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Friday, September 20, 2019

Blood Guard - Inspiration & Development

The inspiration for the creation of the Blood Guard came from three different sources, specifically three people. It was not until I started this blog that I realized that the true idea, that initial spark, was actually from my Merlin fan fiction story called 'Rise of the Dragonwitch'.

The story was originally designed to happen before The Great Purge and the official pairing were both original characters. The first being my OC, original character. The second OC was specifically designed to be her male counterpart, that which complimented her strengths but also shielded her weaknesses.

This character was the leader of the Blood Guard, the protectors of the High Priestess of the Old Religion. This story is the birth place of Benedict Strathem. His revamped version is the First Captain and he is basically the other half of her soul.

They are not soul mates, simply two halves of the same soul, torn asunder when the power of light and the power of darkness became too much for the physical body to handle. Therefore it was siphoned off into another body which ultimately formed the First Captain.

This creation was also the same event that would result in the birth of the demonic butler and the Hollow of Death. Both of these creations needed to happen simultaneously, otherwise the plot would not have been able to progress.

Now...what actor/celebrity inspired the creation and appearance of the First Captain? Here's a hint...detective, eugenics, dragon, and doctor. The answer is below.



If you guessed Benedict Cumberbatch, then you're correct! He plays a detective in BBC's Sherlock, he plays Khan in Star Trek: Into Darkness, he is the voice of Smaug from The Hobbit, and he plays Doctor Stephen Strange in Doctor Strange. When portraying Sherlock, it was his intelligent mind that first kick started the character of Benedict Strathem. His later portrayals as Khan and Strange inspired his overall appearance, but still left much of his actual style up to the readers.

The personality of the First Captain aka Shadow is a bit ambiguous due to the fact that he does not actually appear within the first book of The Star Chronicles called Stardust. This could change later as the story is still being developed and a few chapters have already been published on fanfiction.net. He is mentioned at some point, mainly in regards to his inability to be in the same universe as The Star Child, specifically her younger self. Starting out, she has no powers, is freshly regenerated, and one touch from him would stop her heart because his power/presence would be too much for her younger self to handle. Normally this would not be a problem, but due to him being the vessel of her darkness, they are constantly pulled toward each other within the same universe. This is a compulsion that neither can resist and thus the reason why he remains in The Realm during her early years.


Moving right along, the next person to inspire the creation of the Blood Guard is actually two versions of the same character but at two different points in his life. My love for this character is off the charts which is saying a lot considering I am a Whovian. He did originally start as one character which in turn inspired a good chunk of the story before a specific image nearly broke my brain from the insane amount of ideas flying about my head whilst breaking the transwarp barrier. To fully understand his true impact, you'll have to go to YouTube and watch the playlist containing all his scenes...yum. *clears throat* Before that however, I will show you the first image which will act as the representative for this particular character. Then i will explain the first character he inspired and afterwards, show you the image that nearly broke my brain from imagination overload.






Go ahead and scream, Oncers, because oh yeah...he is the one that made the Blood Guard into this monumental explosion including their own parallel pocket universe. To the Oncers, he is Killian Jones aka James Hook, Captain of the Jolly Roger. To the non-rabid fan girl/boy crowd, he is known as Colin O'Donoghue; actor, singer, and musician, acoustic guitar specifically. His portrayal as Killian was the insane amount of fuel thrown onto the spark that was Benedict Strathem. I will freely admit that after watching the entirety of the Once Upon A Time series that this character is my absolute favorite character of all time. I will forever love the Doctor but this guy is just plain mine.

In The Star Chronicles, he has two versions of himself with both existing within the same body; however, in later rewrites, this concept switched from split personality to two separate souls. Much later down the road, they will have separate bodies, but for the majority of The Star Chronicles, two souls in one body with the capability to switch freely from one to the other. This first version of him is Poseidon Killian Jones, often referred to as Sei. He is the Third Captain of the Blood Guard and a member of the Prism Guard. He is also a member of the upper echelon known as The Prism.

Poseidon is the Star Child's second most trusted individual and he is one of the three men that save her life at the very beginning of her timeline in their world. Without all three working in concert, she would not have been able to escape an absolute certain death. Poseidon is known as The Child of the Sea also known as a water elemental. He is able to generate and control water, even transform his entire body into water. There is a lot more that he can do, but I will save that for the more in depth character profile.

Now here is the image that literally created a whole different character, along with a new origin story and chain of events.



Now hear me out...there are several versions of this particular image, but the point of the image itself is the color of his eyes. Poseidon's eyes are a vibrant ocean blue, but this version of him has what I call mirrored obsidian eyes. This image combined with the mirrored silver eyes of Riddick from Pitch Black, Dark Fury, and The Chronicles of Riddick, out popped a whole new character which better reflects Killian's darker side in Once Upon A Time.

