#willow-grimoire

An Age of Darkened Heroes:

Set in a neon-drenched, alternate version of Earth, a world where the undeniable presence of parahumans throughout the entirety of human existence has changed history into a bright and twisted version of what we know, this is the story of the supervillain Deorcnysse, a former Redcoat given immortality and immense power by a demon lord, on his brutal campaign to conquer the human race.

Age of Darkened Heroes features (what I consider to be) a interesting alternate history with a cyberpunk aesthetic, both the result of parahumans existing throughout most of humanity’s past, with a cast of all original superheroes and villains engaged in a complex and often political conflict.

I started working on this concept because I wanted to write something where the main character is an actual villain, actually evil, not an antihero, no redemption arc, no secret positive motives or anything like that. Deorcnysse is a true villain, utterly unaffected by criminality and the loss of life or anything approaching morality in his efforts to complete a simple goal shared by his demonic partner: dominate.

A Traveler's Tale:

Blessedbe Morringer has had a hard life. What other kind of life could it be, with a name like Blessedbe and a family like his? Since they met, his parents went from agnostic, to new age spiritualists, to non-denominational something-or-other (his Pa’s words), to evangelical christians, to the kind of christians who move their family across the country to a compound in Appalachian foothills of Tennessee just in time for the birth of their youngest kids, Blessedbe and his identical twin sister Praisebe. 

I won’t bore you with the details of their numerous, esoteric, and unfortunately often hateful beliefs, but suffice it to say that Bless, as he prefers to be called, would doubtless be beaten if his parents ever found out he knew what “transgender” was, much less that he *is* trans. 

Then one day, when he was almost 17, his life got harder: a sudden slide, a sudden-er drop, and a sudden-est stop, and his ma and pa, oldest brother Daryl, youngest brother Jubilation, favorite sibling Springfield, all just... gone. 

And now he discovers a new fear, for who will he live with now? Alas, the wrong choice is forced upon this young man: he goes not to his father’s numerous siblings back in California, but to the sisters (and I suppose brothers, though they hardly count, even by their own standards) of his Ma, and suddenly her strictness, intolerance, and penchant for viciousness seem almost pleasant.

He cannot stay here, in this big dark house, so silent and yet so brimming with noise. And so, at the urging of his brother and sister, he leaves, running into the woods, taking a rifle his great-grandfather wielded in WWI, a good sturdy knife from the kitchen, all the clothes he can carry, a lighter, and a set of encyclopedias almost as old as the gun. 

After weeks of trying to live in unfamiliar forests (forests he would have known were in Maine if his aunts had bothered to tell him where they moved him too), he stumbles into an unknown town and in desperation pawns his rifle. Soon out of money, the poor teen resorts to stealing a strange book with clockwork on its cover from a small curios store on the edge of town, hoping it will be enough to recover his prized rifle.

Caught redhanded by the owner, Bless runs for it, back into the forest. No sign of pursuit, but it doesn’t matter. Weeks of isolation, months of abuse, years of fear filling his mind, he runs, smacks his head on a twisted trees, and falls down a long slope.

Waking after his tumble, Bless scrabbles in the deep leaf cover for his things, his pack with clothes and food, bookbag with encyclopedias and knife, the stolen book, his... rifle. But, he hasn’t gone back for that yet...

Wait

Wait wait wait, hold on.

Is that a squirrel?

Why does it have a sword? 

ENDURING; or, ÞRÁÐUR

More than 1000 years ago, a young man fled the blasphemy of christian Normandy, heading north towards the homeland of his people.

On the journey, a storm struck his longship, wrecking it upon an unknown shore. Upon the desolate island, a tower, and a stranger.

Displaying unnatural power, the stranger struck down the survivors one by one, before the young man took up one of the island's stones and struck down the killer.

The ship destroyed, the young man survived on the island for months, before eventually another came, seeking revenge for the death of the stranger.

In desperation, the young man spoke read from an ancient book held in the tower, and began to meet the new threat with eerie powers of his own.

Alas, this was not enough, and the young man turned his power to the island itself, warping its trees and stones into a great ship, which he poured his new power into and sailed away in.

Slipping in and out of time on this strange vessel, the man would meet a woman, and start a family, eventually giving his life to the ship to further protect his family from the forces that still hunt them.

In the modern day, the man's great-grandchildren still live on the ship, still watched over by his wife, still hunted. Empowered by the ship Enduring, his descendants struggle to survive their enemies, the world, and each other, as a shadow from their past brings all together.

Sagas of High Imorre:

Everyone knows there are 12 races inhabiting the world of High Imorre. Everyone knows the old chant, roughly translated from some forgotten tongue thousands of years ago, just out of the memory of the oldest Aelfy:

Aelfy and Druings. Strong of magic, long of life. Ancient enemies for dominion of the forest.

