An FMA au of Bartimaeus works surprisingly well, and the more I thought about it, the better everything fit. I don’t have time to write an actual story, so here’s the outline of a plot. Spoilers for fma, and implicit spoilers for bartimaeus
-400 years ago, a homunculus named Nouda was created. He wanted freedom, so he tricked the King of Xerxes, under the offer of immortality, into killing every person in his kingdom in one instant. All those souls could give someone nearly unlimited power, and Nouda took them all for himself. But he still wanted more, he wanted to become the perfect being, so he travelled west and began manipulating a different country
-to help him in his task, he rid himself of each of the seven sins and gave them all bodies and new names. First was Pride, known as Ammet: a powerful shadowy eldritch being. Next were the twins, Faquarl and Bartimaeus, Wrath and Greed, with the power of sight and shapeshifting respectively. Then came Sloth, or Jabor, with his immense strength. Then there was Gluttony (Ramuthra), Lust (Honorius), and Envy (Simpkin).
-100 years ago, Bartimaeus ran away and started a life of his own
-10 years ago, the country of Amestris started a civil war against the region of Ishval, where a girl named Kitty lived
-5 years ago, Nathaniel began reading alchemy books with knowledge beyond what his teacher would show him. A state alchemist named Lovelace had wronged him, and he wanted revenge.
-Around the same time, Kitty was living in the slums of East City. She found a group of surviving Ishvalans called the Resistance who learned the destruction part of alchemy but not the reconstruction part, in order not to tread on their Goddess’s domain. They used this power to attack State Alchemists, the soldiers who had headed the genocide of their people. Kitty didn’t need much convincing to join
-Nathaniel’s plans of revenge backfired horribly, causing his teacher’s wife, one of the only people he cared about, to die. Utterly enraged and still too confident of his own power, he broke the biggest rule of alchemy and tried to bring her back. He failed, losing a leg and gaining so much knowledge in the process
-In the east, the Queen of Sheba was starting to feel threatened by the Amestris across the desert. There were rumors of the government creating philosopher stones from the souls of their enemies, using them to strengthen their armies. She sent her head guard, Asmira, over to investigate and bring one back
-Bartimaeus had been roaming the world for the past century, but now he found himself coming back to Amestris, just to see what was up. He met a kid, Ptolemy, who was studying both Western alchemy and Eastern alkahestry, and combining them. Even before he met Bartimaeus, he had figured out the country-wide transmutation circle, but with information from Bartimaeus’s time working for Nouda, he came up with a way to reverse it. There were a few other people working together with them, and after awhile, Bartimaeus started to feel like he has a family for the first time in over a hundred years
-With the knowledge that the Truth had given Nathaniel, he was confident that he could take on Lovelace for real this time. After getting automail prosthetic legs, he went right back to trying to ruin Lovelace. He was nearly stopped by a monster named Ramuthra that devoured everything in its path. It was watching Lovelace’s house, though it did not appear to be working for him. Nathaniel got past it and uncovered Lovelace’s treasonous plot against the government, earning himself a position as a State Alchemist
-The Resistance received an anonymous tip, and went to attack Makepeace, the kindly-seeming head of government who had ordered the destruction of Ishval. But before they could even get close to him, they were stopped by a horrifying creature who could heal itself and had claws that could pierce through everything. All of them were killed except Kitty.
-After spending two years in Amestris with Ptolemy, Ramuthra caught scent of Bartimaeus. Along with Simpkin, he attacked the place Bartimaeus had been living, killing Ptolemy and all but one of the others. Nouda had Bartimaeus killed, absorbing his essence back into himself.
-Nathaniel quickly began rising through the ranks of the government. As he did, he began noticing things that didn’t line up: a human transmutation circle in the ruins of an abandoned government laboratory, rumors of experiments to combine humans and animals into chimeras to use as soldiers, alchemic wonders that could only have been done by a philosopher’s stone
-In the aftermath of the Resistance’s destruction, Kitty ran into Asmira. The monster that had killed her team was still after her, and she needed help. Asmira knew that anything that could regenerate its wounds had to be powered by a philosopher’s stone, and she wanted access to it. It was a perfect match
-The more information Nathaniel found, the deeper he dug into the going ons of the country. One day, he mapped out all major conflicts Amestris had ever been in, and it showed a clear pattern. Spread out in key points along the circular shape of the country, each major conflict was clearly a blood sacrifice for a country-wide transmutation circle
-He was found out almost immediately, and dragged into a lair underneath the central government. Here, he was told everything. The heads of the government were not behind this plot, but are rather mere pawns, manipulated by Mr. Hopkins, a mysterious and immortal man who was secretly a homunculus in a human body. The homunculi were sad to kill him, they said. Apparently he was going to have been a sacrifice to help them activate the nation-wide array, but he was becoming too much trouble to keep around. But at least he would have some use.
-Nouda took the essence of Bartimaeus, wiped of any memories, and stuck it into Nathaniel’s body. The homunculi expected that he would destroy Nathaniel’s mind, like Faquarl did Hopkins. Instead, Bartimaeus had boundless curiosity about the whole world, and as annoying Nathaniel was, he amused and interested him. Bartimaeus decided to keep him around for a little longer
-Working together, Kitty and Asmira ambushed Honorius. After learning that there were more like him, they killed him and decided to go after a weaker homunculi so Asmira could have an easier time of bringing a stone back to Sheba
-However, the more destruction Asmira realized the homunculi could cause because of their philosopher’s stone, the more she worried about what would happen if she took one to Sheba. The final straw was when she and Kitty learned that in order to create a stone, people had to die. Asmira knew that she couldn’t allow this knowledge to be spread any further, even to her own queen
-The last surviving member of Bartimaeus’s family from before found his way into the tunnels of Central. It was only after Bartimaeus had killed Affa that all the memories came flooding in. Furious and grieving, with a whole past life crashing into his mind, he went after Ramuthra to try and kill him for what he did to Ptolemy and the rest. He didn’t succeed, but he managed to escape unharmed and join up with Asmira and Kitty
-Now, they are planning to stop Nouda’s plans to destroy the country. There’s only four of them, but Nathaniel knows the intricacies of how the government and the people in it work, Asmira can sense the presence of a homunculus, Kitty can kill them by disintegrating their bodies over and over until they die for good, and Bartimaeus knows how to reverse the country-wide human transmutation circle. In addition, all of them are extremely powerful fighters in different ways. They don’t have a great chance of winning, but they do still have one
So there were these books I rather liked when I was younger and they were still coming out called The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud. I recently reread them and found myself liking them even more now that I've gotten into writing a bit myself. The main characters in this series are so compelling and definite as they develop.
And thus I find myself with a need to draw fan art for it.
So this piece highlights the first book, The Amulet of Samarkand, and Bartimaeus and Nathaniel's first incident together, facing fire, torture, thieves, a mercenary and a whole government's disbelief.
I know there is a graphic novel as well for this series, but I've never seen it myself, so all representations are based off key traits in the characters descriptions. I find this worked well in my stained glass abstraction style's way of minimalism for the characters.
All characters and settings belong to Jonathan Stroud
Art and interpretations belongs to me
Also on my deviantart here: http://alerane.deviantart.com/art/Odds-that-you-could-do-something-with-307225160
