What do you think the purpose of the first chapter is in the Noragami narrative?
If I’m recalling my manga industry information correctly, I believe that many manga from new artists get their starts through competitions or pitches submitted during open submission periods to comic publishing companies in Japan, but Adachitoka probably had a bit of an advantage in getting Noragami accepted, given they already had a good track record with the company; they illustrated a series by another author that was published in the same magazine as Noragami. They likely pitched their idea for their original manga and got accepted fairly easily (or at least were not rejected!).
The first chapter of Noragami shows all the signs of being a pilot chapter. This chapter was likely part of the original pitch made by Adachitoka to the publishing company to demonstrate their technical skill and capability for creating and capturing characters completely of their own. It tells a relatively self-contained story that introduces the main character (Yato) and main elements (gods, shinki, and ayakashi) that Adachitoka wanted to focus on in their longer story. It does the job of getting people interested in more, without leaving readers completely hanging just in case that “more” never occurred. Pilot chapters may not be completely orphaned from the series that produced them (like Naruto’s weird little pilot chapter for example), but even so, most of the time they don’t have any real bearing on the rest of the series plot.
Because this chapter was likely originally a pilot (although take this with a grain of salt, I don’t know this for sure!), I’d be cautious in taking anything that happens in this chapter as written rule or guaranteed applicable to the main plot of Noragami overall. As often occurs in pilot chapters, sometimes ideas and the “rules” of the series canon change dramatically, and elements that were present in the plot get dropped from the actual series later on.
So my thought is that, while the first chapter of Noragami is entertaining and brings up some interesting ideas (like the little monster born from Mutsumi’s wish), I probably wouldn’t necessarily assume that it has deeper significance beyond just introducing the world and characters to us readers.
That’s my thoughts, anyway, but I think you said you had a theory on this, right? Share it with me! :D
Potential Project Pilot Chapter One: The Lord of Frost
Hi there everyone! I've mentioned in multiple posts that I have been working on three potential story ideas with the intent of posting potential pilot chapters in the hopes of picking a primary project to work on, with you, the reader, deciding which pilot chapter you like the best guiding my decision.
So far, I have one complete chapter, half of a second and the notes for a third chapter awaiting my attention. In order to get me back to writing after yet another short hiatus (I had a lot of paperwork to fret over), I have decided to post the first complete pilot chapter today. Assuming all goes well, I would like to have the second project's pilot chapter up this weekend and then work on the third one next week. Thanks to anyone and everyone for your support! Please enjoy the chapter and feel free to like/reblog!
(NOTE: As these are pilot chapters, they will most certainly appear again in a different revised form when I start the project properly. Each project is currently unnamed and as such will be going by the chapter title I assign each one)
There were those who insisted The Winter-Warlock of Blackstone Gardens did not exist. That he was just another urban myth among the school of hundreds swimming through the sea of frosted fog enveloping the undercity. A fae-tale to frighten the street urchins, a chilling creation of the dozens of tour guides and peddlers seeking quick coin from curious newcomers to the Imperial Capitol.
Of the teeming thousands of under-citizens living in the shadows of the titanic towers of their rulers, lost in the bleak brick forest and drifting purple smoke, it was Jaqson Skade of 108 Flint Alley, Unit 3F, who knew the truth of the matter better than anyone else.
For Jaqson Skade, for better or worse, was The Winter-Warlock of Blackstone Gardens.
He’d give absolutely anything to be anyone else, his heart and soul to live another life, walk another path. But the Goddess of Fate was not so kind, not to him. Nor to any of those poor souls who stood against him and the ancient magic that was his burden.
“Nine hundred and ninety years has our beloved city of Great Exahldria stood proud,” harrumphed Grey Tobey, senior of the scruffy, shabby conclave of street prophets gathered near the district’s central tram station. He bellowed and blathered at the milling crowd, clutched at the floppy lapels of his threadbare great-coat with the spidery fingers of his right hand, arthritic left hand curled tight in his ragged rat-brown beard. “Ninety-nine decades! The bones of this city are engraved with the markings of each year, of the moments, men and monsters that walked its blessed paths and made this city live and breathe! And do the lot of you have any clue as to the most cursed of these creatures walking the city streets this day and age, huh?! Do you?!”
