Portfolio Index

The Queen's Army
Read how Mazus helps overthrow a mad king, but do they succeed?

Death of a King
See how the king mysteriously died and how his son assumed the throne.

The Soul Eater
Follow Mazus on his journey to find how to use the Ring of Purity.

Start of a Journey
Enter the World of Solitude and follow Mazus as he retrieves the Ring of Purity.

Falling to the Shadows
Read of how Mazus came to be and creation of the world he lives in.

Week 4 Storytelling: Death of a King

King Vogner rules the prosperous kingdom of Sette Diavoli. His people very well like him because of his kind nature. The kingdom under his reign has been flourishing with crops and housing for all the people residing. His reign started when a wrathful god named Peshmerga terrorized the kingdom. Peshmerga attempted to destroy the kingdom because the people refused to worship him. The Black Knight, Mazus, defeated Peshmerga. Ever since then, King Vogner, his wife Windy, and their son Argus have ruled over the kingdom to protect the people.



My Vision of King Vogner
Source: Wikia


Over the years the king has started to strike alliances with other kingdoms to form a connection between them. The king’s advisors and Argus was against this idea because they were already the most powerful kingdom in the country. They could dominate the whole land with little resistance. The king disliked the idea of one powerful kingdom and believed that the whole country needed to be strong to be able to fend off intruders.


The blindness of his father made the Argus angry. He believed that the king should be ruthless to intimidate potential enemies. Argus started to resent his father and he always thought his father was a weak king, despite being beloved by the people. Over time it started to cause him to think that he could rule better than his father. Argus persuaded his father’s advisors that his idea of ruling was better. He met with some of the advisors in secret to discuss the plans to get what they all want.


On the third year anniversary of the defeat of Peshmerga, the kingdom held a celebration feast in the palace. At this time, Argus planned to poison his father to assume the throne and to wage war against the other kingdoms to conquer the land. So before the king went to bed, Argus proposed one last toast and with that gave the king laced wine that wouldn’t hold affect until the king went to sleep.


The next morning the shrill cry of the queen woke the whole castle. Everybody in the kingdom discovered that the king is dead. Faking his sadness, Argus assumed the throne and ruled with an iron fist. He immediately declared war against the other kingdoms to dominate the land. The kingdom started to become disordered and there was chaos everywhere. All the people were afraid to do anything about the sudden change of life style. People were dying and there was nothing they could do about it.


The queen started to suspect what has been going on. She started questioning the advisors that had quickly started accepting Argus’ transition. She learned that the king had been poisoned but didn’t know who poisoned him. The queen gathered that Argus has assassinated the king in order to become king. She gathered her belongings in the dead of night and set off on a journey to find someone to help her take her son down and reestablish what her husband did. She went off to find the one that defeated Peshmerga those many years ago.


AUTHOR’S NOTE:


This story is from the Ancient Egypt unit, specifically the Death of Osiris story. In the original story, Oriris was a beloved ruler with the people. Set, Oriris’ brother, wanted to rule instead of Osiris, so he made a chest to lock Osiris in to kill him during a feast. The queen, Isis, went out to look for her husband’s body. Set ruled with an iron fist and caused disorder. The story goes on with Isis’ journey to find Oriris’ body. The story ends with Isis being sheltered in a poor woman’s house. The woman’s child died by a scorpion sting and Isis raised the child from the dead.

I changed the setting and characters to the ones in my previous stories but this one has a more independent nature so it would be easy to follow without the knowledge of my other stories. I wanted to flow all my weekly stories together with the same characters, settings, and artifacts but keeping them independent enough for readers who didn’t read the previous ones to follow without getting confused, but if you had read my other stories, you can see how they all tie together and hopefully by the end I can have one large story.

I also changed the purpose of the queen’s journey. I made it to where the queen searches for Mazus. I also made this story with a slight cliffhanger because this story had one without resolving the fate of Set and if Isis found what she was looking for.