Dwaurvs and M’e’rr. Insular, mysterious, inaccessible. Grown strong from their mastery of their elements.

Sunfolk and Chythych. Peaceful, amiable, terrible when threatened. Content to live in their own places, among their own kind.

Jants and Lost Unrisen. Wisest, eldest, wanderers. Long memories breed long nightmares, and homes are forgotten.

Arukendi’i, Humhuns. and Scaled. Proud, warlike, glorious. Ever expanding, ever advancing. Great devotion to dead gods means great deeds in their service.

Ffae. Strange. Magical. Indiscernible. Alien. Custodians of magic, keepers of stories. Madmen who summon armies with their laughter.

But across the mightiest seas of the world lays a lost land, with a people not new, but forgotten, save for the eternal hatred earned by their ancient crimes, and they have another verse for the chant of Men of Imorre:

Orcs. Reviled. Cast down. Men in the shape of beasts, or beasts in the shape of men. From their hands flows blood to drown nations, and iron to rebuild them.

Too long have the Orcs suffered, exiled for grand deaths they no longer remember, yoked by a true tyrant, an immortal sorcerer of historic power, currently in the guise of the Boy-King, Al-Hannerapt. Too long have they been denied their freedom and their identity, their culture twisted into a cruel parody of children’s tales and their ancient khanholds forced together, their treasures, their art, their culture, and their lands amalgamated and perverted by an evil of old who thinks of naught but power.

Too long has this endured, but no longer. Patience is the most valued of Orcish traits, and the strong blood of Urgor has deemed the wait long enough. With chain and with sword, with cunning and with ferocity, Urgor-in-Exile will reach out its hand, the vengeance of a thousand years of Orcish slavery, and the Ceaseless One will cease, drowned by blood as the chant forewarns.

StormWorld:

A world of magic, dragons, and unending rain, ravaged by strange invaders with impossible machines. Gods silent, alliances crumbling, the inhabitants of Vorsagaard are rapidly losing ground to the multiheaded hydra of the conquerors from some strange distant world, a hydra held back only by its ignorance of their lifeblood, their magic.

On another strange and distant world, a boy awakens. Or at least, he thinks he’s a boy. Seventeen year old Tyne Jefferson has only recently come to the conclusion that he might, in fact, be a he, much less a boy. Probably gonna keep the “they”, though. That feels right.

Recently graduated from high school, Tyne lives a privileged life as the child of a successful tech millionaire, beta testing the games produced by their father’s labor-of-love game studio like the smash hit MMO StormWorld, streaming, and gaming competitively across the world. Little does Tyne know, but soon, Vorsagaard, the Storm World itself, and its many gods, will reach across time and space to pull them towards a home he never knew he needed, and a conflict already far beyond stopping.

The Annals of Humanity and the Stars:

TAOHATS (my preferred acronym cause it just seems funnier than AHS) is one of my three largest story concepts, alongside StormWorld (see above, my oldest concept by... a lot, more than a decade old at this point), and the Heraldic Ages, listed below. TAOHATS is designed more as a setting for stories to be told in than a concept with both a setting and a story at it’s heart like most of my work. It’s an expansive sci-fi world with some space opera or fantasy elements, inspired by some of my favorite series, like Star Wars, Red Rising, Safehold, Out of the Dark, Frontlines, Mistborn, and Powder Mage. 

Currently TAOHATS is divided into 3 main eras, a feature you’ll find mirrored in the Heraldic Ages, each centered around a single story, though I do plan to have more. In the interest of some semblance of brevity (wasted on this post, I know, I mean look at that sentence, good gods), I’ll save the explanations of each story’s plot for a different post, and instead try to give a brief overview of each era’s setting to try and explain the world as a whole.

The Annals of the Long Search: set on the Nova Futura, the largest spacefaring vessel ever constructed by humanity. The Futura was built in haste to pursue another ship, the Nova Caelum, Earth’s first attempt at a colony ship, which had been launched through, and seemingly delibrately destroyed, the Charon Gate, taking humanity’s only connection to the stars, as well as their best and brightest, with it. The Futura’s mission to find its predecessor and the invaluable technology and knowledge contained aboard will be abandoned after a journey of more than 400 years of strife and conflict in favor of colonization efforts.

The Trials of Humanity: A mere 15 years after the departure of the Futura in pursuit of the Caelum, Earth, struggling with environmental collapse and resource shortages, exacerbated by the construction of the two ships, is invaded by aliens. Numbering only a few thousand, the Tāft decimated the few tattered surviving extraterrestrial colonies, then swept aside Earth’s hastily raised defense and obliterated all ability to resist. At first it seemed the Tāft were only there to extract resources, but then the abductions began. The Tāft were studying the Pulse, the unifying conceptual field of the universe, trying to learns its secrets and win a war with an unknown enemy. They remained on Earth for years, before eventually connecting a small group of humans to the conceptual imprint of an ancient unknown species, giving these “Unending” access to what many species call magic, and ensuring the Tāft's own defeat.