“Here we go again,” Jaq sighed, watching the horde of ranting raconteurs from his place in line at his favorite caffa-cart. The Winter-Warlock of Blackstone Gardens, far younger in years than the urban legends claimed, clicked his tongue in irritation. “Time for another of Grey Tobey’s Tall Tales of Terror.”
The caffa-cart cashier, a willowy redhead whose tiny nameplate read Emira, giggled from behind the cluster of steaming stainless steel samovars and service-pots. Once his order was up, Jaq fumbled about in the pockets of his crumpled black velvet jacket, flicked his crimson crystal coin-card against the lens of the payment point, then grabbed his cup of hot, steaming caffa with a simple smile and nod to the pretty young vendor. He blended back into the crowd subtle as smoke, worried this was the day Grey Tobey regaled the crowds of their unfortunate encounter from two months past.
“Lay off, Tobey, will you?” grumbled a short, squat woman in a faded blue coat sitting on the cobbles by his feet, frantic flowery patchwork all over her sleeves. A blanket roll covered in cheap, handmade souvenirs sprawled at her booted feet, a few brass coins shining in the upturned bowler hat at the end. “You’re scaring folks away, not bringing them in!”
“Button your trap, Hester!” Grey Tobey hissed, bowing his bent back and balding brow in the direction of a traveler new to Blackstone Gardens and its peculiar inhabitants. “Look, here’s a customer! Care to hear about the local legends of our fair district, madame? Free of charge to hear the tale, three bronze scepters to live it!”
“Oh, I really don’t have time for a tour of the Gardens,” murmured the woman, blushing beneath the broad brim of her black, bell-shaped hat. Jaq could barely make out her words against the susurrus of the crowd, but a quick touch of unspoken spellcraft cut through the rambling rabble easily enough. “On my way to work; the tram will be here any moment! I will say I am curious about this cursed creature of which you speak. I do love a good urban legend.”
“Of course you do, madame, of course!” Grey Tobey flung out his bony arms in an elaborate flourish, home-made brochures and buttons spilling out of the wooden tray dangling from the straps slung ‘round his shoulders. “Many a dire creature from the bowels of the Ten Hells slither and slink these streets, beasts of brimstone and fell-fire that would tear your soul to ribbons and ash as soon as look at you!”
“Really? Here, in the tram station?!”
“Not the station, madame, but all the streets and alleys around you! Every nook and cranny-or is it crook and nanny? No matter! Aye, hellspawn and devilkin and their unholy conjurers walk among us as we speak! Masked masters of mortal sin and depraved rites that would turn your blood to ice! Dark Servants of The Queen of Damnation herself!”
“Yep. Any moment now.” Jaq slithered past a pair of street vendors arguing with a block-faced Dragoon of the Metropoli, brushed aside a pile of soggy broadsheets from yesterday’s edition and took a spot on a secluded corner bench beneath a sculpted stone column. He took timid sips of his caffa, cast glimpses at the black-and-beryl clockface overhead, cursing at the amount of time left before his tram arrived.
Once Tobey had drummed up enough grandiose verbal build-up, a crooked finger would pick Jaq out in the crowd, with his sober sable attire and shock of silver-white hair incongruous against his pale, youthful face. The infinity mark tattooed into his slender neck, the many curious rings upon his fingers, the mismatched eyes beneath hooded lids-one burnished gold, the other a glacier-bright blue-green-all those signs would label Jaq a creature of the Cursed Legions, a practitioner of the Forbidden Arts.
