#there are a few jerks and proteus is a problem that didn’t help with Alpheus

[headfullof-ideas]

Okey-dokey, first up we have the one and only, no longer six thousand years old, Nereus! Buckle up it gets long.

Nereus is a member of the Order of the Guardians of Lemuria, and one of its current oldest members. He’s very old, though his favorite passtime is being purposefully evasive over his exact age when youngsters ask him. His age aside, Nereus is one of the Guardians most socially aware and acclimated to matters happening outside their Orders boundaries and work. Most Guardians stay within the land they’ve settled in, hidden away from the rest of the world, and for good reason. Some Guardians though, specifically and usually the younger ones, venture out into the world searching for remnants of Lemuria still left out in the world. Nereus, despite his great age, goes out with them to help look for remnants of Lemuria still left, but also to keep an ear out on whatever’s happening beyond the Guardians immediate concern. Nereus is aware of how narrow-minded the Guardians organization can be, as unintentional as it is, and is doing his best to maintain a level of awareness amongst his fellow Guardians about all the issues that circulate in their area and beyond. However, as open as his eyes are, Nereus doesn’t interfere, instead putting most of his efforts into the pressing matters that the Guardians work hard to control. Though wandering around out in the world some Guardians are determined to avoid means Nereus can keep an ear out on any whispering that may allude to someone potentially stumbling across things that really can’t get out into the world.

Nereus also makes sure to keep an eye on the remaining descendants of Lemuria’s monarch lines, the Nektons and the Benthos’s. The Benthos heir, Alpheus, has long since fled Nereus’s watchful eyes, fleeing into the dark corners of the ocean and the growing Dragon Trapper markets to avoid Nereus and pursue his own goals. Nereus is worried about Alpheus, having watched the boy grow up and worried with what he’s planning. Trying to find him is proving difficult though, and some of the other Guardians are persistent Nereus leave Alpheus be, though the part of Nereus that took care of Alpheus as a child can’t help but keep searching for him, desperate to make sure he’s okay and doesn’t hurt himself or do something he may regret. The Nektons are more approachable than their cousin, and Nereus has repeatedly used his seniority to get away with divulging Guardian secrets and knowledge to the Nekton parents and their daughter, Fontaine. Does he use riddles and a patient evasiveness that infuriates Fontaine and her mother, and even gets on Will’s nerves on a bad day? Perhaps, but who can kid an old man trying to have a little fun every once in a while? And does it also add on to his excuses in his own defense against the Guardians who are particular about who is given Guardian secrets, if Nereus makes it seem like he didn’t blatantly tell the Nektons about certain things, and that they figured it out themselves? Yes, it does. And besides, with the way the Nektons explore the seas the same way their ancestors did, Nereus is sure that they would have stumbled across what the Guardians are hiding sooner or later. He knew he couldn’t stop them, and knew he couldn’t bring himself to stop them from doing something that’s in their blood, so he figured preparing them ahead of time was the ultimately safer option for everyone involved.

Most Guardians are in some way connected to the once great Lemuria itself. Some are descended. Some are in debt or awe. And others were scholars or archaeologists, sought out by older members as they stumbled across ruins and recruited into the Guardians cause. Nereus is one of the lucky few who knows exactly how he was connected to Lemuria. He was descended from one of the close scholars of the Nekton family, his six thousand years great grandmother being a close and personal friend to the last monarch, Queen Doreus herself. His ancestor was one of the ones who started the Guardians organization after Lemuria fell, and Nereus sometimes feels bad for using that added legacy to get away with bringing the Nektons deeper into the fold of what the Guardians have been doing for six thousand years now. He’s seen how bad of a power trip using such a legacy in such a way can fall, spiraling off the deep end quickly into abuse and hunger for more power. Nereus works to keep himself humble, and sometimes purposefully seeks out the Nektons only child in order to do so. Aside from enjoying her witty tongue, and hearing her insight on things and how they differ to his, Fontaine has a way of making Nereus feel like an ordinary person by talking about things that even he, in his many travels out and away from the Guardians home location, didn’t know. There’s nothing more humbling than being schooled by a child. Nereus enjoys her company however, genuinely, even though he knows that he can drive her a little insane sometimes.

