The Premise

The Schedule

The Concept

The Download

The Backstory

The Characters

Keys of the Endpoint is an illustrated fantasy story about several personal journeys interlocking and ending up in a chaotic place called the Endpoint. Upon arriving in the Endpoint they each receive a power in the form of a key and must use it to survive or have it stolen from them and die.At least one chapter will be released each month. All chapters except the latest is available publicly for free. Become a patreon to get the latest chapter one month sooner than the public release.The thought behind the project is to write a story with powers that you can find in fantasy and sci fi like x-men, heroes, superhero movies, sanderson books and the like. But to expand on it with an internally logical system that allows you to combine and modify powers with others and extend the capabilities and usage of them. This also enables a sense of progression which I guess makes this progression fantasy as well (I love progression fantasy). The main initial drive behind the series will simply be the characters, their personal stories and introductions in the beginning. After a while however, the overarching goal of the project will be to give the reader a first row seat to the creation of the first real civilization, society and culture in a brand spanking new world. The purpose of the story is to basically let the reader be a witness to history.You can find Chapter One here: https://mega.nz/#!wOYD0Ywb!bOwOH1ZFBnCkksUUOU1y2cl... : There's a lot of spoilers from this point on so if you are already interested you can totally just skip this for the ethical reading experience.An undisclosed ancient people from a dimension different to ours invented (discovered?!) keys that could amplify the human senses and abilities to great lengths making every living person on their planet close to superhuman. This ushered forth a golden age and for millennia all was well. But they could not stop there of course: A new discovery theorized the possibility for the keys to open up portals or worm-holes through space, enabling instant transportation! This was too good to pass up and the entire planets economy and political structure was soon dedicated to this grand teleportation project. Then everything went to shit.Space-time became too unstable and large electrical storms of unprecedented scale and with strange characteristics terrorized the planets surface. After the storms had settled, the ancient and advanced civilization was gone. But soon, new people began arriving to what they soon dubbed "the Endpoint". These people, whisked away from their own dimensions, place and time, who had walked into natural phenomena like storms, fog, hurricanes and mists (walked into hurricanes, lol) in their own worlds, came stumbling out the other end to a new world. To a world filled to the brim with rubble, vehicles, strange technologies, foreign writing, alien fauna and miles upon miles with broken buildings covered in unrestrained vegetation. The bronze keys of their (step-)forefathers lay scattered about the landscape.So the ancients project had worked in a sense, but not in the way they had intended. Stranger still, the ancients old birthright protocol, a planet-encompassing equity project that aimed to provide one bronze key to every newborn child in the world upon their birth, began to warp as well and behave in new and unintended ways. The birthright project began to provide keys to the newcomers as well. But these keys were nothing like the superhuman keys of old, these new keys had their caps removed, their limits superseded and the superhuman soon turned to the supernatural. Wondrous abilities and gruesome conflict ensued., in his 30s, comes from our world in the timeline of 2011 and works as a free-lance detective of sorts (with the coat and hat and everything, he says it helps with the expectations his customers have) in Colorado, Usa. His brother Finn goes missing after a hurricane strafes their hometown and is presumed dead. But no body is found. Isac is unable to accept his brothers death, (ton of family drama and regrets involved here, family reunions anyone?) and becomes obsessed with a theory he has about a connection between missing persons and natural catastrophes. Through his investigations, Isac eventually finds his way to the Endpoint, always searching for his lost (in more ways than one) brother Finn., in her 20s, is a girl born in the Endpoint. Her parents were refugees from a war in a different world during a time similar to our renaissance. An orphan, she is raised by a rag-tag group of survivors of the chaotic Endpoint along with her trusted lieutenant, a man filled with remorse for being a part in bringing the war to her old people, resulting in the death of her parents. Asters case is particularly interesting as the birthright project goes especially haywire with newborns after the breaking and grants them gleaming golden keys, brimming with untapped power, bizarrely making all newborn babies targets for kidnapping and murder. Aster, against all odds, is one of the few to survive to adulthood, seeing as the new era of the Endpoint is only thirty years old.To protect those remaining in her rag-tag group she strikes a deal with the slippery Tejahl. In return for the protection Tejahl provides, Aster must give up her golden key as a deposit to, in theory, ensure Asters loyalty. Aster must also collect keys for Tejahl and work with her bandit gangs to uphold order and round up newcomers. She continued in this position until one day her path crossed with a peculiar newcomer who claimed he had entered the Endpoint not by chance, but on purpose. He is looking for his missing brother. Not only that, but he intends to return to where he came from., in his 50s, is one of the ancients and the only survivor of the breaking (but is he though?). He comes from an equally ancient family line and was hailed as a prodigy by his peers and made the first heir to the De Gamo dynasty. He declined and renounced his position in favor of stealing one of his family's many airships to smuggle refugees across borders blocked by raging warfare. Refugees forced away from their homes because of the total collapse of a country. (Coincidentally also a country Falco himself destabilized btw)So when the breaking takes place Falco is doubly lucky to find himself both at the precipice of the event AND in the air at the same time. Falco then spends two decades trying to establish a new government with the first newcomers, he achieves some initial success but ultimately fails. He then travels in his airship for a time researching the storms and the arrival of newcomers through them. That is until one day he rescues a remarkably optimistic and broadsmiled young man, reminding Falco of himself from a different time. Sure he is a bit naive, clumsy... or stupid even. But he has the right attitude. So yes, Falco decides to take this strapping young man, this Finn, under his wing. Teach him how to be a man. How to lead. Someone with such a sunny disposition can't do wrong, right?