This is the last archetype, which is “Voyage and Return”. I used Wyvern’s Call for this and may... also actually be the main character of that that’s doing the narrating oops lmao
It works and I really like this one ok. I generally like Wyvern’s Call though to be fair
Been up on Patreon since last October!
~
Consider this; there is a single slab of stone, set upon a mountain. It is as a lintel stone to tall and weathered buildings that once stood there, although they are long fallen and shattered against the ground. It is half a day’s climb from the nearest settlement, and though everyone knows of it and the ruinous buildings, no one knows who placed them. They just are.
The slab is worn and cracked and broken, the world having worn it down. Plants hold it together as much as they push it apart by their growth.
It looks old, and maybe it is as old as everyone believes it is, because that is how it looks.
No one steps near it. No one sets foot or paw, talon or claw, hoof or horn near it.
This is a slab that may once have served a purpose but does no longer, for the stage beyond is broken and the wind whistles mournful and empty about the reaching spires of a shattered civilisation. The slab is a turning point and a calling way, and there must once have been stories to call from it.
This is the first;
Once upon a time, there was a storyteller.
Now storytellers, they’re travellers. Space and time and everywhere in between; they take listeners on journeys to the far off lands, to times that have been and will be and may never exist but in the imaginings of those few who spin their webs with words.
They travel to learn and perfect their craft, to spread their stories and learn new tales to take home for their first audience.
This storyteller did not, at first. Xie lived with xir brother and xir mother in the ramshackle ruins of a city that had once been the home of great monarchs.
Stories enough within the rubble, but storytellers are meant to roam and xie knew it. Xie knew it and still didn’t leave, almost believed xie couldn’t, for the loyalty to xir family and the struggle that they faced in survival every day was enough to keep xir there.
So when xie calls the first wyvern, it is an accident; xie didn’t know what xie held, only that it was old and gathered a story of itself in the dust that had surrounded it and built upon it for years.
Xie goes with the wyvern when it calls (screeches, rather, with acid dripping from its jaws and scouring the town to dripping rubble) only to save the rest of the city; xie has every intention of escaping it and returning to xir home and xir safety.
But the two are bound in more ways than xie understands at first, and it saves xir when xie runs into trouble and again when xie’s starving and again when volcanoes erupt and earthquakes tear the world beneath xir apart.
So xie saves it in return, in small ways at first. Xie tells it stories of the days when the wyvern corps ruled the skies and people didn’t run at the sight of them (and the wyverns - even wild - did not burn humans to dust merely for existing in their hunting grounds). Xie stops the people they meet from attacking with axes and guns and nets (because all they know is that wyverns are dangerous but their scales are useful and will feed a town for months upon the profit), and later patches the wounds it receives from the people xie can’t talk down, the ones that won’t listen to a journeyman storyteller for xie is young and inexperienced in the ways of the world.
They become a bonded pair (though neither of them realise it) and when they have learnt many stories and the true history beside, they return to xir home, to face the terror of a wyvern as old and as broken as the city it rules with fear.
They’d almost met it before, when the storyteller had first called xir first wyvern; the call was not tuned to one and so it had come as well, and waited to see its challenger (they had run before its might, out into the black bleakness of the shattering world).
The storyteller faces it with xir coterie of wyverns behind xir, armed only with words as was xir right. Xie is a storyteller, not a warrior, and this is how the world will be saved.
Or - not saved, as such, because the one it needed saving from is long dead and the damage has been done. Reclaimed, perhaps, so that they need no longer live in disparate wreckage.
The great wyvern is calmed, by the stories xie tells from the world xie has travelled, and from the world that was before. The world it almost remembers, the one that people talk of it hushed and awed tones that beg for it to be returned to them. The wyvern is calmed and the city is rebuilt, though not to its former glory.
Never to its former glory, because the storyteller will not let them forget and there is no royal family to sit on the throne anymore (and perhaps that is just as well). There is just the storyteller and xir coterie of half-wild wyverns stepping forward to meet the new future.
The hillside is old and weathered and cracked through with the rolling slumber of the giants trapped below its surface. Nothing but the mobile and hardy can survive on its sides; no buildings last unless they are flexible. There are the ruins of ancients, a shattered scattering of the merest remnants of stone steps. There might have been seven of them, leading up to - to what, no one is very sure.
There were steps, and perhaps they led nowhere. There were steps, and perhaps they led everywhere.
There were steps, and there were seven of them once, but they have shattered and tangled in the grasses on a hillside in the sun. There were buildings, once, but even the foundations have gone so there is now only the imprint in the waving grass and the shifting lands, like the dents in a bed of a sleeping body.
