Recurring Elements in Vignettober
Over the course of reading through the Vignettober entries, you'll run into a few recurring characters and settings. These are all parts of their own narratives which, for some reason or another, haven't been posted to this website. This page will serve to act as a primer/guide for these people and places.
Any characters not mentioned are non-canonical or otherwise unimportant.
The Valkyrie Program
The Valkyrie Program is a story where Samael, Archangel of Death, opts to maximize goodness on Earth by purging the wicked. In the process of doing so, he recruits people who led violent lives but were ultimately good people. These recruits would become Valkyries acting on Death's behalf to carry out his orders.
The WiP webnovel can be found here.
Dana (featured in "Horizon")
Protagonist of The Valkyrie Program. His story is best read in the webnovel itself.
Christian (featured in "Horizon" and "Camera, Road, Jumbo, Navigator")
A placeholder for Kevin and Malik; or rather, a name shared between the two of them. In "Horizon," Christian was a stand-in for Kevin, while in "Camera, Road, Jumbo, Navigator" the name was a stand-in for Malik. This was because I hadn't yet figured out their names, and "Christian" seemed to fit them both well enough.
Alex (featured in "Camera, Road, Jumbo, Navigator")
A genderswap of Alex as she appears in the webnovel. The vignette that Alex featured in was during a brief time where I was playing around with her gender to see what felt best. While initially a direct rip of a male character I played as in a really old role play, I eventually decided to jack up the smugness and make her female to be a proper foil to Dana.
Maid Syndicate
In simplest terms, the Maid Syndicate is a massive corporation whose practices span across 6 color-coded divisions: Red (health and first aid), Orange (construction and infrastructure), Yellow (hazmat and corpse disposal), Green (private security and paramilitary operations), Blue (research and development), and Violet (housekeeping and servitude).
The Maid Syndicate has a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, with their vignettes being simple glimpses in day-to-day operations. However, the following characters in particular are ones worth keeping an eye on...
Leona Modise (featured in "Camp," "Sweep," and "Blunder")
The luckiest unlucky soldier of the Maid Syndicate's private security branch (the Green Maids). "Camp" takes place during her service where she's mostly carefree despite her shy-high battle prowess. Over time she went through skirmish after skirmish, always with outstanding performance and always suffering irreperable injury (i.e. a missing finger or rib). She climbed the ranks until being caught in a battle where she was the sole survivor, at which point she finally decided it was time to retire from her current line of work.
"Sweep" takes place after her transfer to being a Violet Maid, where she works in a mansion alongside other housekeepers. One of whom being...
Hansel van Vuuren (featured in "Sweep")
A delicate Afrikaaner who chose to work as a Violet Maid in a quiet house. He's an intelligent person, the kind to try solving riddles for hours on end for fun, but simply doesn't want to apply himself to making greater contributions to the world. Maybe it's low self-esteem, or maybe it's just worry for his own health.
Matsumoto (featured in "Shredded")
A former Green Maid, Matsumoto once worked with Leona Modise. One noteworthy mission the two faced was rescuing the son of a US ambassador from the AWB. At the time, the AWB had been terrorizing South Africa in a bid to establish the Volkstaat, and of course the ambassador's son was taken as a high-value hostage. The Green Maids were able to rescue him without a hitch, earning Leona and Matsumoto a wealth of reputation.
A few years after this event, Matsumoto would be in Palestine where a rival faction took her prisoner. For better or worse, their liking of her body kept her alive over the years she was captive, although her limbs were cut off after her fourth escape attempt. Fortunately, she was later rescued by yet another rival faction who saw it fit to send her home to America.
Asher (featured in "Shredded")
The ambassador's son saved by Leona and Matsumoto; later became Matsumoto's caretaker after her return to the States. He currently works as a domestic bodyguard under the Green Maids -- as his rescuers inspired him to do -- although he's considered a college career to join the Blue Maids (R&D for other maid branches).
A Vacant Earth
Loosely based on the short story of the same name. While the world itself is identical to that of the original story, its characters and their goals have changed entirely.
Sundry and Vice (featured in "Crown" and "Sting")
Two survivors of the apocalypse who decided to band together in a quest to see where they might fit in. While they've known each other for only a year, the two cannot be seperated.
Consider Sundry the type to love talking and be horrible at it, while Vice hates talking and is wonderful at it. While Sundry spent the early days of the post-apocalypse scavenging whatever canned food he found in abandoned houses, Vice hopped from commune to commune as each one seemed doomed to fail for some reason or another. Eventually, the two would run into each other at an abandoned bar named Sundry and Vice, whereupon they named themselves accordingly. They charted out their plan to walk to the West Coast in search of a place to fit in, then double back if they haven't found it just yet. With every step full of comfort and clarity, the boys walk on.
'93 Misfits
A misadventure in worldbuilding first and plot second. While the Axis powers were successful in capturing Western Europe in World War II, they couldn't hold out against the Soviet Union who remained in the East. The USA would also win the Pacific theater, but never went further than Japan as they considered the score settled at that point. Thus began a three-way cold war between the United States of America, Nazi Europe, and the Soviet Union.
The year is 1993, and double agents are aplenty as the childless, recently-deceased son of Adolf Hitler has left a power vacuum for a new leader of the regime. While bureaucrats scramble to assume leadership, CIA and GRU agents mingle closely with Abwehr agents to see how they can take control of the situation. In the midst of it all, within the sprawling city of Cincinnati, Ohio, a hapless P.I. gets caught up in the murder of an Abwehr agent, the CIA cover-up, and the crosshairs of a debt-seeking mafia.
As far as plot goes, my aim is to make something comfortably complex; not too convoluted, not too predictable.
"Slick" (featured in "Weave")
Not actually named "Slick." This name is a placeholder.
A private investigator looking into a murder that turned out to be one of an Abwehr agent. Throughout a convoluted turn of events, he ended up taking in Antonio Fratelli of the Capone family, as well as Abwehr and GRU agents who were eager to betray their causes as double (triple?) agents.
Antonio Fratelli (featured in "Weave")
A mafioso eager to betray his family, as he was never given any choice in becoming a part of it. For whatever reason, he sees "Slick" as a ticket to get out of his life of crime.
Starbound Fanfiction
There's a good chance that you already know the setting of Starbound, and if you don't, then... Well, maybe start by skimming through the official wiki.
The fact of the matter is, though, the lore kinda sucks. It's completely bare bones, and what little meat there is lacks any real flavor. Not to mention, there's a lot of elements that simply make no sense. For example, Hylotl living underwater on every planet they colonize... despite the fact that they were only forced to live underwater on their home planet. I've decided to do what Chucklefish refused to and play around with the setting to make it feel as lived-in as possible. This involves turning a lot of things on their head (Hylotl colonizing planets on the surface, for example) and in some cases outright contradicting what's in the game (Big Ape not being seen as an oppressive force by the public).
Sundance (Featured in "Trek," "Passport," "Heavy," and "Trunk, Ragged")
A Novakid from a well-known planet called "The Rock." His brother, Sigma, is an intergalactically renowned private investigator despite the fact that he and Sundance were equal partners. Fed up with this, Sundance decided to start his own investigation firm on the Hylotl-colonized planet Asahi-Yon.
Sigma cares for him deeply, regularly sending messages to see how Sundance is doing, but Sundance wishes he could have more distance to make his own name.
His brand is the shape of the antisigma (
)
Tatyana (Featured in "Trunk, Ragged")
An Apex bureaucrat in search of as much evidence of Big Ape's corruption as possible. Her ultimate goal is to climb the Miniknog's ranks and fix everything from the inside, eventually exposing the government's malpractices and shutting them down herself.