Unwritten Stories--Explanation

The purpose of this post is to describe all the ideas I had for stories following The War in the City series.   Since I never finished The War in the City, I consequently never got around to these other stories.  But I want to write down some of these ideas nonetheless--mostly because these unwritten ideas would form the basis for my subsequent story, so I want to explain the genesis of those ideas here.   
This post is also an extension of the previous post--"Explaining War in the City", and it is meant to be read after it.  
As I mentioned in "Explaining War in the City", even though I never finished War in the City, I did have the plot all mapped out in my head.  And in the 2nd to the last section of "Explaining War in the City", entitled "Where I Was Going", I explained what the ending of War in the City would have been, had I stuck with it.  This post picks  up from there.

Because I've always been a lazy writer but a prolific daydreamer, I always have hundreds of stories floating around in my head that I never get around to writing.  And so it was Fabulae.  I had all these plans for what I was going to do next once I finally finished War in the City.  And then I never finished War in the City, and so consequently never got around to writing the other stories.  But this is a record of my daydreams. 

To reiterate what I said at the end of Explaining War in the City, I planned to end War in the City with Pompey and Diana established as rulers of the city.  Like Julius Caesar, they would avoid the terms "King" or "Queen", but they would essentially be absolute rulers in all but name.  This would be a turning point in the history of The Watchers.  I intended that the reign of Pompey and Diana would last for many years, so all the remainder of the stories I envisioned in The City would happen under Pompey's rule.  From this point on, democracy was over, and the future storylines would take place in an autocratic city.

In spite of the fact that Pompey's intended character arc in War in the City was a degeneration into violence and corruption, I wasn't planning on portraying the ruler Pompey as someone who was purely evil.  His bad qualities were that he was autocratic and always used violence to solve problems.  His good qualities were that he genuinely cared about the welfare of the city, and wanted to do what he could to protect it.  So he could play both the good guy or the bad guy in the future depending on the storylines.  In stories when the plot was about protecting The City from some sort of outside threat, Pompey would be one of the good guys.  But there would also be storylines in which the plot would be about trying to establish more freedom in the city, and then Pompey would come off as a bad guy.

I was very pleased with myself for thinking up a character that was both good and bad at the same time, and I thought this was all very nuanced and clever.  (Or it would have been, had I ever gotten around to writing those stories.  It never became more than an idea, but I thought it was a cool idea.)  However, in the years since, I've since read any number of books that have a similar idea.  Lord Vetinari in the Discworld series, for example, is something I've come across in the years since, but it's very much the kind of the vibe I was going for.  

I had a lot of vague ideas for stories I would do during the reign of Pompey and Diana.  I'll detail some of them below.

One idea was to get The Watchers out of The City and out into Fabulae more.
You see, when I started the world of Fabulae (way back in Dishon Chapter 1), it was a medieval fantasy.  The Watchers were originally supposed to be just one of several stories within this Fantasy world (before I realized that I only had enough energy to write one story at a time).  But I was beginning to feel that The Watcher's City was really claustrophobic.  Everything was inside.  (And in my head, I envisioned The City to look a lot like the interior of the Starship Enterprise--white walls and white corridors with artificial light).  Even though The City only existed within my imagination, in my own imagination I was beginning to feel bored with it.  I wanted to write stories about places outside with green forests and blue skies.
I had already begun trying to integrate more and more greenery into The City.  (Over the course of my stories, I begun imagining more and more parks, trees, grass and parks inside the City, and even an artificial blue sky).  But I wanted more.   

I had planned that Peter would end up with a group called "The Waiters" at the end of War in the City.  I was planning that The Waiters would live in the outskirts of the city, in which there was a sort of artificial nature preserve that was also enclosed within the cities boundaries.  I was thinking how I could do more stories that would take place in this environment, but I didn't have any clear ideas.

I remember in the spring of 12th grade going on a hiking trip in Northern Michigan with my Church Youth Group.  It was called the "No Wimp Camping Trip" because it was supposed to take place in winter, but actually when we went, it was just as the snow was beginning to melt, and the greenery of the forest was becoming apparent.  I remember spending a couple days walking through the forest--I was with a group of other boys, but we also spent a lot of time walking in silence, and as I was looking around at the forest, a began to think about what kind of stories could take place in this forest.  And I decided I wanted to think of some way to get my own characters into a forest like this.
I had some sort of vague idea that somewhere in Fabulae there would be a Robin Hood type character deep in a green forest.