
The Spirit goes into a stream, an virgin or infertile woman drinks from it and becomes pregnant. She gives birth to a divine child, embodied by the Spirit.
Things like that.
Brothers: The Brothers make contact with a village. This village is in Fortress's traditional territory, but is so far on the fringe it hasn't had any contact with them in ages. The people will only acknowledge the authority of the brothers if they pass some trials, like an arrow-shooting contest (Keith has superior weapons and might), a drinking challenge (they present the brothers with a disgusting concoction - Jeremy drinks it politely, Keith spews it out but everyone laughs and they all make friends), and Jeremy gains their trust by telling them the story of how their village came to be. Or he tells jokes. Not really sure here. Basically a way of showing characterization.
And Keith does something dastardly, something cruel for no good reason: stealing a child's toy, killing and eating someone's pet, impregnating a girl and then leaving her, something to show he's a bastard.
There's also a point where they're camping, tired, and arguing, but they start calling each other ridiculous names and end up laughing together.
And at some point, Keith sees Jenny bathing in a waterfall and is charmed by her, but she zaps him with her raygun.
There is a village near an abandoned, polluted, industrial site. In Jeremy's text about the world, it's noted that people know it is an ancient factory site, and that it's dangerous. But as they travel to find it, it turns out that now the people nearby have a mythological explanation for the crazy minerals in the water, that they never did before.
Revival: Keith has captured the Spirit in some form, and can control it to create miracles, like healing the sick. He is in front of a large crowd of people, demonstrating this, and trying to make them obey him. But Jeremy disagrees with this method, and defeats Keith's intention by bringing a form that the Spirit desires more than the one it's in. Turns out it wasn't really trapped after all, just comfortable in its form until it saw the more desirable one.
Revolt: The Underground people have subjugated some villagers and turned them into oppressed agricultural workers. Keith joins their resistance movement, and starts genuinely caring for people who aren't from his elite Fortress. Not sure exactly what happens here; maybe he uses the Spirit to help accomplish this.
Enlightenment: Jeremy finds an ancient book about eastern spirituality. He starts trying to live a monk's lifestyle, which his brother thinks is ridiculous. He performs good deeds even as he withdraws from society. At some point, he catches up to the Spirit, and tries to join its presence to receive enlightenment and transcend the sinful earth. But it doesn't work that way. The Spirit possesses him (maybe one of the rare times it takes over a person) and does something ridiculous instead. Jeremy realises that enlightenment cannot come from the divine. Not sure what the resolution of this episode will be. Dissatisfaction, most likely.
Climax: All three people are trying to catch the Spirit. It changes form quickly, evading their attempts, like that scene from The Sword in the Stone where the wizards transform. Eventually, it finds a reason to laugh at the antics of the brothers, and the laugh that escapes the creature's mouth contains the Spirit itself. Jenny catches it in the jar, incapacitates the brothers somehow, and returns to her underground world.
Resolution: Jenny returns triumphantly, and presents the jar of captured Divine Spirit to Professor Jones. BUT, Ethan is in the room also, and through an amazing transformation, his beauty leaves his body, opens the jar, and re-joins the rest of the Spirit! It turns out that when they originally added magical dust to the play-doh frog, some of the dust got onto Jeremy's skin (he was holding it), and he was possessed by a tiny amount of Spirit. That is what made him so good-looking and attractive. Now that the spirit has left him, he's rather plain looking. Jenny doesn't recognize him, or doesn't like him now that he's not beautiful (yeah, she's a bitch because of this), and runs away in tears. She leaves her underground society to become a doctor living in a hut on the surface, curing people who come to her with her advanced technology.