"Portico" storyboard

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Portico Storyboard

The fiction Universe behind Portico takes place 1,000 past an apocolyptic event which wiped out the prior human civilization - to see how the human race was "reborn" read (Fate's Horizon). Civilization is starting to rebuild, and learn from the advanced humans (Cyberans) who lived before. There are two rival factions. The Dawsians and the Baquists engaged in a war.

The technological (and greatly outnumbered) faction Dawsians take control of a Cyberan orbital station and begin to restore it to running order. Upon reviving the craft they come across a discovery; there is a weapon on board of unmached destruction. As the Baquist intelligence gets knowledge of this, they plan a hijacking operation - sneaking their men aboard a cargo ship.

The men inside the cargoship - a Baquist special forces team - take every deck of the ship except for the captain's bridge. The captain, realizing the weapon will fall into enemy hands, engages the ship's engine to over capacity destroying the engines in the process and leaving the ship hopelessly adrift.

After the disapearance of the Portico both sides engage in a race to find it. It takes several years before they come across the Portico. When they come across the ship they find the weapon completely destroyed, and discover the remarkable story of the doomed men aboard the Portico in its place.

What happened was both sides aboard the Portico realized that they were going to die. The enemies got to know one another and realized how pointless and tragic the war was and vowed to destroy the weapon so that no one side would be able to use it against the other. They documented their time together- the story is uncovered and transmitted to earth. The story is so compelling it brings the war to an end.

The story centers on a conflict between two tribes. The first tribe is a tribe of white people who live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the forest while the second tribe is one of black people who have agriculture and cattle and are recent settlers in the land. At one point in time the two tribes made an unwritten treaty declaring a certain river to be the boundary mark between their respective territories.

Enter the male protagonist, a young member of the white tribe who has a grudge against the black people for killing his parents in a battle before the treaty. Working hard to improve his hunting prowess, he eventually becomes his tribe's leading hunter. The hero uses this to seek revenge against the black tribe by leading a poaching expedition against their cattle. However, his raid goes awry, leaving him injured.

The hero finds himself being nursed back to health by a young black woman who has taken pity on him. At first the other black people shun the protagonist and question his helper, but by rescuing the black village from a dangerous animal, he earns their respect. He also learns the advantages of agriculture and animal husbandry over hunting and gathering, falls in love with the black woman, and marries her.

Eventually the protagonist decides he wants to bring his new wife and her tribe's way of life back to his tribe, but can he persuade the other white people to abandon their old traditions?

That's a rather nice ending which I imagine must be very rare in sci-fi or any other spec. fiction genre. Usually you have one side defeating the other instead of both sides realizing the error of their ways.

I thought you wrote a good story. It's a genre which I think has been largely left unwritten. Not only does it have morality of overcoming grudges, but race too. I wonder if their kids would inherit the good qualities of both races? - I can't help but feel there's an anthropological significance in the story.