Hello, guys!!
These are some of the proposed characters I have in mind for my ElementstheGame-based light novel. Will color them digitally when I get the time, but that's really time-consuming so please be patient. As a teaser, I will be providing a little bit of context for each character.
The Hero.
Shion, the only person in the world born with the power to control all six Arcana (all 12 elements). He wields that two-bladed spear halberd thingy, which is designed after the level 46
Clear Providence in
DragonFable. He also has (my own personal design) a shuriken shield thingy, with four blades that can spin like a propeller.
Each blade (2 on the spear and 4 on the shield) grants him access to one specific Arcana. Because he can use all six, he was hailed as a legendary hero and was prophesized to defeat the Demon Lord.
Now, the Demon Lord is no pushover himself. He has his own brand of magic impossible for humans to learn, such as (also from DragonFable) Void, Disease, Evil, and Fear. However, he does possess the Death and Darkness elements that humans know of.
The battle raged on for seven days and seven nights. Neither the Hero nor the Demon Lord could break each other's defenses, until at the final day, Shion went for a gamble. He cast an unorthodox Light spell that caught the Demon Lord off-guard. It was not meant to kill, but rather, to target the Darkness/Death elements within him and shatter him into a million pieces.
It worked. That night, 10000 pieces of the Demon Lord's powers rained down upon the continents. It was a historical moment. Despite not being banished for good, splitting the all-powerful Demon into tiny fractions of himself was more than enough for a victory.
However, the strain of invoking that spell has also left Shion open for an attack. As the Demon Lord grew weaker and weaker, he cursed the Hero and his future so much. He cursed that he will never be able to become a hero again, and that he shall lose authority over all his Arcana. The powers that was once his will cease belonging to him, and that he will have nothing left by the time the Light spell is over.
And so, the premise of this entire story, by the time Shion woke up he had no recollection of ever being a hero. He does not remember his name or anything about himself (complete amnesia) and standing in front of him were six different waifus, each a manifestation of what was once his own powers. The Demon Lord had turned his Arcana into sentient beings that can now think for themselves, and to make matters worse, they don't want to work together. They all have different personalities and different agendas, and they want to do whatever their own things instead of cleaning up the 10000 pieces of magic floating about.
Only one of the Arcana has any sense of responsibility: the Wave Arcana, Fire+Water chan.
She seems to be the only one who has a shred of obligation to finish the Hero's task. She inherited Shion's sense of righteousness, and so, is pretty much the only one who is hero-like among the Arcana.
Though she uses mainly Fire in her fighting style, she is more Water-like in her personality. She cares enough for the protagonist who has amnesia, and forms a party with him. She feels that the Arcana are still the Hero's property, and should act according to Shion's will.
But the other sisters are not so eager to do so. They want completely different things. They don't care about anything but themselves, and as much as Wave Arcana tried to take over as leader, there was a parting of the ways was sooner than she had expected.
Now the sisters are scattered all over the country. Wave-chan and hero's goal is to convince the sisters of their cause, while beating as many of the 10000 demon pieces along the way. Needless to say, the Arcana will not agree to her peacefully, so she may have to fight them when the time comes.
The Nest Arcana, Death and Life.
One of the things that I think will really make this story unique is the forcing of opposite elements. It's useful for magic practitioners to be able to control opposites like fire and water, so that if fire gets hard countered, shifting to water mode is an excellent plan B. If water gets countered instead (by electricity perhaps?) then fire as its opposite can bring in the pain. It's very flexible.
But these waifus that were created are not magic practitioners. They are personifications.
They themselves are made of the very magic they are using. Imagine a god of both water and fire. His whole body would be made of fire, but at the same time, should also be made of water. He should rage owing to his fire nature, but simultaneously, should be calm and serene like a river. It doesn't make sense. To have both is to be torn into cascading split personalities. Conflicting elements hurt each other, they battle, and though we can say they're useful enough as human magic, polar opposites would bring immense psychological pain for the beings that are made exactly out of them.
