For some reason, I used to be quite fond of the name Grey for random characters...but now, not so much (*thwaps forehead for reference*). Have been browsing deviantart, since it's the best thing since sliced bread (and I swear I'll find some other comparative, no, really, honest I will- especially since I don't much care for presliced bread; it's so much more satisfying to cut yourself a nice thick slice of bread, slather it with jam, and make a stickey mess out of your fingers trying to eat it...) and have been suddenly inspired to think about that damn vampire story...I should explain.

That Damn Vampire story is now a part of That Damn Fantasy Story With Too Many Characters that is really four or five separate ideas that I decided to squish togethher. So, you've got the very thinly veiled fanfic, which is a combination of an ancient self-instert that I came up with when I was...six...I think, and the omni-smith idea (very rare class of magic user, a Smith is someone who forges magical things out of the elements, ie Wind Smiths and Fire Smiths and such...an Omni-Smith can do just about anything), and originally that was just one idea, involving very thinly disguised video game characters and Radrezyne, my oldest original character with a new name and extra angst. Then there was Tybarra's story, which was just a random elf story 'bout this chicky who got exiled and went on to do the whole adventuring, angsting, ass kicking thing, only she turned into a reclusive priestess and started acting really bitter when I incorporated her into this...then there was the Dragon Staff idea, which was originally a trilogy of things that I'd planned about Monsters and Earthbound and the Rift (big arse hole in the ground where all the dragon kin were exiled to after the War of Sky) and I incorporated Aralathe the lost Dragon Princess and her foster brother Valinus into the damn thing, and Ara went from being cool and independent and sex crazed to being whiny, sheltered, and scatterbrained, while her love interest went from being helpless and clueless to...young, helpless, and clueless. Poor, poor Alin. Then Blaze, from Tybarra's story originally, wandered in and decided to be Ara's cousin or something, I was never particularly sure on the details, and his original incarnation had him looking for his girlfriend and complaining about his father and all of his weird, prophetic dreams. The current incarnation has him clueless and silly, but fully aware of the fact that he is not, in actuality, human. He had some issues with the whole species thing the first time around. Then there's the vampire story, with Orianne the cross dressing archer mage, Tanavir the snarky demonic half vampire mercenary, and Nirvanu, the moronic, demon hunting, vampire hating, holy water toting, angry orphaned child raised by Evil. He didn't realize the whole town was a colony of vampires until after they tried to kill him (oh, so clueless, I always make my male characters so very clueless). At the tender age of thirteen he decided to become a professional demon hunter, and he's not half bad at what he does...

So, yeah. Lots of separate stories, all of them somehow intertwined, and I've no idea where the plot is going. The vampire story was actually based on a dream that was based on Harry Potter and D&D...But that's neither here nor there. Orianne the archer mage needs to get to the archery grounds so she can be tested (she's only sixteen or so, and isn't a real archer mage until they've tested her and given her a bow). A young girl, travelling alone, however, is a Very Stupid Thing, since chivalry went out of style with ruby tights in her world; she meets up with Tanavir in an inn at somepoint, and Tana decides to be Ori's Protector. Not sure if there's anything femslashy going on there, or it it's just Tana being kind...Tana's story is a little screwy, actually, though she doesn't feel particularly traumatized by it. Anyway, Tana decides to help Ori get to the archery grounds, and they both decide that it would probably be best if Ori pretended to be a boy until they get there, since two women, even when one's a demonic half vampire with a sword, are even more likely to be harassed than one woman alone. Go figure. So, Tana the Demon Vampire Mercenary and Ori the Cross Dressing Mage in Training set off on the road, and they run into Nirvanu at another inn. Or rather, Tana calls him out on the fact that he's swindling people in a drinking contest and tries to best him- only to find that, instead of normal water diluting his drinks, he'd been using holy water, and this leads to quite a few unpleasant things. Namely, Nirvanu chasing Tana halfway across the country side, to a lake in the middle of a forest (cutting off her hand, fracturing his wrist and spraining his knee in the process) until the sun rises, at which point Tana promptly clocks him with the pommel of her sword, since he was already gloating over the whole "Ha, vampire plus sun equals ash!" thing, not realizing that she's only a half vampire, whatever that means.

*takes a breath* And that was as far as I'd gotten. In the crazy story with too many people, they meet up with Valinus and Tybarra and they all go off questing to save Val's sister, whom he doesn't realize is actually not his sister, but a Monster Queen instead. (Long involved history lessons would reveal that dragons are more or less extinct; there's only ever one at a time, and she's always the Queen, and she always dies giving birth to her Trueborn Daughter, and the last one sent Aralathe off in a human shape with her last breath, and now that the Monsters are all dying of a mysterious plague, they figure it's high time they got their Queen back- only Ara doesn't really want to go back...) In the original silly vampire story, they go on to the archery grounds; Ori gets her bow and finds that she's actually one of the rarest kinds of archer mages, a gravity mage (only they don't call it that, they call it something else that sounds far more impressive); and then they go traipsing over the countryside killing Evil and such, until Nirvanu finds out who he really is, and Tana finds out what she really is and Ori decides that having a crush on another guy when he thinks you're a boy really, really sucks...Oh, love triangles. Ori falls for Nirvanu, who has a thing for Tana (never mind that he hates her for being Evil! and shiz...) while Tana does the whole obsessively protective thing to Ori that may or may not be romantically induced but probably isn't. *by this time, she was gasping for air*

And that's the silly vampire story.