There were steps and there were stories, and that is as we are.
This is technically covering the Rebirth archetype but uh. I
I mean to be fair they don’t always cut to the bone like. I used Expect to Fly for this one! Which is the novel I’m working on editing atm.
It’s been up on Patreon since last September! Most of my writing goes up there first, if it’s going up
~~
Consider this; there are five steps, set upon a mountain. They are not high, they are not shallow. They are half a day’s climb from the nearest settlement, and though everyone knows of them, no one knows who made them. They just are.
The steps are softening at the edges and the first splotches of lichen are beginning to grow across the leeward side.
They look only a generation old, but nothing looks as old as everyone believes they are.
No one climbs them. No one sets foot or paw, talon or claw, hoof or horn near them.
These are stairs with nowhere physical to go but paces up the mountain, but there are stories.
This is the fifth;
Once upon a time, there was a fire. It was kept in the forest but didn’t eat the trees except when they were gifted as tribute. When it didn’t seem to need the trees - they gave them anyway, willingly, because gifts are gifts regardless of necessity - the stories started and the legend grew. Someone whispered prophecy, and that’s how it started.
It spread like the wildfire that this fire wasn’t, across the world, from wingtip to wingtip, to flight to triad to the common people, who - who scoffed at it and went on with their lives. The eternal flame was for the long-lived, and the rest were too busy in making sure the long lived could be long lived.
So the fire is all but forgotten and life goes on, as life is wont to do. The world grows up and the wind goes on and the fire is talked about as fact by the winged and as fiction by the rest, until the day a girl gains her wings.
It is a mistake. She is too young. She didn’t start the process herself, although she made the decision that charms the summon and gives her flight.
There is outcry, of course, and she hides because she is young and scared and confused even without the talk of prophecy - she doesn’t believe in the prophecy, because it is only an old story, not even a children’s tale but an old wives’ tale, brought out to air when the nights are long and cold.
Her hiding is seen as weakness by the jealous and wisdom by the understanding (Or those who would take her wings and do not want a fuss). But for all that she hides, she does not want to give up her wings, she just - she just wants it to be of her own choosing.
There is a touch of fire in how she retaliates, in how she responds to challenges both real and perceived. This is how she ends up chasing another flyer into the belly of a storm. This is how she ends up twisting and falling and lost, as a gate opens and takes her from the attacker to safety that doesn’t seem like safety because it seems like being lost. She is and she is not lost, a street (but a world) away from home.
Wingless, she grows again and looks and learns again what it is to be human, what it is to be friend and family and winged.
It is a new life, although she didn’t have to die to start again (although in that storm there is no telling what might have happened, had the gate not opened when she fell).
When the fire does erupt (as the prophecy that was never a prophecy was said to say) she makes the choice as she always has (to jump to fly to save) and this time there is no hesitation and no control and she dies for her choice.
For a few terrifying moments the world stands ashen and ember filled as the fire rages and flares amongst the trees where it has lived, waiting for this girl this child this angel this protector this harbinger - she has many names, many titles, and no one can ever agree on which are true except Phoenix.
(Foolish, to be named for mythology, and yet - what is the fire that never dies but a myth? What are prophecies but stories we wish would come true?)
The fire rages and the girl gasps and is alive as ash and snow and feathers fall around her.
She finds her way back home - by fire, by wind, in the night, in a falling star - and picks up the pieces of her life from where they’d fallen in her wake.
She welds them back together with a dedicated persistence that leaves them - not pretty, in soldered black lines, but strong and together and they will hold.
She has grown and she has learned; for her, death would never be the end but another beginning. For her, life again and again and again is the cycle that she has chosen and her place is the forest where the fire never dies.
This step is hardly a step and more a leap of faith, but all the same it is taken and the world is a lighter place.
So we’re uploading things that were on the old sideblog and then got punted to Patreon!
I still really like this experiment and also it’s a handy sort of intro to some of my novels. Ergo; writing.
This one is the Rags to Riches story archetype, and encompasses my novel idea Sacrifice and has been up on patreon since last August
~~
Consider this; there are seven steps, set upon a mountain. They are not high, they are not shallow. They are half a day’s climb from the nearest settlement, and though everyone knows of them, no one knows who made them. They just are.
The steps are pristine and new, all sharp edges and clean of blemishes. They look as if they were laid just yesterday, and yet they have been here for time beyond memory.
No one climbs them. No one sets hoof or horn, foot or paw, talon or claw near them.
These are stairs with nowhere physical to go but paces up the mountain, but there are stories.
