A Couple of Ideas

[The Amazing Avian]

For the last week, I've started writing down some of the ideas I get while in the shower. There are 3 in particular that stand out more in my head:

1. An original story about a serial killer killer. He hunts down and kills serial killers. That's about it really, its not very ironed out yet.
2. An Assassin's Creed fanfic set in Japan with the protagonist being the apprentice of Hattori Hanzo. I intend to not only use the feud between the Templars and the Brotherhood, but also individual feuds between lords. Now, considering how loyalty and honor were the two greatest values of the time, I kind of want to show what happens when a ninja's oath to his master conflicts with his oath to the brotherhood.
3. An original story in a Colonial America kind of place where vampires, werewolves, and humans live in relative peace due to a treaty signed by them centuries before. To ensure the conditions of this treaty are enforced, there's a Holy police force named The Inquisitors. There are 3 different storylines:

• The first stars an apprentice fletcher (someone who makes bows and arrows) who was recently turned into a werewolf. There have been a series of murders around the area where he lives which point to a werewolf culprit and he's beginning to doubt himself, believing that the beast within him is doing this. Its going to center mostly on him doubting that he can control himself after transforming, dealing with his lycanthropy, and investigating the murders himself, trying to find out whether or not it was him who did this.
• The second deals with the alpha of a large pack dying and the pack splitting with multiple people declaring themselves alphas. What remains of the pack is adolescents and an old werewolf who in human years would be in his mid-40s. He has to take it upon himself to raise the young, teach them everything he's learned before his time comes and pick one to take his place as the alpha of the pack with the intention of that alpha reuniting the scattered pack into the large one it was before.
• The third deals with an Inquisitor in training and her master (A red oni, blue oni pair respectively). While the veteran Inquisitor is trying to teach his apprentice, she's too impulsive and her black and white mentality when dealing with vampires and werewolves makes it difficult for him to get through to her. As a result of that, he takes her with him to visit his friend, Alexander Ivanov, a vampire. It is a difficult time for the Ivanov family, however. Of the six noble vampire houses, the Ivanov is tied with another for the most powerful, and because of that, it is feared by the others. Its rival house, the Ozera, have secretly negotiated with the other four houses and are plotting to have the Ivanov house eliminated. Now the two Inquisitors are caught in an internal power struggle that may very well decide the fate of the whole country.

Originally, there were 5, but 3 of them had very similar settings so I decided to go ahead and make them part of the same story. Now, my question is, which one seems the most interesting?

[The Amazing Avian]

No feedback?

[Umbra]

Well, obviously the third one feels more interesting than the other two. Assassin's Creed can only go that far, especially if you try and connect it to Desmond and somehow give him a direct ancestor in Japan. (Almost at the same time as Ezio, mind you.) First one isn't ironed out that well, as you say, so it's not that interesting.

 

Now, onto the third one. Will the storylines converge at some point, or are they entirely separate? I could see the first and second converging rather easily - simply have one of the other alphas be the killer - while the third could end up looking for these killers and meet up with the fletcher from the first story. 

 

The setting itself seems interesting, but it could use some more ironing out as well. How exactly would the unveiling of actual vampires and werewolves - in significant enough numbers to be a threat to mankind - affect the history of the world as we know it? Assuming that you mean to set the story at some point during the late 1700s (the relevant time for the American Revolution) that would've put the vampiric / werewolf invasion somewhere in the 1500s. With a massive war on the homefront, does Spain and Portugal rise to become great powers of the world? Is America even colonized, or do the natives remain in power? Does the Protestant Reformation occur, or is the Church reunited behind the Inquisition? 

 

So many questions, so little time.

[The Amazing Avian]

I intend to have them converge at some point. As for the history, I think I got something figured out. The vampires descend from Lilith (obviously) and slowly increase in number, with each vampiric house starting off as a loose coalition of vampires, and then during feudal times, establish themselves as nobility. Each house (before formally establishing themselves as nobility), came together due to similar philosophies, for example one of them will feed out of pure bloodlust, while another will only feed to keep themselves from dying. When European colonists came to the new world, vampires were among them, and over time, six of the noble houses from Europe (who still retained their titles) established territory for their houses, which I will decide how to divide up later.