And that's what I want to use for the central theme if this story: how sometimes we have parts of us we hate, how sometimes, people are forced to become something they're not. I'm going to be an engineer soon (board exam on November), but I really don't want to do that. I hate it, I don't know anything about it, and if I have to do that sh*t everyday for the rest of my life, I really will kill myself.
No, I want to draw manga, and write stories. I want to live freely. I want to know what it's like to take on something with no idea of what the correct answer is. I don't want to be just a gear in a clockwork that can be replaced with a million more identical pieces. I want a journey. I want to find myself in the process, and show an answer that defines
me in the product. I want something that can be considered uniquely my own.
So yeah... I think I can pull off a theme like this. As someone who is good at math but doesn't want to do math (and yes, I'm asian), I think internalizing the girls' conflicts is something right up my alley. All the Arcanas are made of opposing elements, and so all of them are discontent with themselves. Because they are born into this world with elements not what they desired, much like how not all people are born into the families they wish for, so too, they must figure out how to cope on their own. Maybe they come to terms with who they are. Maybe they don't...
Now that that edgy emo sh*t is out of the way, let's get down to the character designs!!!
As you can see, our design for the Life element is a loli holding a skull (to represent Death). As evident from her facial expression, she's shy and generally runs from any social interaction. She can talk to plants and animals, and usually, those
are the only ones she can talk to. She can use plant-based magic, as well as heal others. No color yet but you can imagine her hair as light green. Maybe her character design could benefit from a few flowers here and there, your thoughts? She doesn't like fighting, whether it's fighting the demons or fighting her sisters. Her goal is just simple peace.
Okay, so that's Life!
But keep in mind though, that an Arcana is two opposing elements slapped together. As thematic as Life-chan was, the Nest Arcana also has the element Death in it. How do we incorporate this into her character? She's so cute and innocent, I don't want her killing people and such. What to do...
I racked my brains over what a Life+Death person should look like, and I came up with what I think is the best solution for this conundrum.
BAM! A second version!!
Wait, hear me out. The loli takes on her Life appearance earlier during the day, but at night, she transforms into this ghost-like dandere with tentacle monster things coming out of her. Death dandere, as oppposed to her other self, is stoic. She doesn't really care for peace or destruction; she's emotionless. She walks away from social interaction just like Life-chan, but more of just because she sees humans as insignificant. Similar, yet so different.
Death dandere, as you can see, has no feet. The lower part of her body just cuts off into nowhere and she's just floating around. That's because when I visualized her, I imagined Death magic as sucking the living daylights out of anyone with a soul. Her lower body is a portal or vacuum that can suck everyone's soul into nothingness when activated (like that hand portal guy from Inuyasha). She keeps it down most of the time when it's not active, but all she has to do is raise her cloak up, in a jellyfish or squid-like motion, and it's bye bye for everyone within five hundred meters.
Another witty thing I thought of is that, in contrast to Life-chan, Death dandere can talk to inanimate objects. Because objects are dead. It makes sense, right? It's thematic genius, right (?) Daytime cat whispherer, nighttime table countertop buddz.
She has a stitch in her face to resemble the Frankenstein monster. Also, she has that weird, teeth-like hairband on her head, to signify that she can use bone construction magic as well. Those two cat-ear like things are supposed to be the canine teeth (genius!!). She can use the tentacles to grab stuff like hands, and when dawn arrives, she transforms back to Life-chan.
That's their coping mechanism. They're like twins sharing the same body, or I guess you could say that Death dandere sleeps during the day so Life is in charge, and Life loli sleeps during the night, allowing Death-chan to take over.
One very important character development milestone I want to reach is that Death-chan has a passive soul-sucking ability 'even when she's not using it'. It's not noticeable, but it sucks life out of everyone near her ever so slowly, such that given a few months or years together with her, her allies would begin to suffer health problems.
That's why I want for the protagonist to eventually break open her outer shell and show her what friendship is like. Death learns of happiness, what it's like to have companions. Some part of her will long to be with the protagonist on his journey to clean up 10000 demon magic scraps, but some part of her also knows that she'll end up sucking the life out of everyone in a few years' time if that were to happen. She is happy whenever she's with the protagonist, but deep down it's hurting her so much that she is eating the lifeforce out of him.