Story Source: Egyptian Myth and Legend
Author: Donald Mackenzie
Year: 1907

Week 5 Storytelling: The Queen's Army

Argus was a king that ruled over Sette Diavoli Kingdom. His ruling with an iron fist caused a deterioration of trust with the people. The people found out that he ascended to the throne because he poisoned his father, the king, which caused the queen to flee the kingdom. This led to Argus to keeping a tight hold on everyone with the use of the military to preserve order over people that were starting to rebel for the loss of their beloved king and queen.

My vision of King Argus

Source: Zerochan

Meanwhile, the former queen visited a neighboring village to find a man named Mazus. She heard about him being a great hero that could help her to defeat her son and reclaim the kingdom. With the help of the villagers, she found him and his traveling companion, Lucia, along the shore by the river. When she told them what had happened, they quickly agreed to help.

The queen and Mazus assembled an army consisting of villagers, allies from neighboring kingdoms, and those who opposed Argus within the kingdom. They gathered weapons and magical objects given to them by Lucia, who was trained in the mystic arts. With everything at hand, they had enough warriors and weapons to go against King Argus head on. The only obstacle in the way was the river that divided them. It was the largest river in the kingdom and difficult for such a big army to cross, so Lucia created a bridge made of ice big enough for the whole army to cross.

The queen’s army carried flags and chanted “Victory to the Queen” while they marched on the castle where King Argus was waiting. The battle started and both sides began striking each other. Mazus was sweeping his sword across the chests of the opposing army and his body count was higher than any other soldier there. Lucia was using her magical abilities to summon apes, bears, and other animals to aid them. The animals helped out in ways of fighting, building, and transporting injured soldiers to the medics.

The battle was leaning their way when Lucia sensed something wrong. She felt a very powerful force coming from King Argus’s castle. The king was summoning the power of the Earth Rune, which has the ability to control plant life and the Earth’s plates. This meant that he was able to use plants as weapons such as using trees as barriers and poisonous pollen to pollute the air. This also meant that we was able to create earthquakes. Lucia tried to find Mazus to warn him, but it was already too late. She felt the earth quake and the earth began to crack beneath her feet. She managed to find Mazus and teleport them in time to escape the earth swallowing the queen’s army. They realized that they had lost the battle. They reported to the queen to tell her about the defeat and what their next plan was.

My vision of Lucia

Source: Wikia

Author’s note:


I used the story The War With Ravana as my storytelling. The setting, characters, and artifacts are from my previous stories but I tried to make it so that you could read this and understand what was going on without reading my previous stories. This story was different because I ended it with a defeat instead of a happy ending. In the original, Rama’s bridge was created by the apes and bears, but in my story, I changed it to it being built with magical powers. I changed a lot of details of the original to fit the characters and setting of my portfolio story but the overall events of the story are still there from the War With Ravana story. It was sometimes confusing to remember who was on whose side because the names were unfamiliar. I ended it with a defeat and cliffhanger so that i could extend it in the next story.

The original story included Rama’s army of apes and bears against Ravana’s. In the beginning Rama asked the King of Ocean for help getting across the river. The battle continues on with Rama shooting arrows at Ravana’s crowns, knocking them off his heads and making him retreat. Rama had 10 heads and each head has a crown. The Rakshasas were desperate and tried to awaken Kumbhakarna, the strongest demon but Brahma said that he were to sleep and only awaken for one day only. They managed to awaken him and it ends with him asking where the apes are so that he can eat them.

Story Source: Indian Myth and Legend
By: Donald A. Mackenzie
Year: 1913

Week 9 Storytelling: Falling to the Shadows

In the beginning, the people lived in the heavens. One day, the overlord’s son named Mazus was playing with the sacred jewel that belonged to his father. Mazus ran to the edge of the heavens where he slipped and fell to the shadows below. Phoenixes flying by saw a light coming from the jewel falling toward the shadows.

One of them said, “What is that light shining?”

Then another said, “I think there is a child falling with the light.” He then added, “The shadows will swallow him if we don’t help.”

So they flew to Mazus but the jewel fell out of his hands and into the shadows. The phoenixes laid Mazus on one of their backs and flew on.

They continued flying with the little boy with them. After flying for a while, one of them asked, “What should we do with him?

