Welcome to Gaia! ::

So... I had all these characters and plotlines I wanted to wrangle out of having their own entire story, so this is how I did it: I condensed the plotlines and stuck them all in the same, more or less continuous world. And called them Tales of a Divine Order, because they all have a moral, and that moral is that things get put right in the end. It has nothing to do with god.

Part 1: Dreamwalkers

Things are looking pretty dire in the geographic area in which our story begins- a possibly crazy ruler is attempting to expand his holding by invading the small, less anthropologically complex areas at his borders, and is doing quite a good job of it, thanks to his uber-powerful Dark Mage Sidekick Dude, who may or may not be the true power behind the throne. Don't worry, all the unclear bits get more or less cleared up later. So a bunch of said small civilizations down in yon forest get together and form a resistance. They still get their asses kicked.

Thus, after having the entire group she was fighting with wiped out, Autumn Victoria (who does not, at the moment have a last name) aka Lady Macbeth (they have Shakespeare, for some reason) finds her self in a blank para-universe (it's not actually it's own reality, just somewhat separated from the one she was in before) along with the Dark Mage Sidekick Dude and two animals who are, for some reason, in human bodies. The actual humans have lost their memories.

Stuff develops, the humans slowly gain back their memories, Autumn faster than the Dark Mage Dude, Crow Boy and Squirrel Girl, for entirely different reasons, cannot talk, and yet they are somehow Celestial Messengers or something. Anyways, Autumn finally remembers who Dark Mage is, right before he realizes who he is, and they are both transported back to the main universe... right in front of the Imperial Army. Autumn kills Dark Mage Dude, right before he kills her, and we are then given a spectacular Bolivian Army ending.

Part 2: To See and Be Seen

Not more than a year has passed, and things are looking up. Not really crazy Emperor Dude has stepped down, and his successor is much more diplomatic. Peace happens. Successor dude decides that the army is much too large and starts disbanding a fair bit of it, when he is told by a... clerk (or something) that not all of the army can be disbanded safely.

Cut to Autumn/Lady Macbeth's home village. Turns out she has three kids- Adelaide (12 years), Adrian (8 years) and Jake (6 years). As they are now at peace with the big not-an-empire-anymore-country, there's not a whole lot of fuss when a traveling bard from aforementioned location pops in. There's a fair but of fuss about him keeping some guy in a cage, though. At one point, he asks the audience if anyone knows why aforementioned guy is in a cage, and (surprise, surprise) Adelaide gets it right- he's an animal. And we're not talking like the spirit messenger things from part 1.

See, to increase the size of the army, Dark Mage Dude and Ruler Dude found out that if you took four soldiers and a dog, you could mix them up and end up with (essentially) five soldiers. Except for the rare few people with this gift my mind wants to call Ebonism (but that sounds racist, so I won't) no one can tell the difference. And guess what? We've already met two people with this gift- Adelaide and the clerk dude.

So wandering bard dude gets Adelaide to go with him, Adelaide makes the people who were really supposed to be caring for her brothers (she was the one who was actually doing it) take care of them, and off they go. Only, bard dude is a vampire. And he has a not-quite-platonic domestication relationship with the dog guy- the cage was just for show. Oh, and the only people who can identify vampires? Other vampires. What with that and the animal people, the title should be apparent.

The Freak Show makes their way to the capitol city, where Bad Things Happen, and the vampire bard, his dog/person, and possibly the clerk from the very beginning die, and Adelaide shows off her shooting skills. See, Autumn might have left her kids home alone, but she didn't leave them unprotected. Big evil guy gets vanquished, and, for her trouble, Adelaide gets a commendation from the new ruler and a government job.

So how, you may ask, did the Vampire Bard get a hold of an Imperial Soldier? Well, it goes like this:
1. Guy owns dog.
2. Dog goes missing.
3. While searching for dog late at night, guy gets turned into vampire.
4. Dog comes back looking like a human, and somehow convinces guy that he is, in fact, the same dog.
Less clear is what Vampire Bard wants with someone who can tell the difference. Maybe he's still not sure if it's his dog. I don't know.

More coming, once I figure out what the plots are like. But! I know for sure that there will vampires and fairies. In gardens. *snork* And something like a princess.

Nah, I'm pretty sure she's rich, although she might not be Successor Dude's daughter. She gets to know Adelaide pretty well, anyways. And Adelaide is a top government agent. She no longer needs to associate with scummy peasants.