Trying to consider where the Shadow Age premise came from at this point approaches on being speculative. It started as a basic narrative idea I had around seven or so years ago that had nothing to do with the current world, and I developed it as a story for film. I actually think there were alternate realities and time travel involved in the beginning - there was something in there about a feudal society gaining access to futuristic atomic technology. I grew to like the characters I had developed, but wanted a more down-to-earth environment to play with them in (thinking of the Shadow Age premise as down-to-earth is absurd, I know, but when compared with the original idea it's practically a documentary).Shadow Age then developed as a single screenplay idea - a war between feudal lords, one of which is a genocidal madman, set in a wasteland. This story has become the basis for the entire saga, and has remained intact all this time, except now it's just the biggest, most climactic part of a much broader tale.
When we produced the original Shadow Age short film in 2003, it was mostly a construction of throw-away ideas to act as a proof of concept for the larger story. I really enjoyed playing with the world, though, and eventually developed that throw-away story into what could have been a feature-length prelude to the main film. We actually meant to produce some of this story at one point, but the production demands would have been too broad and costly for us to shoulder, so it's been shelved all this time.
Fast forward to now, and I have dozens of smaller ideas to build the world out of. Settling on an episodic web series has finally given me an outlet for these ideas (and perhaps an outlet for others to collaborate with us with their own interpretations). At this point, the series will begin with smaller stories that develop the canon and characters, and if all goes well, we'll eventually lead into the "prelude" story arc mentioned above.
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