To Jaq’s surprise, Grey Tobey instead turned his feverish gaze upwards, trembling hands pointing to the domed ceiling of white glass and black iron overhead. No, not the ceiling: the massive stone beast suspended beneath the dome and above the tiled plaza, wings and horns and lean leonine body lost far beyond the hexagonal gilded framework of clocks and vox-vents.
“The Chimera of the Changeling Gate!” Tobey cried, spinning the surprised woman in the black bell-hat around as if they were in a dance, cackling all the while. “Aye, nary a demon as powerful and deadly as that ferocious serpent-lion walked our streets before or since that day a century ago! Why, my grandpappy of blessed memory said he recalled the smell of sulfur tainting the air decades after that cruel beast ravaged the land, its reign of terror at long last put to an end by the fair Knight of the Ivory Spiral….”
Jaq breathed a sigh of relief. No need to worry about Tobey today. Perhaps the crazy old bugger was saving up the story of their accidental midnight meeting for another mark; perhaps the cheap dragonflower wine he swilled to keep the freezing fog at bay most nights burned away the memory of weeks past. Either way, Jaq liked to try and keep his cursed existence on the downlow as much as possible.
In a city of ten million, in an older, shadier district like Blackstone Gardens, this wasn’t too difficult a task. His morning caffa-run made it a little harder, though, but Jaq couldn’t inveigle his inner essence with the Higher Mysteries without at least one cup of scalding hot bean juice down his gullet. Accompanied by tons of cream and three sugars, of course. He may have been a sinister urban legend to many but that didn’t negate the need to satiate his ample sweet-tooth.
“Ultraviolet Line Train 303, Margrave’s Park to Wiley Street, Now Approaching,” announced the thin, reedy voice of the metal-mind controlling every tekhnic apparatus in operation. “Have Fare Talismans Ready Before Boarding Please. Ultraviolet Line Train 303…”
Jaq gulped down the rest of his caffa, tender throat protected from the boiling brew by a quick ice cantrip, then scrambled from his perch towards the edge of the main platform. He kept his talisman dangling against his bare chest, beneath the thin silk of his taper-collared white button-up shirt, flashing the hexagonal pass at the nearest heavy-browed Dragoon with a look of utter boredom. While there were weirder folk about the station than Jaq-fringe-mages and slimepit harvesters, crystal-burners and kobold priests-he still didn’t wish to draw any attention, especially from subway fascists.
Train 303 sped by in a quicksilver blur, dozens of faces and the muted light of the interior masked by tinted tube-shaped windows. The doors dilated open with a soft hiss, revealing the ice-blue neon nimbus of the cramped cabin within. Bodies moved in, bodies moved out, the balancing act between vehicle and platform done within seconds.
Jaq found his own lithe-framed flesh vessel squeezed in between a couple of crystal-burners from the nearest energy station, their char-scented slate blue overalls hidden by bulky greatcoats. The majority of passengers aboard, standing and sitting, wore some form of scarf, hat, gloves and coat as the undercity of Great Exahldria was infamous for its chill and damp even into early summer; Jaq supposed he should’ve aided his blending in by wearing more than his simple black velvet coat but he was called The Winter-Warlock for a reason. He liked the cold.
The doors dilated shut again and in a flash they were off into the wild black yonder of the tram-tunnels. Jaq hummed a quirky old tune his long-dead master once taught him under his breath to calm his nerves, wishing the ride were over already, that the whirring thrum of the speeding train was slightly lower-pitched, that the larger of the two crystal-burners wasn’t digging their elbow into his side.
Three more stops and then we’re home. Deep breaths, happy thoughts, you’ve got this.
The subterranean pitch outside quickly faded; the bright blue neon inside dimmed. Beyond the tinted glass, the jewel-bright horizon of Great Exahldria sprawled upwards and onwards.
Above, between, below, the ancient capitol of the Thetasian Imperium swallowed the early morning sky and marched along and over the snaking ribbons of its mighty rivers. Iridescent blades of plate-glass and cut-crystal sliced through the clouds while domed districts of industry, habitation and agriculture zones bustled alongside commerce sectors, combat arenas, energy fissures and slime-pits at the base of the skyscrapers. Fortresses, bridges, universities, ampitheatres, palaces-name a splendid civic structure, a shining example of architecture at its finest or strangest, and you could find it somewhere in the sceptered skyline of the megalopolis.
