Backup: Kingdoms and Thorn Canon Primer

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Summary

Kingdoms and Thorn is a collection of stories revolving around team operatives, a group of people raised from childhood as living weapons before they finally rebelled against the military that made them, that of the Thorn Republic, and established self-rule in the western territories, now known as the Kingdoms Cities. Former team operatives now work to make new lives for themselves, sometimes reaching back for the families they lost when they entered the program and sometimes remaining focused on the families they made for themselves, the teams.

The children who made up the teams were genetically modified humans, or specials, who entered the program between the ages of four and seven and generally underwent processing that also wipe out their memories of before. Most of the children were orphans but others had been taken from their families. They were allowed to group up naturally into hierarchical teams and named each other.

Stories revolve around several teams and groups of people, such as the Special Unit that rose up in the wake of the Thorn Rebellion.

Team 34

Team 34 consists of 8 members, in rank order:

Rank Primary Handle Birth Name
1. Shift Jennifer Haller
2. Kilter
3. Sear
4. Justus Justus Ellison
5. Kismet
6. Protector
7. The Database Brittany Rachelle Winslow
8. Meld

This team has gone through several iterations, beginning with a different leader, Watcher, who established the "exception" each member of the team receives where they do not have to simply obey or be severely punished. Justus arrived shortly after Watcher left and never lost his memories or gained superhuman abilities.

Team 34 is a general-purpose team, deployed for a wide variety of scenarios. The languages they speak and various skillsets vary widely.

Shift is the top-ranked operative in the entire Projects. When she describes herself, she says, "I know the difference between right and wrong. I just don't care." Nevertheless, she's extremely loyal and self-sacrificial and will do literally anything to save or protect those she considers her own. She became a mother at a young age and took her daughter as her exception, having her placed with foster parents outside of the Projects, never to be taken or considered an asset by the Department. She has a love/hate relationship both professionally and personally with her second, Kilter. Her special ability is shapeshifting. After the Thorn Rebellion, she gains custody of her daughter, settles in Bellyn sometimes with Kilter and sometimes without him, and continues working in the political/legal/military arena of the Kingdoms.

Justus was caught in the middle of a team operation where normally he would have ended up killed. Instead, he and his friend were both inducted into the teams as teenagers. Justus was assessed as unable to survive processing so was offered to Shift, who had already proven herself adept in manipulating and conditioning others. After training hard for six months, he rose to fourth rank on the team and stayed there. Despite having no special abilities, he is a competent military operative, adept at combat, espionage, infiltration, security, etc. After the Thorn Rebellion, he does not return to his family but decides to go into law enforcement in the city of Riving.

Rachelle, that is The Database, is a sarcastic, practical operative with a terminal special ability. She is able to absorb, read, and mimic any genetic material she comes in physical contact with, but it doesn't come with an off-switch, and she is a storage system running out of space. She tends to take support roles and doesn't know how to say no to people she cares about (she cares a whole lot more than she lets on) and ends up in a relationship with Justus because of it. Her brother by choice is Meld and both of them take care of each other when their special abilities become too painful. After the Rebellion, she moves into an apartment in the city of Kishet and prefers to go by her birth name. She often works with Heather, a former operative from another team, as a computer/technology consultant and often consults with the Special Unit in Kishet on law enforcement cases involving special type humans.

Meld is a quiet healer who considers Rachelle a sister. He regularly nearly kills himself healing others, before and after the Thorn Rebellion. He's definitely a grounding force for the team, someone they consider "good" when the rest say of themselves, "We're all half-monsters." He's always reliable and always there.

Important Works related to Team 34

  • Dowse and Bleed, a novelette, wherein Rachelle gets called in to help the Special Unit find a missing special and nearly ends up dead
  • A Time to Die / Its Own Absolution, a pair of short stories, one from Shift's perspective and one from Justus' about his arrival in Team 34

Team 8

Team 8 consists of 7 members, in rank order:


Rank Primary Handle Birth Name
1. Red Wolf Ben Taylor
2. Whisper Sierra Lewis
3. Storm Everett "Rett" Kiernan Murray
4. Maker
5. Surge Heather
6. Minder Marcella
7. Ashen

This team has gone through several iterations as well, with Storm being the leader before he ranked Red Wolf first and a former member having died in an anti-terrorist mission. Team 8 was a strike team, tasked with handling violent or potentially violent situations inside and outside the Thorn Republic, various direct combat situations, and assassinations.

