Alice’s Idea Giveaway Sunday, vol. 5

Hello, peeps! Alice’s box is the gift that keeps on giving! Christmas is at hand, and creepy white-bearded lechers squeeze through holes left and right – what better time than this to take a peek in Alice’s mind and pillage it of its best ideas?

I’m sharing my best ideas once again in this weekly giveaway. See something you like? A plot progression, a character quirk, a world feature? Take what you fancy! It’s all free, names included!

What do we got today? Let’s see!

The Moonlight Monastery

I had an idea about a story set in 1636 during the Franco-Spanish War. A cavalry commander called Aguilliere (Lady Lydia Clairmont in disguise) leads a band of Savoyard cuirassiers who are fleeing Spanish troops. To the Savoyards’ good luck, mist springs up, and they think they can lose their pursuers. However, from the mist appears a strange, walled monastery. Despite Aguilliere’s sense of foreboding, they take shelter in the monastery, for the cuirassiers are deathly tired, and their horses ridden hard enough to make their hearts burst.

The monastery is of course inhabited by demonic vampire nuns, who have used their dark arts to lure humans into their lair. A bloody feast will soon be prepared!

The twist is, Aguilliere is Lady Lydia in disguise, and she is part of a long line of vampire slayers – a scion of the Clairmont family. However, in another twist, she cannot defeat vampires on her own, as they are creatures physically superior to humans. Lydia needs the fabled Sword of Night, but she left it at home when she ran away to join the army.

Then, in a third twist, Lydia falls in love with the youngest nun in the monastery, the blasphemous vampire Arienne.

Now, Lydia is caught in a web of conflicted desires, as she must save her faithful cuirassiers, do her duty as a vampire slayer, and claim the ostracised Arienne for her own.

History is tons of fun, peeps! Did you know the French soldiers were once obligated to have a nom de guerre? And did you know that a surprising number of women fought in various wars, disguised as men, and many had very long careers? Or that the cuirassiers of Savoy wore grotesque helmets nicknamed “Death’s Head”?

Asmela of the Night Wind

Asmela is the terrifying, invisible assassin of the Gods of Nar. They employ her to keep in check their rebellious stonemasons, the giants of the Dhaal Underworld. The gods have robbed Asmela’s memories and put in their place false ones, making Asmela believe that she is the queen of the luxuriantly fetid Nar Valley. In reality, Asmela was once a rebel chieftain who fought alongside the Dhaal giants to defeat the Gods of Nar. (A play which, obviously, failed!)

Asmela’s sister, Gamala, was once a powerful sorcerer, but she was slain in the war. However, Gamala’s ghost struggles to return from the lands of death, so that she may restore Asmela’s true memories. And, since the Dhaal Underworld lies closest to the lands of death, Gamala’s ghost comes there first, and begs aid from the Dhaal giants.

However, since Gamala is dead, she can’t easily distinguish the dead from the living, and ends up talking to the spirit of a departed Dhaal stonesmith, Kora Xantre. Xantre then speaks to one of her descendants through dreams. This descendant ends up being Asmela’s target.

Asmela kills her target, of course, but with her dying breath, the Dhaal giant tells Asmela to speak with Kora Xantre. This leads Asmela on the path to recovering her memory, and realising that the Gods of Nar have led her like a puppet on the string.

 

That’s it for this Sunday, fellow writers! What are some of your best ideas? Give them to me!