Nereus is concerned about a lot of the things happening in the world around him. The rumors of dragon raids in the Archipelago, the growing business of Dragon Trappers and the underground trading routes taking root in many markets, whether or not dragon trapping is a trade that those markets allow. The Grimborn brothers growing in power, the Dark Orca ship and the pirates that command her, conflicting reports of Dragon Trappers seen traveling or fighting with dragons bearing riders, depending on who you asked. Even the whispers of trouble brewing further east than the Guardians travel grows more and more pressing with each month that passes. It’s all very concerning business, and Nereus has tried to bring its attention to the other Guardians. Regardless of how many agree with him though, even Nereus himself has to admit that at the end of the day, what the Guardians are working to hide takes precedent, lest the information or news gets out into the wrong hands.

The Guardians that Nereus is a part of are a six thousand year old organization, built on the rubble and ruin of Lost Lemuria. Lemuria is thought to be nothing more than myth six thousand years after its end, most people believing it sank beneath the sea, never to be seen again. The stories that are told of Lemuria in the present day say that she angered the ancient nameless gods of the sea, swallowed up by the waves leaving not a trace behind. These stories are only half true. What actually happened was that Lemuria near destroyed itself. The great kingdom of Lemuria had two royal families, though it had been the Nektons that had reigned as Lemuria’s monarchs for some time until Lemuria’s last days. The Benthos’s of the time had been biting at the bit for a chance at Lemuria’s reigns, and after many inner quarrels, they attempted to stage a coup against their cousins. However, the coup failed, but not before it kickstarted the biggest civil war known in history. The fights between the two royal family lines as the Benthos’s tried to claw the monarch title from the Nektons grew and grew until some of Lemuria’s oldest devices were placed on the playing board, ultimately dooming the kingdom as a whole. What had made Lemuria such a massive kingdom was its ability and ingenuity to create devices that were seemingly magic. Maps of the stars and seas activated by water, treasure troves of knowledge and information activated by dragons fire, naval ships that sped through the water like they were powered by the currents themselves, and the royal Scepter itself was said to have the ability to speak to dragons. It was instruments similar to the Scepter that the Benthos’s brought to the table in a last ditched attempt to win against the Nektons, and it was the dragons that they summoned that doomed Lemuria.

The dragons that the Benthos’s dragged into the fight were leviathans from the deepest parts of the ocean, great beasts of the Leviathan Class that the Lemurians referred to as Monumentials. The Monumentials were a force to be reckoned with, and unfortunately for Lemuria and the rest of the world, they couldn’t be controlled the way that the Benthos’s thought they could be. The Benthos’s lost control of the very creatures they weaponized, and soon the Monumentials were raging rampant across the world as they fought both the ones who drove them into aggression and each other. Lemuria was destroyed by both the Monumentials and itself due to the Benthos coup, and the rest of the world was left in such a ragged state by the time the last Queen of Lemuria, Queen Doreus Nekton, put a stop to the Monumentials madness, that within the next hundred years, people wondered if Lemuria had ever really existed at all. The world picked itself back up again, and the remaining survivors of the once great Lemuria banded together under Queen Doreus’s last order as Queen of Lemuria; ensure that it never happens again.

The Guardians formed and worked to make sure that what happened never happened again. It was only because of Queen Doreus somehow figuring out how to calm the Monumentials enough to stop their fighting that the world and everyone in it wasn’t destroyed, and they weren’t sure what would happen if the Monumentials were driven to a global anger a second time. The first generation Guardians decided under Doreus’s command that Lemuria could never form again. Its time had come and gone, and if it didn’t form as a kingdom a second time, the chances of the same situation that led to its destruction the first time had a lower chance of happening a second time. This meant ensuring that everyone eventually believed that Lemuria had never been real at all. As most of Lemuria and all her knowledge had been destroyed during the war, the Monumentials essentially helped ensure that no one within the next few generations could find anything that would make them second guess. However, bits and pieces still floated. Documents and tools and instruments taken to different corners of the world during the many evacuations during the Benthos and Nekton war, temples and villages and sites built in places beyond the kingdom itself. People that weren’t tracked down and accounted for after Lemuria destroyed, who took personal items with them as they fled to any part of the world still standing after the Monumentials destroyed nearly everything else. The remaining Nektons and Benthos’s, scattered across the ocean. Lemuria was gone but bits and pieces of her still remained. The Guardians worked to gather everything they could find, bringing it to the location they started to set up as a base. Aside from gathering everything to make sure no one realized Lemuria had been real, the Guardians also sought to preserve the bits that weren’t destroyed by the Benthos and Nekton war. What had happened was a tragedy for everyone involved, and they couldn’t bring themselves to let everything that Lemuria had built be truly lost to time.

