Plot Devices

From Fantasy Novel

• Have one of the sequel novels begin with talk of a mysterious plague that has begun sweeping through the land. The reader had last seen the heroes and land triumphant, victorious or whatever, and begin the second or third novel with a shadow cast over the story and its characters due to the plague.

• During 2258, Commander Jeffrey Sinclair leads the station. Much of the story revolves around his gradual discovery that it was his capture by the Minbari at the Battle of the Line which ended the war against Earth. Upon capturing Sinclair, the Minbari came to believe that Valen, a great Minbari leader and hero of the last Minbari-Shadow war, had been reincarnated as the Commander. Concluding that others of their species had been, and were being, reborn as humans, and in obedience to the edict that Minbari do not kill one another, they stopped the war just when Earth's final defences were on the verge of collapse.
  
  Ambassador Delenn is gradually revealed to be a member of the mysterious and powerful Grey Council, the planetary legislature of the Minbari. Towards the end of 2258, she begins the transformation into a Minbari-human hybrid, ostensibly to build a bridge between the humans and Minbari.
  
  The year ends with the assassination of Earth Alliance President Santiago, and with the escalation of tensions between the Narn and Centauri, after a Narn outpost in Quadrant 37 is completely destroyed by an as-yet-unidentified third party.