Another answered back, “We should take him to see the Queen of Peace in her castle in the sky. She’ll know what to do.”

They flew to see the Queen of Peace and asked her what to do with Mazus. She ordered a council with the other leaders to deal with Mazus and the jewel. After the council, she approached the phoenixes and said, “If we can get the earth, we might be able to create land for this child. He will not be able to get him back to the heavens to his father, but we can create a land for him to live here.”

The phoenixes took the queen and the other leaders to the place where they saw the jewel fall into the shadows. The queen summoned divers. The first she summoned was the dragon, the best of them all. He dove into the shadows and was gone for a long time. He finally came up with a gaping wound and told the queen that he didn’t see the jewel but the creatures below attacked him. He died moments later. Then she sent the pegasus. He was also gone for a long time and never came back so the others assumed him to be dead. The queen sent many animals to retrieve the jewel but they all died.

The Queen of Peace called in a distressing voice, “Who is capable of retrieving the jewel?”

Thestral that retrieved the jewel

Source: Wallpaper222

No one offered, until the thestral said he would try. He was a small horselike skeletal creature with red glowing eyes and giant wings. He was smaller than the dragon and the other creatures so no one took him seriously. The queen said to him, “Well, you try then.”

The thestral went down the depths of the shadows. A long time he was gone and the others began to say, “He surely has died. There’s no way he could have gotten it.

After a while, they saw a glimmer of light getting brighter and brighter. The thestral came to the surface and dropped the jewel at the queen’s feet. The queen picked up the jewel and began to chant something and broke the jewel into tiny pieces. She threw the pieces into the shadows again but instead of falling, they formed into islands and started to grow.

The islands grew larger, until they became as large as the continents in our world today. Legend says that when there’s an earthquake, it is because the Queen of Peace moves her foot. She continues to watch over the new lands from her castle in the sky. Mazus grows up in the new land and devotes his life to protecting the earth the queen made. The Queen of Peace gives Mazus his first black armor and bestows the title of Black Knight to him.



Author’s note:

This is from the Wyandot people. I based my story on the Creation of the World. In the original story, the shaman ordered his men to dig around the roots of the tree and when the men dug too deep, they dug a hole to the moral world. There the tree and the chief’s daughter fell through the hole. The tree fell into the water but swans saved the girl and brought her to the Big Turtle. The Big Turtle ordered animals to retrieve some earth from the roots of the fallen tree so that Big Turtle can make a new earth. However, none made it until the ugly toad went down and got it. The small turtle rubbed the parts of the earth on Big Turtle’s shell and his shell became an island for the chief’s daughter to live.

For my story, I kept the same story but changed the characters to fit into my previous story for my portfolio. I wanted to create an origin story for my character so that readers that read my other stories will have some sort of an idea of who he is and where he came from. The name Mazus came from my other stories. The Queen of Peace is another song title from Florence and the Machine that I liked and it felt appropriate since she isn’t a main character but she does have a more significant role than the creatures diving for the jewel. All my creatures are mythical and the thestral is a creature from the Harry Potter universe that I liked. They are used for transportation, but the only people that can see them are ones that have seen death. I didn’t add that aspect of the thestral to mine because so far there is only one human.

Unit: British North America
Story: Creation of the World
Author: Katharine Berry Judson
Year: 1917

Storytelling for Week 3: The Soul Eater

With the Ring of Purity in his hand, Mazus sets off to find Lucia the Seer in Sette Diavoli Kingdom to find out what power the ring holds. Sette Diavoli kingdom is on lockdown when he gets there. The guards tell him that there is a higher power threatening the kingdom. They continue on to say that the god Peshmerga inhabits an island close to the kingdom and is planning to destroy it because the people started to worship less and less, thus weakening him.

The guards allow Mazus to enter the kingdom to find Lucia and to figure out how to help the kingdom. The maid in the palace says that Lucia is at the Valley of the Dolls and the King is at a neighboring kingdom asking for reinforcements. Mazus learns that the Valley of the Dolls is a place where the Soul Eater Rune lies. The Soul Eater, with the combined power of the Purity Ring, can kill Peshmerga by turning him into stone.