Jaq wanted none of those things right now. He wanted to be away from the noise and the bustle, free of the warmth of so many beings huddled together, the shifting, shuffling living wall of flesh. He wanted to be home, hidden at the far back of his crooked little alley, with his books and his artifacts, his clocks and cats and unfinished projects, Lydia’s surly, smoke-eyed stare glaring at him as he turned away another petitioner. Anywhere but here.
When the vox-vents finally called out Wiley Street Station, Jaq nearly jumped for joy once the doors gave way to freedom. What was likely the worst obstacle of the morning was done and over with; the long hours of the day stretched ahead.
Wiley Street above was much like the rest of this part of Blackstone Gardens-clusters of row houses and flat-blocks squished together, ten to thirty stories high, brick and brownstone facades crumbling and cracked. The foundation blocks of skybound districts and the lattice of the upper traffic webs loomed over even the tallest building, spellstone and silvered steel glistening. Inkleaf trees and noxflower bushes lined the streets and sidewalks every so often, the darkling beauty of the thin-stalked plants giving the district its name. Not much else recommended the working-class neighborhood to newcomers, save the ancient ruins and urban legends of centuries past. It was a region of the undercity where many existed, but few truly lived.
Flint Alley was about another five minutes’ walk down Wiley Street, sandwiched between a row of secondhand goods shops (many closed) and the old arcane animal shelter. Should Jaq ever need to go thrift-store diving or adopt a lonely land-squid, he didn’t have to go far.
The same couldn’t be said for his morning cup of caffa, not anymore. The old café right at the alley’s entrance had shuttered its doors six months past, much to Jaq’s dismay. The Blackstone Central’s café served a good breakfast brew but they were too distant for his liking and they switched out cashiers too often for him to grow comfortable with anyone on staff. Hopefully that redhead Emira would last more than a week. Jaq had a good feeling about her.
He nodded at ruddy-cheeked Missus Gordon while she moved another box of faded paperbacks and music-boxes to the front window display of her thrift shop, gave a quick hello wave to jowly Mister Brooks the shelter-supervisor as he took a burly drakehound out for its morning walk. A few people in the neighborhood knew of Jaq, were even on polite terms, but hardly anyone he could call a friend.
Jaq wished he could afford to be open with more people, to be seen as an ordinary, likeable person even among the everyday ranks of magedom in the city. But he was an unusual case and always had been, an officially sanctioned Warlock of the Thetasian Decadiarch. One of the Thirteen Shadow Sentinels, cursed from birth with the dark magics of the Ten Hells itself, commissioned to rid the Imperium of the vestiges of the Last Great Demon War still scattered throughout the land.
And even within that small and secret body, Jaq was still an unusual case.
The Winter-Warlock they’d named him, The Lord of Frost, The Ambassador To The Elementals Of The Coldfire Court. The other Sentinels searched and served far and wide across the Imperium and even other nations while he stayed here, in the slums and shadows of the capitol itself, where the undercity met the underworld.
Beneath the bluster, Grey Tobey was certainly right about the denizens of the demonic depths walking the streets of Blackstone Gardens. For there was a Hellpoint within the ruins of Old Exahldria scattered about the district, a narrow crack in the barriers between realities.
And it was up to Jaq to protect the city from whatever horrors waited on the other side.
The curling coils of purple smoke sliding down the alley and along the black iron stems of glowglobe-posts only added to the growing sensation of cold creeping into Jaq’s mind and body. He’d almost welcome back the seething mass of subway passengers and all their sweaty, sour warmth.
On second thought, maybe it’s not that bad.