This version of him is known as James Hook, commonly referred to as Hook or Jimmy. He is considered the true captain of the Jolly Roger and he is The Fourth Captain of the Blood Guard. This man is the person Her Ladyship trusts most and for many a reason. Those reasons will be revealed when I do his in depth profile later on. Now Hook is radically different than the Third Captain, whom he usually calls Brat. Aside from an almost identical appearance and the fact that he is a water elemental as well, everything is different.

Hook is known as The Heart of the Ocean. Where Killian has exceptional control over water, Hook has raw power. The entirety of the ocean would obey his command, but his control is not nearly as refined as Poseidon's. The reasons for the different skill sets will be explained later. Here is where things get interesting. Killian is considered to be the nicer of the two, often viewed as polite, kind, gentlemanly, and sweet. *coughs* Clearly these people do not know him very well. Poseidon is on the colder side of the emotional spectrum, mainly in part to his origin story.

Killian will often push his emotions aside to focus on a problem, thus allowing for greater control over his elemental powers, but when provoked, no force in creation will stop him from killing his enemy. Not even the Star Child could stop him. Giving him a direct order could potentially stop him, but Poseidon has a high tolerance for pain and the brand wouldn't have enough time to generate a level of pain severe enough to hinder him, let alone stop him which means that his target is long since dead before the order takes full effect.

Hook, ironically, is at the hotter end of the emotional spectrum. He is far more expressive and open with his emotions than the Third Captain. He is also the only person in the whole of creation that the Star Child will always obey. She gave him complete control over her actions to prove to him that he was what she most desired and loved. It is true that she would choose him over everybody else but there are some extenuating circumstances involved with that. The irony is that Hook would obey his wench even without a direct order. He is constantly thinking about how she feels and what she would want instead of simply doing as he pleases.

The truth is...he loves her. He loves her so completely that when she is run through by a sword originally meant for him, he would deliberately skewer himself on the same damn sword. 'Where you go, I will always follow'. This shows how much he cares because he is willing to follow her in death just so that he could be reborn and find her again. This kind of devotion plays an important role in the story and ultimately changes everything whether good or bad. Admittedly he is quite a bit rougher with her in bed as opposed to Poseidon, who has a bad habit of treating her like glass which usually results in Hook having to take over so she wouldn't be the crap out of their shared body.



That's three...but I did say that one was technically two, so there is another character which provided the final leap and basically cannon balling into the development of the Blood Guard and The Realm. This individual is from the TV series called Sanctuary and was originally a one off character that dies near the end of the episode. He is played by one of the main actors of the show, Robin Dunne. His usual role is the profiler, Doctor William Zimmerman, but this one off character is known as Captain Jack Zimmerman. Many believe this character to be Will's grandfather but that is not verified anywhere so he takes on a slightly different blood relation to William.




Now this image doesn't really do him justice so I'm going to provide a slightly modified version of Dr. Zimmerman, seeing that these two are physically identical with the exception of the eyes.






I do apologize for the colors being a bit off from each other...two different apps were being used, the top one for the vibrant blue color and the second to show the effect of his powers. Now to clarify, Captain Jack Zimmerman is, in fact, The Second Captain known as Light Zimmerman aka The Lightning Fang. He is a lightning elemental that generates a constant supply of lightning. He is exceptionally powerful but wielding the more destructive side of his power is quite difficult for him. This is due to the fact that out of the four captains, he is in fact the youngest.

Much of his training was geared towards a single purpose, to forcibly command a person's body to regenerate in a specific way. In this case, it was to allow the Star Child to survive in their world. If he hadn't, a single breath in this new atmosphere would have been extremely toxic for her and she would die of asphyxiation, simply unable to process the air which chokes her to death. Thus the reason why Light focused so much on finite control so that he could take control of the electrical signals in her brain and command her entire nervous system. Given enough time, the process would have been completely painless, but due to a near imminent death, he had to work quickly and at a much higher voltage, forcing Poseidon to take control of the fluids in her body to keep her heart beating. In doing so, both he and Hook endured the same pain she did and it sapped them of most of their strength, more on this at a later date.


Whew...that was a long one. Just wait until I get to everyone's profiles, histories, abilities, and family trees...which does not include the whole student/mentor thing and opposites training and then there is the partnering system and The Hall of Memories. *giggles* There is still so much more to tell you. We've only just begun our journey through The Realm. Oh and sorry for any spelling or grammatical errors. I'm doing this completely from my phone and auto correct is annoying. 

Next up is an analysis of the elementals; natural elementals, awakened elementals, powers and resistances, typical life spans and how they relate to both nature and magic. Yes... There is magic but don't worry, it has a scientific core to it...or as much of one as possible considering I'm meshing many different universes together into a single storyline. And this is me shutting up. Seeya!

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