Mazus sets off to the Valley of the Dolls to find Lucia. He finds her at the entrance because the only way in was to possess the Ring of Purity. This was so that only a person who was worthy enough to obtain the ring could enter the valley. Mazus then gains entrance and grabs the Soul Eater Rune from its platform to use against the threat of Peshmerga. They start feeling the Earth shake as Mazus removes the rune from the pedestal. Both Mazus and Lucia run outside to see the sky turn grey. They can also see the mountain from the island where the god lives start to move and stand up. Mazus and Lucia realize that the mountain itself is the god. Peshmerga knows that the rune has been removed and knows that it will be used against him.

When Mazus and Lucia return to Sette Diavoli, they see that whole kingdom is in chaos with people running everywhere. When the crowd sees Lucia, they rush over, grab her and run toward the palace. Mazus doesn’t know why the crowd grabs her until the maid at the palace says that Peshmerga would stop his attack if the kingdom sacrifices her. Mazus follows the crowd to the top of the palace where they tie her to be sacrificed. From his island, the god approaches the palace getting ready to strike. The Earth quakes with every footstep Peshmerga makes, as he gets closer to Sette Diavoli. As he is mere feet away from Lucia, Mazus inserts the Ring of Purity in the Soul Eater Rune and throws it at the raging god, combining their powers and stopping him in his tracks. Peshmerga realizes how powerful the immense power of the ring and rune hold when combined together and retreats back. However, at that moment, his body starts to feel heavy as he turns to stone. He then starts to break apart with the weight and crumbles to the ground.

The people know at that moment that the kingdom is safe again and cheer through the streets. Mazus hikes through the rubble to examine the now-dead god and notices that the ring and rune are still connected. He picks up the connected pieces of the ring and rune and stashes it away in his pocket and turns toward the palace. Once he gets there he is greeted by the king. The king thanks him for saving the kingdom and asks Mazus to stay. Mazus responds with a thank you but he still wants to continue his journey. Lucia is very grateful that he saved her and decides to accompany him on his journey. Both Mazus and Lucia depart from Sette Diavoli Kingdom to journey to another land.


Author’s Note:

This plot was taken from Ovid's Metamorphosis and the settings, characters, and artifacts were taken from my previous Storytelling post. My goal was to expand on Mazus’ journey and add to it so hopefully by the end I can have a whole list of stories about one universe.

From Ovid's Metamorphosis, I chose the story of Perseus and Andromeda. The original story is about Perseus, a demigod. He tells the story about how he took the enchanted head of Medusa to defeat the Titan Atlas. I focused on the part where Perseus takes the head of Medusa and turns Atlas into stone to save Andromeda. A fun fact is that there really are mountain ranges in Africa called the Atlas Mountains inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphosis. The original story has Perseus telling a story about how he defeated Atlas, but I changed it so that he was doing it.

In my story, I took an artifact from my previous story and gave it more of a purpose in this one. The Soul Eater Rune came from a video game I played a long time ago and felt like it fit since it was used to kill. The Sette Diavoli Kingdom is translated as Seven Devils Kingdom in Italian but has no real history. I just took it from a song of the same name by Florence and the Machine. The name Peshmerga came from the Kurdish soldiers fighting against ISIS. Even though they are not the enemy, I liked the name as it means "he who faces death" in Kurdish. This might foreshadow something about Mazus in future chapters.



Atlas in the Mythology, Peshmerga in my story. Source: Wikimedia






Book: Ovid's Metamorphosis


Author: Ovid (translated by Tony Kline)


Published: 2000

Story Telling for Week 2: Journey Through the World of Solitude

In the center of the Land of the Blue Moon lies the Crystal Palace. There the king of the land requests an audience with the Black Knight Mazus. The king summons Mazus to send him to the World of Solitude to retrieve Ring of Purity. This ring grants the wearer awesome power that the king wants for himself. Mazus assembles the best men to assist him on a journey filled with danger and the unexpected. In order to find the gate to the World of Solitude, Mazus seeks the help of the seer Lucia, who is the only person alive to know its location. Before he departs from Lucia and enters the gate, she warns him saying that he will be the only one to return but doesn’t specify why.