This is the seventh;
Once upon a time, there was a girl. She is young and she is scared and her family is - not poor, exactly, but they aren't well off. They get by, and her brother will be (their parents believe) the saving grace of them all, because he has magic and magic is power. All the girl has is a mark - not a birthmark, because it happened when she was five, but not quite a burn or other scarring - that means she must hide away and be careful.
The girl isn't forgotten (although maybe some wish she was) but she is swept aside and dismissed. She clings to her brother - and he to her - until he has to leave. He is the only one that cares for her, that makes her life worth anything. They live in the library, where knowledge is free, and search out impossible ideas and the phantom architecture of an idealised past.
He has to leave, to learn of things that cannot be written (he has to learn his magic, which waxes and wanes with the moon and with his sister because it is for her and only her that he can truly use it), and so she hides in the silent shadows of their home, not quite a servant but not quite the daughter of the house, either. She takes to the nights and wanders the house when she cannot meet anyone who does not want to meet her. She doesn’t leave the house, because - because she has never, not on her own, not since her brother left.
And then she is found out, like she always feared would happen. Her brother is missing, and they come to the house. The leader, the greatest of them all (the usurper, the killer, the strange and enigmatic power on the throne) comes to offer his condolences and finds her out. He sees her for what she is (or part of what she is, the part that could have her fighting and killing for someone else’s entertainment if she were born any lower in social standing).
Her brother is missing and she cannot follow, should not follow, but the leader seems to take a sort of cunning pity and leads her from the house of her parents and into a bigger cage. It is gilded and open and furnished with the trappings of knowledge and power. But she is the power and power is chained and she cannot harness what she has never known to be hers.
This is not how her story should have gone. She should have been born into a family that knew her, that welcomed her. She should have grown tall and proud and confident and ready in her role. Instead, she is a shivering shadow that could never follow where she was expected to lead.
She could never follow, but she does anyway, because her brother is her brother and it has always been about him, him and her against the world.
Until she finds him and he rescues her and together they find her people. Her true people, the family that she should have been born to but wasn’t, because fate is the flippant whim of a God near comatose with malnourishment.
They are hunted down because the world is not safe for her and her own (and hasn’t been for a long time) but along the way she learns, she learns of her birthright and her power and what it means to the people she has found, and she learns how to use almost every aspect of it.
Almost every aspect, because there are some things that cannot be taught in words.
They are hunted down and they are caught, and her brother unleashes the true might of his power (in her service, always for her and her protection) and he is powerful, more powerful than anyone might have expected, but even that isn’t enough and he falls.
The girl - no longer just a girl, she has learnt too much and seen too much and she has grown and she has armour of scales the like of which haven’t been seen since the war before last - is left standing alone, but now she doesn’t cower away and take to the shadows. She doesn’t run. She stands up and fights back.
The scared shadow of a girl becomes Queen and defends those who have defended her.
This is the tragedy archetype which - if I can pull it off in the way I want to - is only true of Dragon Stand for some people. But it’s the people I care about, so...
It’s been up on patreon since last September!
~
Consider this; there are three steps, set upon a mountain. They are not high, they are not shallow. They are half a day’s climb from the nearest settlement, and though everyone knows of them, no one knows who made them. They just are.
The steps are worn and beginning to crack with plants that creep in through the edges of what once must have been the finest join to be seen. Lichen patterns across them, almost runic in shape but unknowable in meaning.
They look old, but nothing looks as old as everyone believes they are.
No one climbs them. No one sets talon or claw, hoof or horn, foot or paw near them.
These are stairs with no purpose, because the buildings have fallen away from about them into crumbling rubble that looks like nothing more than roughened rock that has always belong there. They are paces up the mountain, and there are stories to go with them.
This is the third;
Once upon a time, there was a country. Perhaps it is still there, or perhaps it has been halted and shrivelled and cut up into the remnants of history, into small countries that can bear the strain of it better.
The country’s rulers (three generals and a scaremongering politician) decided that what would be best for them was to be on top. To rule the near countries, destroy the far and fold magic out of their reality (it was a reaction of hate and fear and zealous pride, the belief that magic was only ever an easy out, a cheat to get around honest work. They did not understand).
It took them years upon years, and an influx of refugees from the disintegrating islands before they had the resources to do anything, but when they did - they struck hard, and they struck fast.
The rest of the world rose up against them, but they rose in isolated portions, with no cohesion between countries and resistance groups and rogue crews. When someone tried to rally them, they failed. The world would burn before the might of the all-consuming empire.