Ice crystals and frost clung to window casements and drainpipes, sewer grates and doorframes. A few lumps of mud and slush decorated the alleyway, the first stalks of early spring grass trying and failing to thrive in the brackish strips of soil. The slightly metallic scent of burning energy crystals from the nearby power plant-the source of all the violent and azure fog throughout the night and early morning-added to the sensation of stepping into mid-winter.
And yet, for all that, Jaq had to remind himself he was not in some snowy wilderness. He was in Flint Alley, home was in sight, the warmth of indoor heating emanated from the brick and mortar on every side. He was still in the domain of humanity, still in a realm where fire coursed throughout the blood of the living.
Perhaps fire runs through your blood, echoed a shrill, sharp voice deep within Jaq’s mind. But not mine! Never has, never will.
Jaq spun about. No one at the alley’s entrance, no one at the alley’s end. Another quick glance showed nothing in the dumpster behind 110 Flint Alley apart from the usual garbage sacks and soggy cardboard. And what might possibly be the fattest raccoon he’d ever seen.
“Show yourself, devil.” Jaq reached into his cluttered pockets, slid out from the black velvet depths a short scroll-worked rod of bronze, flicked the rod open to its full length. Brushing snow-white bangs out of his eyes, Jaq tapped into his Second Sight and synchronized the spectrums of coexistent realities. What his usual eyes could not see, his Third Eye drank in all. “I am Jaqson Skade, a Sentinel of The Shadow Court. You will submit!”
“I will, will I?” The ghostly pallor of a Twisted Imp shone stark against the muted, mottled greys of the alleyway reality. Nasty, brutish and short, its face filled with fangs, its bulbous eyes brimming with hatred and hunger. “No, I don’t think so!”
The creature crouched at the edge of the road, toadlike and tubby, shocks of mold-blue hair sticking out between long, pointed ears. Black talons and webbed feet clawed at the frosted dirt while milky-white limbs clothed in rags tensed in preparation to strike. Twisted Imps were the spirits of murdered kobolds, corrupted by the demonic energy of the otherworld and often forced into a foot-soldier status by any number of Demon Knights wandering the fell frontier, Unbound or Beholden alike. Usually, they roamed the paths of the dead in troops of twelve to twenty-four, but this one was alone. And waiting.
All of this flashed through Jaq’s mind as the Twisted Imp switched from toadlike crouching to a lightning-quick lunge, shooting its deadly claws arrow-straight towards Jaq’s exposed throat.
No matter he was in the world of the living and the Twisted Imp was on the other side. The barriers were weak here in the undercity, weaker still wherever Jaq went.
True to his reputation as The Winter-Warlock, Jaq swished the air with his bronze warding rod, flashed the trio of rings on his left hand, said aloud the necessary words of spellcrafting. The air rippled with sparks dancing along his breath.
“Barrier Incant! Glacial Blight!”
A field of frost enveloped Jaqson in a heartbeat, crystal knives slicing the air and rendering his surroundings deathly cold. Elaborate patterns of whorls and spirals painted the air a vivid sapphire, spears of ice and wind shot a dozen feet outward. The Twisted Imp screamed upon contact with the spike-studded shield, its sickly flesh carved into bloody tatters, hot red droplets staining the cobbles below.
“No dispersal, eh?” Jaq stepped back, lowered the spell barrier, flicked the bronze rod outwards again. The Imp staggered backwards several yards away, scarred and snarling but still extant. “Tough little bastard, aren’t you?”
The Imp rasped a vicious curse, then dashed to the side. Jaq repeated the spell but the Imp dodged and bounced its bulbous body off of the dumpster lid. Garbage sacks exploded upon contact with the thrusting spears of ice, a sickly-sweet scent perfuming the air. In the confusion, the Imp flew by Jaq’s head, slashed a claw at his shoulder.
Jaq gasped, cursed, stumbled. His physical body felt nothing, didn’t let loose a single drop of blood let alone a gushing flow. His spirit was wounded, however, shallow but smarting nonetheless. He’d need a vial of holy water and an infusion of ghostbane herb into his tea later.
