Pile of One-Offs

These are a series of stories in mind for the first quarter. Keep in mind these are not meant to be completely formed, and they will be tweaked as they develop into working comic outlines. However, the whole point of this article is to find any interest or feedback I can get from the story ideas I have in mind. So for each story: there will be a dry pitch of the story itself, and a list of the key details to happen.

After typing and reading over these, I realized these are about the same story despite the different beats. Alongside, I added a note per story, for thoughts I have concerning them. Overall, I don't think these are in any way perfect, but I care since they help me understand where I want to take things.

Story A

A wanderer rescues a princess in secret

• Beginning - Wanderer in wilderness is told of mission and finds place
• Informed by a moth at the start, has to convince wanderer, gives to wanderer a deus ex machina for later
• The living earth/other daemon tells traces of where she went
• Passes village, find a waterfall to climb up
• Wanderer finds a badly injured daemon around waterfall, helps it, and brings it to the location supposed to go
• Middle - Wanderer gets ready to deal with mission
• Wanderer heads back to band up some mercenaries, not telling them too much beyond pay
• Develop mercenaries more along the way, weirded by stuff above the waterfall
• They find the princess, and she's out of her mind and not responding, mercenaries have different ideas in mind
• Get ambushed by evil mages, and they kill off most of the mercenaries
• The wanderer hides, now being hunted down about forest
• End
• Wanderer runs into injured daemon, daemon tells more info to save day, and wanderer helps snaps princess to senses
• Deus ex machina is given to princess, and antagonists burn to death
• Princess leaves adruptly in disguise, and wanderer left to go back alone
• As ending, princess comes back disguised as a prostitute to the wanderer at an inn, tells some important details

Note: the real challenge is pushing this one towards a non-cliche direction.

Story B

A worm and a soldier defend a wall from parasitic spears

• Beginning - Start of the problem
• Start out in an infirmary
• Revealed very early what the worm really is, spitting out parasites secretly taken out of wounded soldiers during prayers
• Soldier is the only one who finds out about the worm
• Worm invites soldier to supper as a breather, some exposition about what's going on
• Telling of plan since worm cannot leave infirmary, giving some item
• Middle - Entering conflict
• Can't find someone familiar with item
• Hearings of chieftan and guardsmen concerning the wall
• During a clash at the wall, distance from rest of guards and an enemy's corpse
• Find out who to give the item to, new person comes along
• End
• Briefly come across a wiped out village also inflicted with parasites
• Finding source of parasites, killing it
• Passing out from multiple wounds, waking up briefly in daemon realm
• Back in infirmary, new person nowhere to be found, worm seeming to ignore, gift of fruit jam left for him

Note: the most recent idea of the pile, and in turn the least developed, so not quite sure where to take a part of the last half.

Story C

A thief convinces a raincloud to take back a town from pirates

• Beginning - Arrival of fugitives
• Start with a damaged ship sailing alone in rain
• Entering island, take shelter in the ruins
• Among the fugitives, a thief sneaks deeper into ruins to save his life
• The thief climbs up the ruins himself to find a raincloud
• Raincloud is impressed thief would come up, exchange between them, thief wants to make things right
• Middle - Into base
• Get onto a raft at night, get spotted while leaving
• Enter town's shore, sneak about the town, advancing to the jail
• Enter captives, captives surprised about raincloud and thief, raincloud gains a liking for the captives
• Sneak one captive out to call nearby aid, plan to surround pirates
• End - Into base
• (by the next day, the raincloud is nowhere to be found)
• Captive from before entering the place with aid called
• Pirates surrounded, try to flee, but killed by a sudden storm, raincloud's arms in full view
• Skies left calm for a long time after storm
• After things are back to normal, thief changed, leaves a gift for raincloud at the island, and taking a boat back, rain comes during drought

Old note: trying to realize more of the direction here, even if I happen to scrap this one - which I might since I'm not sure if this one will give off the feeling I want.

New note: shifted the focus to humans since I don't think having a daemon-focused story will work. I still think this runs the risk of being more upbeat than I want it, but it is worth mentioning that none of these rough outlines reflect the type of story execution in mind.

Story D

A monk and mage team up with tieflings to hunt down a cult leader

• Beginning - Meeting tiefling
• Monk and mage launch an assault on cultists, and have been going for days
• Tiefling found investigating their ambush, invites them to hospitality
• Accept hospitality, go to otherworldly home, and tell of plan, warn of something relevant later
• Middle - Assault
• Find a place to hideout, going through the plan
• Launching the assault, some important characters die
• Head-to-head onto cult leader, stealing a part of him before everyone fleeing
• Incident creates alarm, and sending out a guardian to abduct them, brings most of them back
• End -
• Instead of continuing, goes back to save
• Condolences, given aid while going back, and show of support before leaving

Old note: this one is from an outline left on the backburner months earlier. I've been meaning to overhaul it since some ideas are stale, and I have a better feel of where I want to take things.

New note: since a lot of these base stories are very similar, decided to change the middle and end of this one.