Not the self-fulfilling prophecy part. I’m not sure if my universe will have prophecy/divination or not, yet, but I really don’t like it. Dune did a good job with it, so it is possible. I just don’t like the idea of it. It makes the future and free will weird.
I’m talking about the “I’m afraid of you so I’m going to control you, which is what causes you to hate me, whereas if I’d just left you alone, none of this would have happened” part. More of a self-fulfilling chain events than “prophecy”.
This is a core premise of Return of the Strongest Healer. It’s also very human (although absolutely baffling to me, personally).
This is the direction in which the reactions of whatever remains of the US government/military toward our intrepid werewolves are going to trend because nothing makes a government exert more control than something that threatens its sovereignty.
I haven’t figured out how to deescalate that, yet. The escalation is obvious enough, but how to stop it before it gets out of hand is harder. Especially since our intrepid pack leader is already, in book one, working to subvert that control (there is a reason I needed to get the sector numbers figured out).
I don’t think anything below a nation-state is a threat to our intrepid heroes. It’s the sheer amount of resources that can be brought to bear that’s the issue. No ONE is strong enough, but nation-states are not “one”s. They are, by definition, “many”s.
Our heroes will run into peer or near-peer opposition (or the story is boring), but anything beyond that would be even more threatening to the powers-that-be than our werewolves so would probably be focused on before them.
On the other hand, low-hanging fruit is a thing. “Get the werewolf issue settled, then we’ll move on to the bigger problem of the necromancer” is not a crazy plan. “Point the werewolves at the necromancer then we’ll pick up the pieces” is a much better plan, though.
The featured image is a contender. It’s short on color and glowing things, but I like it, despite the ripped jeans.
Marked Up 