Assuming he survived, of course. The Imp was a tougher little foe than he’d realized. Who knew what could happen next?
“Got you!” The Imp cried happily, clinging to the side of an old rundown warehouse now. It twisted its head around to an unnatural angle, another reminder of its existence being tethered to another reality. Cackling, crawling, the Imp refused to stay still. “Next blow will kill you!”
“I highly doubt that!” Jaq swung the rod around, forming a circle of sparks in mid-air. Six more quick slashes and he had a basic hexagram. The exact pattern produced created a runic symbol in the center of the energy circle, a flail of lightning. “Salvo Incant! Indra Blade!”
The Imp cried out as a rapid firestorm of electric tines blasted out from the circle, silver-white and golden-green. Every hop the Imp made from stone to stone, the lightning followed and faster. Staccato burst after staccato burst, a whirlwind of stormlight circling the alley as the Imp tried and failed to evade the wrath of Jaqson Skade.
Charred ghostflesh and coal-black claws fell to the ground a mere yard away from Jaq seconds later, the Twisted Imp’s features even more twisted than before. Ice crystals clung to the burnt and broken body, static sparks frizzed and popped. Jaq bent low, flickered a quick warding circle into existence with his rings, poked and prodded the Imp with his rod-
The Imp’s curling fangs clamped shut around the rod, bloodshot eyes brimming with red rage. A forked tongue, pale green and slime-coated, slithered in between the dagger-sharp teeth. “You. Die. Now!”
Jaq fell back onto the cold hard ground, cursing as the creature surprised him. He’d be damned if a mere foot-soldier class creature killed him but with his casting rod clamped shut in the jaws of death, it was hard to summon anything strong enough to finish the job. He had no other spelltekh about, no wards strong enough to last more than another few minutes, no neighbors in sight or Dragoons nearby to even wonder what was happening.
No way of defeating and destroying the Unseen.
With a ragged burst of breath, Jaq tried a spell out of pure desperation, aware of the backlash. “Aurora Incant! Soul Flame!”
The spell was one which had earned much enmity from the Demon Conjurers of the Coldfire Court. He’d used it only twice before, in minor skirmishes against the Onyx Archduke, and always the spell had proved effective-and also draining to the point of utter exhaustion. Jaq never thought he’d have to stoop so low as to use the spell on an Imp of all things, but this simply wouldn’t give up!
The Imp and Jaq both cried in pain as a crackling cold burst of flame erupted from the Imp’s mouth, parting them both with a short, sharp shock. Jaq landed on a pile of dislodged garbage sacks with the casting rod in hand, the Imp a tangle of limbs in a brackish mudpuddle outside a building three doors down. There was a ringing sensation in Jaq’s head, a blistering heat along his hand and upper right arm. The Soul Flame was usually much more powerful but this packed a wallop all the same.
Jaq staggered upwards, brushed away potato peels and citrus rind off of his sleeve. And groaned when he saw the Imp clawing its way back up as well-the left claw was broken and bent, the fangs shattered, yet still the Imp clung on to its wretched non-life.
“Must. Kill. The Lord. Of Frost.” The Imp hissed and gurgled and spat. “Must. Kill!!!-”
Whatever else the Twisted Imp was about to say was cut off, quite literally, by the quick, clean sweep of a radiant white blade. The Imp’s bulbous, blackened features crumbled into ashen motes, drifting away on the corpse-cold winds of the underworld. Jaq’s Second Sight shifted back into the vision of his reality, proper color flooding the world. And he smiled as he saw who wielded the blade that dealt the killing blow.
Tall and straight-backed, amber tresses pulled back in a braid, garbed in a bronze waistcoat, white trousers and a frock coat colored the crimson of her order, Jaq’s trusty second wiped clean a smattering of black ichor from the soul-forged steel of her hexblade with a lacy handkerchief. Then Lydia Shaw flashed her employer a stark, stony stare.