 

The werewolves come from the Scandinavian countries. During raids, blooded vikings would transform whenever adequate threats were presented, and because of their fury, would come to be known as berserkers. Vampires, due to being far more secretive, would only grow in numbers very slowly, but the vikings would sometimes blood humans they would pillage from and those new werewolves, would blood others in Europe and North America. The Native American werewolves were a different case though, instead of being savage as the vikings had been, these natives learned how to control themselves and would often travel to to teach freshly blooded werewolves in other tribes to control their instincts and use their gift to help their tribe as a whole. In Europe, due to the large amount of commoners that would become werewolves, they decided to form packs instead of seeking places in nobility.

 

The Inquisitors came about during the reign of Charlemagne, with him being the founder. The order was established to protect humans on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Over time, the Inquisitors became a secret society, spreading and training young men and later women to fight vampires and werewolves. During the Crusades, one faction broke off from the Inquisitors, the Knights Templar. They believed that they should not limit themselves to fighting vampires and werewolves, they should also use their skills to fight the heathens in the Crusades. Inquisitors were at one point backed by the church, but after the treaty between the Inquisitors, vampires, and werewolves, received most of their funding from vampiric houses. It is also worth mentioning that Inquisitors have better physical abilities than your average humans and after the treaty, it became commonplace for them to receive a small amount of vampiric or werewolf blood to heighten their physical abilities, but not enough to turn them into one of their own, although there are slight physical changes such as those who take vampiric blood becoming slightly paler and their canines growing a little and those who take werewolf blood having faster hair growth.

 

At the end of the Crusades and the Spanish Reconquista, the heads of the vampiric houses, leaders of werewolf packs, and high ranking members of the Inquisitors met in secret, deciding that after these centuries of fighting, it would be in everyone's best interests for all of them to come to terms and set ground rules to prevent any further needless fighting. This agreement would lead to the current treaty between them. Vampires and Werewolves would not kill humans, and the Inquisitors would not hunt them down, instead becoming a police force  that would find and execute vampires and werewolves who broke the laws set upon them.

 

When colonizing the Americas, whenever vampires or werewolves would go overseas, a small group of Inquisitors would travel with them to ensure that they would not kill anyone. The peace between them still holds in the colonies.

[Dr. Cakey]

This just idly occurred to me, but if vampires can't kill humans, how do they survive? Are you planning to fall back on the "vegetarian vampire" concept like in that?

[Umbra]

Oh, so it was more of an ongoing struggle between the Inquisition and the vampires / werewolves, rather than a straight-up war. With the inquisition being a "secret society" as you call it, is the general public aware of the existence of vampires and werewolves? If they are, then why keep it a secret?

 

On another note, why would the vampires support an oppressive police force that only seems to exist to restrain them and the werewolves? Unless the vampire families are using the Inquisitors as tools to strike out against other families in some sort of power struggle, it seems awfully counterproductive.

[The Amazing Avian]

They don't oppress them. Their job is to enforce the treaty they had signed at the end of the Crusades. They owe a debt of gratitude that they intend to pay off through monetary funding, and due to the vampires now try to avoid killing, it works. I might rethink the vampires funding them though.

 

As for vampires not killing, they don't have to in order to feed. Since many vampires are members of nobility, they feed off their servants, many of which know the true nature of their masters, and those who were not nobles, would simply feed off anyone they found wandering the streets at night, but refrain from killing. To get enough to satisfy them, they feed off multiple people.

 

For a time, the general population was not aware of the vampires. Starting during the Spanish Inquisition (which the Inquisitors did not support) werewolves and vampires were hunted down under the grounds of heresy. They were discovered when a werewolf murderer who was awaiting his execution escaped from his cell and went on a rampage in southern Spain. The inquisitors were able to bring him down, but the damage was done and there were witnesses. This matter was brought to the church, then to the king and queen, and to quell the public, the Spanish Inquisition began. The Inquisitors (the order) took to hiding as many innocent werewolves and vampires as they could and moving them out of Spain, and during the later Inquisitions, would do the same in Portugal and Rome. Relocated vampires and werewolves would return to living in secret, and out of gratitude, vampires began to fund the Inquisitors.

 

Once vampires and werewolves were discovered in Europe, people began to secretly support them, such as farmers selling livestock to werewolves or hiring them for less money than they would a human and allowing them to eat an animal every once in a while. Vampires formed a Night's Watch to more easily find prey, and some people would willingly sell their blood to vampires to make extra money and to avoid being attacked. This was common throughout most of Europe except in Rome, Spain, and Portugal. This helped to keep everything in order, but inevitably, some vampires and werewolves would kill and as a result would be brought to justice by the Inquisitors.

 

Now that I think about it, I might have to rename the Inquisitors.