All this, Life-chan watches from an internal window. Because they are twins, Life-chan knows all too well the pain Death is experiencing. And when she realizes Death is too scared to tell protagonist the truth, she herself does it.
She knows Death-chan won't be able to say it, can't bring herself to be the one that ruins her own happiness, so as her twin, Life-chan does her the favor and bids farewell to our heroes. It's for the best. Death and Life go on a journey alone, so Death-chan can't hurt innocent people anymore. They are in solitude for an indefinitely long time.
"Aw, man. This is a depressing ending," you might be thinking. Can't they go back to the hero's side? Maybe... if a Light spell can be used to counter-act the Death curse...
But that just makes the matter more impossible to solve... because the Light element belongs to-!!!
The Darkness-Light Arcana!!
The Moon Arcana takes on the form of a delinquent yankee schoolgirl, all black uniform and long black hair. She has devil wings and devil horns to signify Darkness, and the orbs hovering behind her are supposed to mimic the yin yang symbol.
As one could already tell, she is heavily Darkness-dominant. What this means is that, unlike Death and Life-chan who share equally, she leans almost 100% towards the Darkness personality. She is violent, she crushes those who stand against her, and she does not associate with anyone. She is not a villain (yet?) but is quite far from being a hero. She is a lone wolf who does everything by herself, much like how Death-chan is.
She hates Light.
Very,
very, much.
From the very first moments of being born, she hated that she ever ended up with this accursed element. She barely uses any of its spells due to its disgusting nature, and she has in fact sealed off all the Light magic in her into the tiny facemask she is wearing at the top right of her head. She can only use Light spell by putting on the mask, and she only touches it very sparingly. Her favorite Light spell would be the full-heal Miracle, because it empties her of all Light Quanta in one go. She feels it cleanses her from filth.
She shows some semblance of concern for the protagonist (maybe plot twist somewhere where she uses an invisibility spell on herself and secretly helps the protag). What I'm visualizing for the second or third arc is that Wave Arcana tries futilely to convince Aether-Earth chan and Gravity-Air chan. They don't want to do her dirty work. She meets The Council Arcana (Time+Entropy), and knowing that it is not an offense-heavy Arcana, she challenges her to a duel. If Wave wins, Council will join her.
But Wave loses. She thinks to herself that she can't even win against a defensive Arcana. What kind of leader is she? She's useless. She gives up hope and realizes it was pointless to try and gather everyone in the first place.
If you want something done, do it yourself. The rage of Fire element within her takes over. It's at this point that Wave snaps and disbands her party with the protagonist. She leaves.
Protagonist, at a loss on what to do, tries valiantly to go demon-hunting by himself with the little magic he has. It fails and he almost dies, and this is where we reveal that Moon-chan has been secretly following him the whole time, giving him support from the shadows.
Protagonist begs her to help him convince Wave-chan to come back to her senses. Moon-chan does not like doing the right thing, but admits that she does relish the thought of beating up another Arcana, especially knocking Wave-chan off her high horse.
They track Wave-chan down, where they find out she has outposted herself in a town popular for its hotsprings. She is collecting as much Fire Quanta as she can and is threatening to burst open the sun. The radiation from all this is sure to kill all 10000 demons for sure.
Protagonist tells her to knock it off as she will also end up killing all of humanity, but Wave doesn't care anymore. She's had enough of trying to compromise, this is the only solution left.
Wave and Moon-chan fight. Fortunately, Moon-chan has also been saving up a lot of Quanta (for secret reasons). She induces a massive Mugetsu-like spell. Just in the nick of time, as the sun is about to go off a huge dragon appears out of the ground and swallows the sun, in a cataclysmic event similar to the sun-devouring finale in DragonFable's Orb Saga.
This uses up all of Moon's energy, and so while the sun is still eclipsed, it's up to protagonist to defeat Wave-chan. Which he does, and shows Wave-chan that there's no such thing as useless effort.