The Star Epic: more than 1,000 years in the future, humanity has not changed as much as you may expect. Technological progress has largely slowed to near stagnation, the prospect of infinite expansion through the galaxy more appealing than advancement. Numbering in the tens of trillions, humanity has settled into 19 great zations (interstellar civilizations) and countless smaller transpolits (transstellar polities), starnats (star nations), and yunesy (united systems). Connections have been forged with the Pulse; ftl travel and communication, gaiaforming, artificial sentience, and other advancements are widespread; and alien life, sapient and otherwise, has been discovered, studied, fought, befriended, and fought again. For generations humanity has seemed poised on the edge of some great unknowable leap forward, but always in the background: tension, building equally quickly to a much more violent resolution.

The Brethren Empire:

Humanity is not alone.

A massive vessel appeared out of nowhere and entered lunar orbit, sending down representatives of the Rimringdsi, an alien race startling similar to us. They bring gifts of advanced technology and science, but also a warning.

They are being hunted by the Ukiirdarse-Raln'Kiin, a savage alien race led by a hive-minded caste of scientist-shamans and engineer-lords. The technology the rimdsi present to us is not their own, but that of previous victims of the ravaging horde, desperately collected and sent ahead of their bloody crusade in hopes of fortifying others against them.

Humanity, shaken by this dire warning but not broken, must prepare. Will Earth, as technologically behind the Ukiirdarse as it may be, finally be the great anvil which breaks the brutes?

No. All the defenses mustered by man and rimdsi were useless, battered aside with barely a glance by the overwhelming might of the Ukiirdarse-Raln'Kiin.

Earth is bombarded, the great Rimringdsi is ark seized, and the survivors are hunted like animals as the Ukiirdarse upper castes test mad technologies across the globe.

And yet, many more humans survived than it seems the Ukiirdarse-Raln'Kiin expected, and early resistance cells have seen surprising successes against the comparatively technologically backwards lesser castes.

There may be hope yet.

The Closing Hand:

Welcome to the center of all the World, the Quartered City, Om Sertonnatul; capital of mighty Rhosettay, mother and master to all other nations; home of the Halmath Sord and its Tothqua Exieda, the last remaining organization of practioners of the Warm Magic and the council that leads it.

A terror has descended upon the magicians of Om Sertonnatul: the Mechaniast, a serial killer with clockwork arms and a simple message of non-magical supremacy, riling up the already suspicious populace and brutalizing magicians no matter where they hide. To stop this threat, the Tothqua Exieda summons the most dangerous mage of their order, their dedicated executioner, from the war-torn and intrigue-ridden north. Enemies of the Sord beware, for the Faebreaker comes.

The Ferrymen:

A zombie survival story set after the collapse of technologically advanced capitalist dystopia, following a group who survive by the risky method of waking up cryogenically frozen people, in hopes of using long dormant bank accounts to buy supplies and weapons in the massive seed vaults-cum-nuclear bunkers-cum-automated department stores that dominate the crumbling cityscape of a hyper-urbanized northeastern United States.

The Heraldic Ages:

Aethling Incorporated, or the Capitalists’ War: In the not too distant future, the emergence of megacorporations has destabilized international politics.

Social democratic reformations in the US, China, and India have done little to slow the explosive growth of their power and influence. Then, following the US Congress's refusal to grant corporations personhood and under the threat of nationalization, the Heracles Corporation, largest retailer in the US, suddenly declares secession, arming its employees and launching attacks of heavily armed mercenaries against competitors and government installations.

Within months the conflict has spread to much of the world and the American government has all but collapsed, ceding authority to so-called "loyalist" megacorps like Amatik Multinational and Persephone BioSci.

Waiting in the wings of this conflict as nations across the globe collapse to armed corporations is Aethling Incorporated, a heavy machinery manufacturer and low level US defense contractor, led by Rikard Aethling, a man with a great vision for the future of Earth.

Herald of the First Ascent: Andrus Baird is tired. Sure, he's got a ship and GUE/GSF citizenship, but the fact that his family was too poor for him to ever actually step foot on Earth, the planet his mother came from, means he's in the lowest tier of citizenship, lacking many of the benefits available to most other citizens. No stipend, no automatic diplomatic status, no augments, barely any access to Earth's medical systems, banking, or proprietary tech.

At least he has a ship, but most of his legitimate work as a freelance transporter comes from ISAAC, and if the Initiative ever discovers the Pyromancy has a psyche-simulating artificial intelligence on board he'd lose everything.

Then one day, a back channel job comes in. A mother on the city-world Athena wants someone to pretend to kidnap her son, a boy who seems to have the supernatural ability to control technology with his mind...