Piece by piece, they all died. The pirates fled, their dragons killed. The shifters, despite their great power, were not suited to fighting and so they hid and were found and were all but wiped out.
The king and queen of the neighbouring country were killed, their child surviving only by the grace of a fallen hero, a fierce protector.
The mages promised their help and betrayed, seeking to help themselves in one last effort. It rebounded and they were shattered and lost and last - last left the hunters, with the child in their paws (their claws, their talons - these hunters were not human, not truly, but they felt and they burned and they hungered like all humans do, and they plotted revenge and a strike back, but-).
Their leader - the fallen hero, the protector, the soul of the world itself - could feel the weight and it was crushing her, and she tried but she was scared.
She hid it, forced confidence when they were watching, then ran into the mountains not to abandon them, but to -
She wasn’t sure what to do, but she knew that something had to be done.
So when Destruction comes calling and offers her a choice (a choice, he says, which doesn’t come once to most people, and now he’s offered her this gift twice), she takes it, thinking that she will have the strength to stay in control, to stay - to stay his power, to only take back what was theirs.
She was wrong. But she was scared and she didn’t think she had a choice otherwise.
The protector is broken and twisted and she is still the soul of the world, but a soul gone dark with the power of Destruction and nothing is safe.
Her soul suffers, but it is what keeps her friends safe until-
Until the worst happens and Destruction sides with those who started the war (they worship him, although they do not know it) and the protector is discarded and cast aside, broken and crazed and s h a t t e r e d into so many fragmented pieces that all they can do is to lock her into a cage and hope that she cannot escape. Cannot destroy what they have started to rebuild in their own image.
Destruction leaves her weakened and weakened himself, irrevocably attached to the beast she has become, the beast the world has made her.
God-touched, the protector of the world suffers and the world suffers with her.
This is but one step, and there are many more before the suffering will end.
The Quest archetype, which I had to... I fudged it slightly.
This is supposed to be like the Odyssey? Mine - Sky’s Necklace - is more just about finding things. Which sort of tracks.
Been up on Patreon since last September! So’s a whole lot more!
~
Consider this; there are four steps, set upon a mountain. They are not high, they are not shallow. They are half a day’s climb from the nearest settlement, and though everyone knows of them, no one knows who made them. They just are.
The steps are softening at the edges, and the splotches of lichen are growing in spirals across the leeward side and creeping across the tops.
They look old, but nothing looks as old as everyone believes they are.
No one climbs them. No one sets hoof or horn, foot or paw, talon or claw near them.
These are stairs with no purpose, because the buildings have fallen away from about them and left only the stairs as a memory of what might once have been. They are paces up the mountain, and there are stories to go with them.
This is the fourth;
Once upon a time, there was a child that was gifted a great heirloom for safe keeping. Together (the child was told), they would keep each other safe. The child grew up, and passed the heirloom down to the next generation with the same words; keep it safe, and it will return the favour. Its true owner will return for it someday.
And so the line continues and the heirloom is passed down and kept safe through wars and upheavals and the rise and fall (and rise again) of their fortunes, all the while knowing that its true owner would arrive one day to take it away.
With all that weight of history behind it, there is little wonder that when it is eventually stolen (there have been many tries throughout the years, of course - safeguard something that fastidiously and it is bound to get noticed and gain notoriety), the effort to get it back is massive and is the catalyst for the Penultimate Great Change of the world.
The family goes to the north (this is not part of the Quest as such but-) for the stories say that that is where all lost things go. Perhaps the necklace considers itself lost and forgotten, they reason on the ship, and so has ended up here.
A handy excuse, when the trip to the north is truly for research and has been planned for a long while.
They don’t find the necklace there. Instead, they find a savage wreck of a person who can barely speak their language and won’t let them go far into the land.
The savage refuses, time and again, and any scout party that goes alone finds itself turned around, trapped and hunted and stalked by what little is left to live there (they begin to whisper of great leathery wings and hard blue scales, the clicking of claws and snarls between ivory teeth the size of tusks).
When they return to their land, the savage is with them. The savage is intrigued by their quest, and though - and though they won’t admit it, something has been calling them back to the land of the humans.
The search is undertaken by the authorities in the well-lit streets and higher halls of society, where the family treads their gallant steps and asks of their acquaintances if they have heard whisperings of the lost treasure (their acquaintances feign polite concern, all the while plotting to turn this to their advantage, to find the treasure first).
They search and they ask and they search some more, but it is the savage - no longer a savage, really, but something of the wilds stays with them yet - that finds the trail. They find it in the alleys and in the ruins, in the rubbish and the wreckage, where they are vicious and sharp and unafraid and - comfortable, when they haven’t been amongst the upper echelons of society.
