I've been working on an idea for a story for the past months (I don't know how many, but more than a few), and then I hashed out something I felt had some good potential with one of my friends that I used to RP with. I also wrote variations of this story for my creative writing class. I'll start with these stories, and show you the early stages.

I really wanted to do somewhat of a steampunk idea, the newer one being sort of like the Roman Empire, had they invented guns. They're not widespread weapons yet, but they're becoming effective. There's also trains, artillery, and...well, so forth.

Early:
The setting is a pretty cliche Soviet-esque empire that has taken over the world, except for one country. The main character, and also the narrator (1st person) is Jack Griffon, who joined the Imperial Legion, which is just a cooler way of saying "army." Anywho, the story was short. He falls asleep on a train, has a dream that explains his past in a horribly rushed and exceedingly cliche manner, and wakes up with the rest of the troops when he gets bombed by rebels. No, there was no mention of rebels beforehand. It was a plot device. So of course, because he's the main character (and there's nothing special about him at all), he comes out as a hero and moves to the border, where for some God-forsaken stupid reason, suddenly this massive empire is outnumbered by a small nation. The fort is overrun, and then an artillery strike wipes out the whole army. I s**t you not, this is how it ends. Jack and the commanding officer of the fort wake up victoriously, and Jack remembers that the commanding officer killed his mother, and then finds that the commanding officer was his father.

Please, for the love of God, use that only as a point for how far this story has developed over time. Also, the ending and most of the plot points were rushed because I could only make the story about 10 pages. It still ended up being 18. Now, for something bearable.

Now:
Jack Griffon, who was named for my RP character, was renamed Tiberius Animus. Animus means "courageous, heroic, and full of character" in Latin. I rehashed the "evil Empire" scenario. Now, it's not evil. And as you may have discerned from the main character's name, it's heavily based off the Roman Empire. The mortals and the Gods are involved closely. The entire universe, basically, is a game. Each God has a race. If that race is weakened or killed off, so too does the God, and vice versa. At this point, there are three major races, named for their respective gods: humans (Victorii), Cereans, and Daenri. The Cereans are pretty much elves, and live comfortably in the woods of the world. The Daenri are sort of like natives. They have black skin like the Drow, white hair, and horns growing from their forehead. They're also about seven feet tall.

The story starts off with Tiberius at age fourteen, and explains some of his backstory. You learn that his father is MIA, and his mother died of the plague. He lives with his uncle, who is quite wealthy as far as most of the population goes. After the backstory explanation, he jumps to eighteen, and his uncle's plantation is burned to the ground, and his uncle murdered. I'm not sure how I can catch this one, since it'll be difficult to explain away the idea of him not being able to hear or see who burned down...well, basically his childhood. He and a girl he spent his childhood with both survive.

He joins the Legion, since he has nowhere else to go. He's not the best. He's not a brilliant tactician. He's just another grunt in a crowd of grunts. Fast-forwarding a bit, during a battle, at a point where he's about to be skewered with a spear, time will slow to a stop, until he's in the immortal realm. There, he finds out that he's the first of a joined bloodline of two families that have been touched by the Gods, meaning that one member of his mother's family, and one member of his father's family were the child of a God. He also learns that in the universal game of warring Gods, the magic binding the universe together states that each God can have one Venator ("hunter" in latin) that's infused with their power to do their bidding on Earth. Cereas and Daenus, the gods of the Cereans and Daenri respectively, tell Tiberius that Victorus, the god of the humans, has been missing for several decades, which explains the rotting Empire (I actually have yet to name it), and that Tiberius is the only one possibly capable of accepting a ritual that will turn him into the first "fused" venator. Meaning, Daenus and Cereas both want to make him their venator at once. They attempt it, but Tiberius isn't strong enough, and dies.

He appears in the underworld, before the only god that doesn't have his own race on the planet. He's wretched, mutated, and..well, dead. So the god of the underworld, who I also have yet to name, infuses him with his power too, which brings him back to life, and stronger than he would have been before. Cereas is "good," Daenus is neutral, leaning towards good, and the god of the underworld's powers are inherently evil. So inside Tiberius, who now looks like a mixture of the three dominant races and has some "evil flair" about him, there's this power struggle between the three powers, and what's left of his human essence.

His first order of business is to eliminate who Cereas and Daenus suspect captured Victorus, a defeated God that infused a human with his powers in order to bring his race back to the planet. It takes about a year, during which he is completely uninvolved with the human civilization (of course, there will be a short romantic tension between Tiberius and the girl that survived the plantation attack), but Tiberius finds the venator and kills him, eliminating the God. At the last moment, the God appears and informs Tiberius that he didn't capture Victorus, but that it was Cereas and Daenus that were attempting to wrest control from the Victorii and establish the Daenri and Ceareans as the dominant races of the world.

Since the gods can't kill anyone directly in the mortal realm, and Tiberius can now keep them from pulling him into the immortal realm, he goes back to the capital of the Empire, and helps them defend it against the more war-like tribes of Daenri, and the Cerean nation, who started marching on the human civilization at the same point that Tiberius killed the other venator, who was incidentally trying to gather allies from the minor races of the world. At this point, nearly half of all humans are dead.

Tiberius leads the Legions against the Daenri and Cereans, and after a long, and well-described battle, wins. At this point, Daenus and Cereas are both weakened, so he allows the nearly-dead god (the one whose venator he just killed) to bring him to the immortal realm, where he fights them both. In the process, he dies, but weakens them enough so that they will no longer be a threat. Victorus, before releasing him to the underworld, allows him one last gift: to continue his lineage.

The story will end with the girl that survived the plantation attack in the beginning, explaining to a friend that she can't understand how she could possibly be pregnant.


Now, mind you, this is a work in progress. I'm filling in the gaps of the story as I go along, so bear with me. I would absolutely love any suggestions you guys have as to how I could make this story better, and note that if I feel it's good enough, I plan on submitting it to a publisher after a few drafts.

Also, I need quite a few ideas for names. Expect cameos. Expect them.