Red Wolf was caught in the middle of a team operation where normally he would have ended up killed. Instead, he and his friend were both inducted into the teams as teenagers. His memories were wiped and he acquired the ability to sense and suppress certain kinds of energy and most other special abilities in others. During his training, Storm realized early on that he would be a better candidate as leader and trained him accordingly before promoting him to first rank. Red Wolf is levelheaded and practical and does not remember Justus or his former family. After the Thorn Rebellion, he starts a family of his own with Whisper in the city of Bellyn and remains close to his team members.

Whisper remembers her life and family from before the Projects, and that colors her perspective at times, including her unwillingness and disinterest in leading the team. She came from a broken family and parental neglect on the part of her mother before ending up one of the most effective hand-to-hand combatants in team 8 as well as becoming a skilled assassin and tracer, authorized as a government hacker/admin, able to manipulate most electronic systems in the Republic without being noticed. She is very quiet and reserved without close friends beyond her team and keeps most of her personal relationships very private. She is also very influential and it was her decision to save Red Wolf when his life was endangered that provoked the Thorn Rebellion at the time it occurred. After the Rebellion, she did reconnect with part of her birth family while focusing primarily on the one she'd begun with Wolf. She remains a major unseen influence in many of the political events that transpire in the Kingdoms.

Storm also remembers his family before the Projects and is perhaps the only team member who viewed the Department as an *improvement.* He and his twin sister, who ended up on another team, came from an extremely abusive background. He's extremely protective of his fellow team members and is basically big brother to them all. After the Thorn Rebellion, he settled in a Kingdoms City and stayed a supportive figure for his team.

Ashen has the same healing ability as Meld, able to share life or take it. In her time as an active team operative, she mostly took it. She's extremely pragmatic, to the point of not understanding a more civilian way of thinking, and sees no use in nonessentials. She loves music however and after the Thorn Rebellion, she becomes a piano teacher while she tries to figure out how to live as a civilian and what normalcy means for her.

Important Works Related to Team 8

Team 95

Team 95 consists of 8 members, in rank order:

Rank Primary Handle Birth Name
1. Wolf
2. Augment
3. Arc Lyssa
4. Skylight Katia Oleyenn
5. Ice Queen Ilyddi Yanos
6. Stream
7. Bridge
8. Math Carter Vamarr

This team specializes in intelligence gathering, infiltration, and regime change. Their job is to set up intelligence networks, gather intel themselves, or manipulate other sovereignties into doing what the Thorn Republic wants. They frequently engage in direct combat situations due to their primary target area: the Ogunn block of nations on the Greater Continents. Most of them regularly use the primary Kachan dialect from that area as their language of privacy and their preferred language with each other.

Wolf is one of the youngest members of the team but became leader when she proved an effective protector as the teams were forming. She maintains a close relationship with all the members of her team and is personable, friendly, fun-loving, and inclined to minimize casualties and even subvert orders to leave political power in the hands of the native groups it should belong to. She inspires loyalty in her team and shows no inclination after the Thorn Rebellion to learn about her former family. She gave the name "wolf" to the special ability that allows her to sense and suppress most forms of energy and most special abilities in others, based on its appearance in action to Math, who has mass-based vision.

Arc remembers her family before the teams, but feels she was betrayed into the Projects by her father. She holds a grudge and avoids contact after the Rebellion. As an operative, she specialized in honeypot missions, undercover intelligence gathering, and mechanical sabotage due to her special ability of generating electrical charges and even lightning. She is sweet and smooth and friendly to those she does not know very well (or is targeting) and is overprotective, fierce, and sometimes bitter with those she cares about, especially her team members. As third rank, she regularly positions herself to shield other teammates from some of the more unpleasant realities of their work.

Skylight is stoic, reserved, but extremely loyal and hard working. She's chronically plagued by insomnia, partly due to her roommate Arc's tendency to spark blue electricity in her sleep, and ends up studying more intelligence reports and practicing more hand-to-hand combat than any of her other teammates. As she grows older, she develops many of the plans and tactics that go into their missions and proves adept at delivering on whatever impossible demands Wolf makes. After the Rebellion, she marries Math and spends several years with the family that was adopting her before she was taken. She has her own training studio where she teaches others with special abilities. She's a dimensional exoshifter, able to manipulate or completely erase anything with mass that is not her.

Ice Queen is the youngest member of the team and the most opinionated. She's fun-loving, often inappropriate, swears liberally, and can often have her fun at the expense of others who are not on her team. She's a fierce fighter, their best at languages and cultural integration and undercover (in low society contexts), and considers Skylight her chosen sister. After the Rebellion, she tries working in the corporate world and struggles to fit in with "normal" life and people. Whenever possible, she regroups with fellow team members instead.

The guys matter. They do. But they're stories are mostly developed on the sidelines of the girls at this point.

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