The Guardians also sought to keep an eye on the Monumentials. They had been just as much victims to the war as everyone else, dragged into a feud they’d had no part or business being dragged into. Despite that though, they were still dangerous. Leviathan class dragons were everywhere in the world, but there was a reason there weren’t nearly as many as the much smaller species of dragons, and there was a reason they usually didn’t settle near people; disaster followed nearly every time. So the Guardians worked to keep an eye on the Monumentials, ensure they stayed in areas that no human might accidentally stumble across them, and potentially agitate them into attacking. They also worked to make sure no one knew how to rebuild the instruments that were initially used to aggravate the Monumentials to the point that they had been, and the worked to make sure that no one found the Monumentials themselves. The Guardians worked to protect the world from the Monumentials, and the Monumentials from the rest of the world. They couldn’t keep them from interacting with each other, but the Monumentials never aggravated each other to the point that the Benthos coup had. So long as no one knew about them, and no one tried to repeat, unintentionally or otherwise, what had happen six thousand years prior, everyone was safe. It was a heavy burden for the Guardians to deal with, and over the years they grew preoccupied with their original goals to the point they avoided interfering in things happening elsewhere for fear of what happened to Lemuria happening again. But the Monumentials and the rest of the world are still safe, though recent business with the Nektons and the only remaining Benthos, Alpheus, has some members growing concerned something bad may happen.

Oookay, that part is done! Now for the authors note section.

Since I’m not bringing any of the magic over from The Deep. Stuff like Nereus being six thousand years old, the prophecy of the Chosen One, or the magical Scepter that controls the Monumentials, it just doesn’t exist here. This means I had to get creative. Nereus is now descended from one of Doreus’s closest advisors and friends, leaving him still connected to the Nektons. I accidentally made myself really angsty about him and Alpheus, which wasn’t entirely intentional but now all I can think about is what his relationship with Alpheus is like and how complicated it must be because of everything that’s happened between the two of them (both in my crossover and canon).

And because there’s no prophecy of the Chosen One, I had to do something different for the Guardians and even Alpheus. So what I came up with was honestly similar to stuff from the newer Godzilla movies. The Guardians are acting kind of like MONARCH here, secretly keeping an eye on these giant creatures that are just roaming around, because with no magic that means Doreus never put them to sleep. After Lemuria was destroyed, the Monumentials were still around. So the Guardians are keeping an eye on them. Making sure no one hurts them and that they don’t hurt anyone else. The Guardians are also tracking down all the remnants of Lemuria that they can find, in order to preserve what’s left and also keep people from asking questions. The less people know, the less likely they are to try and repeat the same mistakes under the premise of ‘well we know what happened last time so it’ll be different this time’ which never works out. The device used by the Benthos’s to drag the Monumentials into their war with the Nektons, and the Scepter itself, are like a more advanced but far older version of Valka’s staff, or on the Godzilla thread, something like the Orca from King of the Monsters.

Lemuria is destroyed here. Not sank, destroyed. There’s almost nothing left of it. Just pieces floating around here and there. Devices that got lost to the corners of the earth, ships and old buildings that don’t fit with anything else. Stories and legends that have culminated over six thousand years, with the only real genuine interpretations of them being what’s with the Guardians or tucked away in some dusty catalog of the current civilizations with records old enough to date back to that time. Some families still have their Lemurian names, like the Nektons and the Benthos’s, but very few remember where they originated from. As far as the vast majority of the planet is aware, Lemuria might have been real, but it was nowhere near as big as the massive kingdom on par with Ancient Rome or Greece or Egypt that it actually was, and it certainly doesn’t exist now. And as far as the Guardians know, Doreus may have died dealing with the Monumentials. Or she may have escaped, going back to her family in order to raise her children in safety. All they know is that she left instructions and her final orders before she went back to deal with the Monumentials, and she was never seen after that. Even her dragon disappeared somewhere to never be seen again.

Figuring out this stuff has been fun, and like a lot of the later story elements, I’m gonna be hinting to/building up to them pretty early on in the fic. The specific arcs like what Alpheus is doing and how the Riders interact with the Guardians/Monumentials will be saved for the actual fic. Sorry for such a long post but a lot of the Guardian stuff went in hand with the Nereus stuff, and I didn’t think to make a second post until I’d already typed all this out