Preview and Spoilers for Third Moon Saga

To pick up where I left off yesterday, I will be spoiling/previewing a bit of one of the stories in my Books of the Shadows saga. Today it will be Book of the Shadows, Third Moon Saga.

Third Moon is the saga I have been working on the most in the last several months on and off. It is my most complicated work so far, and has a lot of question marks left to fill in. At the same time it is a very dynamic story in terms of crafting the individual characters and their personalities, reactions, and the way these things all shape the story.

The Third Moon Saga takes place over the course of a few decades in terms of the timeline of the internal story as told, a few centuries in terms of the overall internal timeline of events when you consider a few flashbacks and character delivered backstory. The story is ultimately broken into four mini-sagas; Moon, New Moon, Last Moon, and Full Moon.

Moon starts with the introduction of Alexander Kuroshiki. He is returning to the town he grew up in after several years. His parents’ work has had them travelling for several years. Finally starting high school, they’ve allowed him to settle down in place to attend school without constantly moving about the place. He generally has few memories of his childhood in this town beyond occasional flashes of certain places, particularly of a large house alone on its block.

In walking past this house on his way home from the store that first night, he comes under attack from a number of blob-like creatures known as ghouls. Fleeing into the house he falls through the rotted floor. He lands in the basement, scraping against a coffin. From the coffin emerges a vampire. He soon passes out.

Alexander wakes up in a hospital bed with no memory of what happened after leaving the store. He is met by a man named Hazma. He works for the Exotic Species Mitigation Bureau (ESMB). Monsters are a known existence in this world… or they were. Nearly two hundred years earlier there was a great war between humans and monsters. It was said that all monsters were wiped out during the conflict. That, however, was a lie. In reality a truce was called as the war escalated and certain factions that were neutral to that point might have gotten involved. All governments around the world have actively participated in this cover-up, as monsters have likewise abided by a concealment of their continued existence.

Alexander was indeed attacked by a vampire. He is now afflicted by a severe condition that requires that he has his blood sucked by a vampire regularly or he will experience extremely painful withdrawal symptoms that can ultimately kill him. Unfortunately for him the vampire he is bound to, Inori, is a proud vampire who shows no emotions on her face or in her voice. She looks down on humans, and the fact that she even has Alexander serve as her personal blood bank rather than kill him is itself an oddity. Now, Alexander must try to find a way to free himself of this curse, while being forced to live with his demanding vampire mistress, a jealous/angry idol girlfriend Rise, while attending a school meant to help monsters learn to blend into regular human society.

New Moon takes place a few years after Alexander has graduated high school. Working under a reorganized ESMB, his duties involve handling cases of conflict between humans and monsters. By the end of Moon, not only has the continued existence of monsters been made public, but so too has the existence of espers. Alexander, in New Moon, is given charge of seeing after three young esper girls, one of whom is part monster (bakaneko).

Having been mistreated by their family or others, the girls are very leery of interactions with others, human or not. Alexander’s task is to help them learn to better control their powers while also learn to get along better with others and overcome their fear and hate of the rest of the world. But it won’t be smooth sailing, as he has to live with those three girls under the same roof with him, his now wife Rise, his continued reliance on Inori, and Inori’s mother Mana. He must also deal with a prophecy that suggests that in the coming years his charges will lead an army that will ravage the planet.

Last Moon takes place shortly after New Moon. It is the briefest of the min-sagas. Inori, distraught and enraged with the conclusion of events at the close of New Moon, unleashed a spell that ultimately kills billions of humans and monsters alike. The remnants of life struggle to adjust to this new wrecked world. A few cities sprout up under the leadership of some familiar faces from the prior mini-sagas, Inori held up as the empress of this new world order. There are those who are not content to let things go as they are, and so target Inori and seek to kill her.

Full Moon is more than a decade and a half after Last Moon. It follows Alex, a young man who is trying his best to just live his life in the world. A new student in his second year of high school, his sister is making that difficult for him. Charlotte, who he calls by the nickname many in the family call her by, Risette, is a select type of vampire known as a voracious eater. They need more than just blood – they need flesh. Alex happens to be human, and immortal. Charlotte relies on Alex as her source of nourishment, having further developed a twisted obsession with him that leads her to isolate him from others entirely. Alex must try to maintain his and his sister’s secret, not just to preserve his sense of normalcy, but so they don’t end up hunted by monster hunters.

Those are the basic synopsis of the stories of the Third Moon Saga. At current it has the most original characters of any of my stories. Alexander, Alex, and Charlotte are all original characters created by me. Inori, and her mother Mana, are loosely based on the Inori/Mana from the Guilty Crown anime. Although I purposely borrow from their characters, I also deliberately change fundamentals about them and so I don’t want to really say that they are making a true direct appearance in the story. There are a number of other anime characters who do make direct cameos. Much of the main cast of Zettai Karen Children appear (the Children will not be the three girls under Alexander’s care). Part of the cast from Another will make an appearance too, as well as Inu x Boku SS and Rosario+Vampire (no on Moka). There is also a Bleach cameo, though it falls under a similar category to Inori, and I doubt anyone will guess it.

In terms of genre, the Third Moon starts off with the feel of a supernatural harem/school romantic comedy as a sort of feint. I think I mention as early as the first chapter that Alex already has a girlfriend, but the way I develop the story the implication is that Inori, and several other female characters introduced along the way, also have a chance at him. But by late in Moon, and then carrying on in New Moon, it is clear that any talk of a harem in any real sense is meant purely as a joke. The story becomes a little bit slice-of-life, mostly adventure. In Last Moon it becomes almost exclusively action/adventure, whereas Full Moon becomes a sort of adventure/supernatural slice-of-life/school comedy.

So, that does it for today. There is a lot of compiling and formalizing of the stuff I do have planned for Third Moon Saga, but it should be interesting. I and working right now on creating the design for Charlotte, just because Full Moon was the last bit I ended up thinking on. I have made plans for an art piece of Inori, but if you can’t wait on the indefinite time of when I might get to that, just look up any picture of Inori from Guilty Crown and imagine her with black hair.

Haven’t decided what I will do for tomorrow, so you’ll have to come back to see. Later.