Freefall: Fifty years after the mass emergence of superhumans across the human race, the Grand Solar Federation's Metahuman Marine Corps is the terror of the galaxy. Elite soldiers, armed with the best technology in existence, wielding unnatural powers, none can stand against them. The Bulldogs, the Davies, the UHSFL, the ISU, all have been defeated soundly.

The GSF is rapidly transforming the galactic balance, building a new order on the backs of the MMC. Then, everything starts to go wrong.

A routine mission to clear out pirates on an interstellar backwater goes horribly wrong, and one of the MMC's most decorated soldiers, callsign: Tracker, is left for dead. Wounded but alive, Tracker must fight for survival on an ancient world, terraformed by a long lost alien race, discovering forgotten secrets and powers along the way.

Secrets and powers Tracker plans to use to enact their retribution on the tyrants that abandoned her after using her to build an empire.

Let Our Voice Be Iron:

One of the few concepts I've discussed on this tumblr, formerly known as The Lancer’s Grave, The Lamellar Regnant, and in one old post I found Sinew and Will for some reason?

23 years ago, Laydra montSaaerva served as apprentice and sniper to the legendary warrior and scoundrel known as the Spearmaster as they fought alongside a ragtag band of adventurers to free the kingdoms of Netadwam and Berlttarye from great tyranny. Now she has travelled again across the Mirror of Heaven and returned, in disguise, to the lands of the Spiral Sea and the city of Hellion Aktra. Armed with her intellect, guns, and formidable knowledge of emotion magic, Laydra sets out to combat the strange forces from the Cradle Lands that first called her here, as well as the theocratic republic that has corrupted her friends’ legacy and legend for its scripture.

The Liars’ Club:

The Pretender, the Actor, the Klepto, the Con Artist, the Cheater. Five kids, all with a history of lying and trickery, all now moved suddenly to the same small town in the middle of nowhere. All with secrets, all with parents who keep strangely disappearing. Brought together by the deception that has shaped all of their lives, only the Liars' Club knows something is wrong in the town of Silver Lake, and only the Liars' Club can do something about it.

The Stars Seem Brighter:

550 years in the future, Humanity spread out amongst the stars and encountered a dizzying kaleidoscope of alien species. Then, the largest of the new Human star-nations, the Confederation of Orion Protectorates, involves itself in a regional dispute between two alien powers, igniting the War of Empty Heavens and shattering galactic peace and Human unity. In the aftermath, the new galactic order is dominated by the COP and its allies, leading those who lost the war to band together into ICTO, the Interspecies Cooperation Treaty Organization. After 50 years of tenuous peace marred by constant COP expansionism, ICTO has reached a fragile agreement with one of the last great galactic powers, the Conclave of Unaligned Species, forming the Goldspires, an international, government-funded, privately-run fleet specializing in exploration, research, search and rescue, peacekeeping, and (unofficially) privateering, intended to serve as a proving ground for inter-governmental cooperation and technological exchange.

Under One Sky:

A planned duology, Up From the Valley and So Say the Mountains, in a somewhat low-fantasy setting. A young woman in a small backwater feudal kingdom struggles to navigate the politics of the Valley of the Colossi after an arranged marriage into the family that conquered it. When tensions overflow, she is thrust into a position of power and must try desperately to defend her home from invaders and civil war, and eventually leads her people to form a new great power in her world. I’ve got quite a bit of plot for this, so the descriptions are gonna be a bit different from most of the others as I try not to give too much away.

Starring:

Halliday: the aforementioned teenage bride, struggling with her marriage and the political tensions of the Valley of the Colossi.

Goshawk: Estranged eldest daughter of the conqueror of Halliday’s home.

Throjyn the Hallew: Exiled rebel and criminal from Goshawk’s home county, living in secret in the Valley.

The Lesser Tender: A young nonbinary monk living a quiet life in the cliffs above the Abbey, who may know things that should be forgotten.

Deirsu tue’Thatark: Representative of a foreign power, secretly investigating the Valley.

Unnatural Directions:

In the vacation town of Normal, North Dakota, a story is unfolding. The LaRue family has been protectors of a mysterious legacy for centuries, keeping the powers of ancient heroes alive by passing them from worthy successor to worthy successor in preparation for the day their enemy returns.

Phillips LaRue lives an idyllic life in Normal. Unaware of his family's mission, he spends his days roaming the town and the mountains around Château LaRue, the family ski resort, befriending the other vacationing teens and dragging them on adventures.

Then one day, tragedy strikes, and Phil is forced to assume leadership of his family and all its secrets, the magical powers his family has guarded lost to his friends, friends who will disappear from his home before he knows it.

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Oh also just to clarify, I refer to my story ideas/WIPs/what have you as Concepts, a holdover from my pre-internet days before I learned the lingo, and one I feel more accurately captures both my creative process and the current state of my work.