Upon entering the gate, he finds a man dressed in a brown cloak introducing himself as Oliver the Proctor. Mazus and his crew approach Oliver and ask where to find the Ring of Purity. Oliver responds by saying that the only way to find the ring is to find a stone called the Rune of Elements. After obtaining the stone, Mazus must bring it to a group called the Untitled. From there, they will lead him to a castle guarded by a Cerberus, which Mazus and his group will have to slay to get in. Inside the castle, the ring will be on the empty throne located in the throne room.

Mazus and his group learn that the Rune of Elements is located at the end of a maze, which they would have to solve. As his group followed by Oliver reaches the entrance to the maze, Oliver reaches out to them and says, “There is a witch that will use her power to turn your men against each other.” After hearing Oliver’s warning, Mazus and his group enter the stone maze. As soon as the last knight enters the maze, a slab of stone from the entrance starts rising, trapping Mazus and the knights inside so that the only way to go is ahead. They continue walking around in silence until they hear a scream coming from behind only to find that the witch had used her magic to turn one of the knights from Mazus’s group against them killing half the group. While the other knights try to subdue him without killing him, Mazus goes on ahead to find the witch to take the rune.

Mazus runs until he approaches the end where the witch is sitting with the Rune of Elements in her hands. As he approaches her, he starts to hallucinate doppelgängers forming around him. They start to attack him and he notices that the only way to stop them is to kill the witch. He creeps behind the witch and plunges his sword into her heart. He picks up the rune and watches her lifeless body liquefy and mold together to form several more bodies. From behind Mazus can hear the footsteps of his knights. When Mazus and his men prepare to fight the new bodies, they speak to Mazus and his men saying, “You have passed the test. Proceed with us to the next task.”

Mazus and his men cautiously follow the Untitled out of the maze when they see the castle containing the Ring of Purity signifying the end of their journey. At that moment, the Untitled begin to mold together to transform into the Cerberus for the final task. Immediately after forming, the three-headed dog starts grabbing at the knights and eating them. The remaining knights tell Mazus to jump from the cliff to stab it from above. When he gets to the top of the cliff, he notices that he is the last man standing. With one leap, Mazus drives his sword into the back of the Cerberus’ neck and kills the beast. This opens the doors to the castle where the Ring of Purity lays. Mazus stands and stares out to see his knights killed in action. He breathes heavily and heads towards the castle.

As he picks up the ring and stares at it, he begins to think if it was worth the journey to lose all the men he brought. As he gazes at the ring, a voice inside him tells him that he has the power to unite people together to stand against a powerful enemy. He then decides to keep the ring and to not return to the Crystal Palace, but to journey off to another continent to understand what the ring means and what power it holds.

My idea of how Mazus the Black Knight looks.

Author's Note:

I chose to tell the story in third person and in present tense. I like the medieval period and I enjoy writing about magic and other supernatural elements. The main goal from this story parallel to Homer's Odyssey was the journey in which the hero has to overcome certain obstacles and has to deal with the loss of those around him, leaving him alone. Homer's Odyssey is about Odysseus going on a journey and landing up on the Cyclops’ Island. After defeating the Cyclops, Odysseus and his men end up on Circe's Island where she transforms them into pigs. After Odysseus frees his men from Circe’s magic, he and his men go to the afterworld and he encounters the ghosts of people he knew. After they leave the Afterworld, he and his men go up against the Sirens, a multi-headed monster named Scylla, and a giant whirlpool called Charybdis. The story ends with Odysseus returning home. I changed the plot of the original by making the main character obtaining an artifact for someone else. The ending was changed with Mazus not returning home and instead setting off on another journey to another continent. I like the idea of having Circe bewitching Odysseus’ men, so I decided to keep that element in my story with the witch in the maze. Scylla is also present in my story as the Cerberus.

Odysseus is a very smart person and that helps him get out of dangerous spots but his arrogance leads him to losing comrades. This is a characteristic I keep with Mazus.

Information:
Book: Homer's Odyssey
Author: Homer (Translated by Tony Kline)
Year: Published in 2004