Then later in the hotsprings we get mandatory boob grab scenes (aw hell yeah!) and then Moon and Wave go their separate ways. Later they will team up again, albeit begrudgingly, to defeat the powerful Aether (Deflagration+Steal).
But other than these rare cases, Moon-chan is off somewhere doing her business. She "operates in the shadows". For example, after she used the wide scale eclipse to stop the sun from exploding, we find out that all the 10000 demon pieces across the globe got +1/+1 permanent boost. This was her plan all along; stopping Wave-chan was just a side trip to the market.
Secretly, her main goal is to separate herself from the Light impurity plaguing her. She studies the Demon Lord magic pieces to find a way to reconstruct the curse put upon the Hero. In fact, I'm envisioning an Arc where, once she collects all the information and Quanta she needs, she uses a possession spell to take over The Council (Time+Entropy). With Entropy as the element of dice rolls and disordering, she initiates a widespread Entropic manipulation to scramble all the given Arcana into new pairings.
I'm imagining this really cool scene where she is at the top of a clock tower during midnight. Protagonist just finished a boss battle or something, thinking we finished an arc and solved all conflicts, but then the enigmatic Time+Entropy comes and tells us it was too late, it has begun. "What's too late?" protagonist asks, and then out of nowhere music plays to the intro of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei opening themesong: Superscription of Data. Everyone looks up at the clocktower, just enough to see a mysterious figure up there. Then darkness spreads; everyone below is swallowed up despite their best efforts to run. A wide landscape shot, then bamboo echoes match the ticking of the clock, and Moon-chan smiles menacingly, lip syncing to the starting line "Oshietemashou ka?" Damn, this gives me goosebumps!!
And the next thing they know, the sisters have completely changed into different elements.
I sooooo wanted to give her a character design like Ara Devi from Elsword:
But I decided to reserve this character design for the future. Because I'm planning that, when two of the sisters see eye to eye on something, even just temporarily, they can fusion into a new waifu with superior element synergy. For example, FireWater and DarknessLight hate each other, but when they agree to work together, they can form a Fire-Light combination waifu. So I want to reserve Ara Devi's design for a Darkness-Death waifu.
The Cloud (Air-Gravity)
My personal favorite, I would say. Tamaba Satori is one of my all-time favorite waifus and I'm definitely writing a character based off her, no if's and but's.
If you don't know, Satori is one of the girls from Busou Shoujo. She is part calm, drug-intoxicated airhead like Agiri-san from Kill Me Baby, and also part power-hungry crazy yandere. I put Cloud Arcana as one of the more powerful elements, up there with Aether+Earth. Air and Gravity are not powerful per se, but its Cloud-chan's attitude that makes them really deadly.
She shows no mercy. She derives pleasure from facing against strong opponents, and so, there us not one battle where she fights without 100% seriousness.
Like most of her sisters, she sees little value in human lives. She can kill most people just by depriving them of oxygen, and Gravity makes her unhittable from most attacks. She believes power is the only thing that matters in this world. Those who have it rule, those without it die. Her goal is to find someone who is enough of a challenge for her, and when she realizes humans are just like insects, she moves on to her sisters. Time+Entropy, whom Wave-chan had a hard time during the first arcs, will get easily trashed by Cloud-chan. And I want Wave-chan to be the one to beat Cloud. She got bullied by everyone at the start refusing to accept her leadership, (Time+Entropy included), but she has a hard counter for poisonous gases. Because she has water element, she can go mermaid and take the battle underwater. It will be sort of her redemption arc.
And then Cloud loli joins the party and becomes the best waifu ever!!!
(≧◡≦) ♡
Her character design is a bit too simplistic at this point so I might add some flying saucers to accompany her. Maybe also an antenna of some sort as a hair accessory? What you guys think?
We're still missing designs for Wave (Fire+Water), The Tower (Aether+Earth) and The Council (Time+Entropy) so if you guys have suggestions, feel free to comment.