The savage finds the culprit and finds the necklace, but it is the Matriarch, whose job it was to keep the necklace safe, that brings it home. She brings it home, and the no-longer-a-savage comes with them and it is revealed. Their history is shared, to an extent. Enough to prove ownership.
Though the family do not know the lineage of that long ago trustee, the not-savage treats them with deference even as the matriarch gifts them the necklace that was theirs, that is theirs.
The savage isn’t a savage, but they aren’t quite human, either. They are old, but they don’t look it. They are old and haven’t aged and haven’t forgotten anything and it hurts, but
But this is not their story. This is the story of a family and a search and a treasure returned. This is the story of a piece set right with the world.
With quest completed and heirloom restored, they part ways. It is - not a sad ending, despite that which happens. A brief parting of the ways.
But such as it is, our story ends and the step is taken.
And here we are at the Comedy archetype, which... as far as I remember was the hardest to choose and write for because wow I don’t really write comedy.
But I landed on Third Time Lucky, which is the third arc of my superhero set because Ace and Aro just like. deal in puns and funs.
It’s been up on Patreon since last September, along with a whole load more stuff!
~
Consider this; there are two steps, set upon a mountain. They are not high, they are not shallow. They are half a day’s climb from the nearest settlement, and though everyone knows of them, no one knows who made them. They just are.
The steps are worn and cracked, with plants that creep up through the crevices and lichen that patterns runes that no one remembers. The stone is cracked and, in places, held together only by the plants that are forcing it apart.
They look old, but nothing looks as old as everyone believes they are.
No one climbs them. No one sets hoof or horn, foot or paw, talon or claw near them.
These are stairs with no purpose, because the buildings are ruined and are low enough that one needs to step down from the stairs before they are in the buildings. The buildings are ruins but there, heavy and shattered upon the mountain. The steps are paces up to a platform, and there are stories to go with them.
This is the second;
Once upon a time, there are two children.
Or - not children, exactly, but young adults and students and they are wreathed in sunshine and laughter. They act a lot like children, because they have not yet been beaten down by the lies of an adult life.
They make their way through life on luck and a breeze, on jokes and friendship and - yes, money. One is rich, effortlessly so, for xir family, and it allows them both a certain freedom.
The other would be lucky enough to live and laugh on a pun and a prayer, but they do not have to do that particularly often.
They arrive in the city because - well, it is as far as they can get going up the river in the boat that they won on a game of chance (luck, they say, and laugh at a joke shared between the two of them) and it seems as good a place to stop as any. The tide markings halfway up even the tallest buildings intrigue them, and so they set to exploring and learning and they find-
Well, they find many things. They find a place to stay, a cafe to hang out in, and they find the stories of the city.
They find out about the heroes - not heroes, vigilantes (it is argued across the city) - that caused the water damage (by saving the city from a skeletal army), and they think that sounds wrong, but who are they to judge? Weird and wonderful things happen around them, too.
They aren’t sure who made the decision first, but soon they find themselves dancing through the streets of a night, making jokes and making friends.
They aren’t friends, not at first. The self proclaimed protectors of the city are tired and wary and they have seen off threats far stranger and far bigger (and far more threatening) than the two of them. Which is fine, because these two new to the city are not a threat, are not there to cause intentional trouble.
But misunderstanding spawns disbelief and that begets uncertainty and soon there is a rivalry of strangers.
The older protectors (not older, exactly, but they have been here longer) step up and the blow ins skip in and they joke and they laugh and they make a game of it because it might as well be fun, this odd rivalry that has been created.
It is one-sidedly serious (because they are driven to defend, even if the city no longer wants them there) and one-sidedly an excuse to exercise and get to know the city that they have decided to make their home (because as long as nobody gets hurt and people are saved and knowledge is found, then everything is golden).
When they do meet, finally, it is a mistake, it is a surprise, it is a joke that uncovers them all because of course it is (because of course the punster cannot resist a good play on words, and in a cafe named for a pun it is almost expected).
There is - anger, disbelief, sighs and heavy, heavy eye rolling but they are here and they are helping and they are laughing and they will be friends.
No one that laughs together can fight the friendship. That is what they have learnt over the years.
Puns bring them together, and laughter helps them defeat the confusion and the growing doubt when mistakes that were made in days long past rise to the fore and come to defeat them.
(The mistakes fail, the curse is - not lifted, but accepted and realised a gift). The quartet becomes a sextet and they berth their boat and make a home.
Laughter pours from the windows when they are home, and scatters across the city when they are out.
