Seeking Heroes. Legendary ones.

[Talanic he/him]

 Greetings!  I'm working on expanding my Gatekeepers novel and could use some suggestions.

 

In this setting, there are five realms that border the mortal one that we know:

The Wild, home to talking animals.

Asgard, source of most wizards and a good number of old deities.  Note that these are entire planets and the name Asgard is not intended to imply that the Aesir control the whole world, just that they left a cultural footprint.

Faerie, home of the elves...and the djinn...and anything else too good to be true.

Pandemonium, a chaotic realm, home to the innocently dangerous Others, who cause death and destruction without understanding what they do.

And Dis, a hellscape of undeath whose denizens usually allow people to explore until they're too far from the exit to escape.  

A sixth realm, Jotunheim, forms a buffer - and a bridge - between all the others, and was home to the giants before the realm was sundered.

 

Mortals who defeated any of the beings from the other realms can wind up becoming immortal Champions.  The titular Gatekeepers are a loosely-organized group of Champions that regulate the flow of traffic to the mortal realm - slaying giants, preventing faeries from kidnapping children, hunting down demons, shunting Others back to Pandemonium with a minimum of collateral damage, et cetera.  Blocking mortals from visiting the other realms was more of a side effect than a goal, but there's good reason to prevent it; since mortals have no magic of their own, enchantments on mortals can be permanent, and they usually wind up exploited by the Aesir or Elves.  The Gatekeepers don't keep the existence of the other realms secret, exactly, but they don't volunteer the information either; they just let the world believe what it wants.

 

I could use some suggestions for more stories to work in. 

 

I intend for there to be about twenty Champions.  Although not all of them will appear directly, I want to have them planned out.  Currently, along with nationality and tale of origin (which might not be the tale of their first adventure):

Enkidu (Sumerian, Epic of Gilgamesh)

Scheherazade (Persian, Arabian Nights)

Momotaro (Japan, The Peach Boy)

Sakata Kintoki aka Kintaro (Japan, The Golden Boy)

Jack of Cornwall (UK, Jack the Giantslayer (NOT the beanstalk) (He also wants to point out that he was Springheel Jack in the 1800s, but not Jack the Ripper)

The Fates (Origin unknown, stories are Norse, Greek, Others - oldest of the Champions)

Yorgi (Modern-day Turkey, St George and the Dragon (No, the story's not originally English...who knew?)).

 

Note that none of them are under five hundred years old - although a few of them took a while before their tales became commonly known.

 

Other tales that are considered history in one form or another:

The Three Little Pigs: Ancient folk tale from the Wild, heavily garbled in the mortal realm; Father Wolf was the hero who saved the pigs.

 

Ragnarok: Actually a succession struggle between Thor and Loki, written by the winning side, such as it was; the Aesir empire has been in decline ever since.  (One character is Loki's grandson, via Fenrir.  The root of the crisis was Loki's political marriage to Anga Voda, princess of the Wild, a shifter who claimed Father Wolf as one of her ancestors).

 

The Greek and Roman gods: Zeus once ruled over Olympus.  Jupiter was a high-ranking bureaucrat who found himself holding the reigns after Apollo's invasion of Dis led to a devastating counterstroke.  He tried to reinvent himself and his cronies to fill the suddenly-open pantheon, but failed to restore order.

 

Cupid and Psyche: He was from the wild - a swan shifter. She was an Olympian.  It worked out, eventually.

 

Hades and Persephone: He was a death god.  She was a mortal.  She is now a Champion with necromantic powers, but does not trust the other Champions - after all, nobody came to rescue her.

 

Arthurian legend: Some elves were manipulating things behind the scenes.  Oberon now wields Excalibur. Arthur did not, however, seek the Holy Grail; that legend came much later.

 

Sorry. Quite tired.  I hope this was readable.

Edited January 7, 2016 by Talanic

[Eagle of the Forest Path he/him]

How about Odysseus, Siegfried and Beowulf?

 

edit: also Siddhartha aka Shakyamuni aka Gautama Buddha.

Edited January 7, 2016 by EagleOfTheForestPath

[Talanic he/him]

Hmm.  Odysseus, definitely, although I have a feeling that he either didn't join the Gatekeepers or didn't survive to the modern age.  Siegfried reminded me of Sigurd (I had the two confused, probably because of Wagner), who is definitely in. 

 

Beowulf I will have to ponder, largely because I need to consider the nature of Grendel.  If I can fit him into any of the worlds that's not Dis, then Beowulf would indeed have wound up a Champion; unfortunately mortals who defeat the spawn of Dis wind up degenerating into monsters as well - that's one of the main reasons that the Gatekeepers still consider demon hunting a high priority.  He could wind up a cautionary tale.

 

Regarding Siddhartha, he doesn't seem to fit with the Champions; they tend to be stuck in cycles of violence, and he wouldn't stand for that.  However, reading up on him does lead me to the bodhisattva Sitātapatrā, a being that he charged with protecting everyone from demons and evil spells.  Interesting.

 

This is a bunch to think about.  Thanks!