Battle Maid Chronicles

LINK

Above link is an image to the mugs of various characters I plan on being in this supposedly sidescrolling 2D hack and slash game which I plan to make when I switch courses into Computer Graphics and gain enough expertise. Or I could turn it into a comic or some shit. Set in this strange alternate world which is divided into a bunch of countries the size of cities, that contains technology and the lack of technology. Something like Kino no Tabi. But well.

Maids. A prestigious class of servants dedicated to serving their master’s best interests. Without them, most Lords, Nobles, Rulers, Kings and Emperors wouldn’t have made it to where they are. It is all because the maids serving them that made it possible. Working for them, working them into the best person possible. Protecting their welfare, ensuring their happiness and in turn they use their power correctly and help in the maintenance of a peaceful world and ensure the happiness of the people. All of this is possible because of maids. They choose suitable masters through the Maid’s Association, and with their expertise… the world is well.

Until now. Corruption spreads. Nobles only care about themselves. The influence of maids decrease and they find themselves unable to find worthy masters and end up being some common servant class. Degraded to the simplest chores and tasks. And some of them are now just whores in uniforms, being unable to feed their families otherwise. The Maid’s Association now only has a low class jobs on offer, and maids find themselves working as mere housekeepers, babysitters, waitresses and the like for the lower and middle classes.

One maid refuses to accept the new reality of the world. She travels across the lands, looking for her perfect master. And once again extend the influence of maids, and to take a step to restoring the corrupted world to its old beautiful self. But alas, she’s broke and by a twist of fate finds herself working for some eccentric noble in some far off nation…..

And that would be the backstory of Battle Maid Chronicles. The life of Erika Rosenthal, a First Class Battle Maid who eventually finds herself working for a Noble. Lord Francoise vi Bourgeois von Burgundy di Achtung XIII.

Now for the character descriptions~

Erika Rosenthal. A Perfect Maid. Excels at all forms of household tasks with expertise in management, economics, accounting, finance and a butt load of qualifications that seems pretty damn impossible for a 20 year old to have achieved. Also excels at combat with expertise in personnel defense, security detail and yeah. Maids are awesome. They can do everything!

A stalwart and stoic character who doesn’t speak more than necessary. Although she seems rather cold and anti-social because of that, she’s a nice person and would help people in need and offer her seat in a train to the elderly and pregnant. She’s quite a bit of a perfectionist, and can’t stand losing. A tough girl. But beneath that hard armoured exterior, she does have some soft fluffy bits of herself. She really likes wearing frilly clothes and has a soft spot for gothic lolita fashion. So one of the rare moments where you can see her smile with glee is when she’s in shops expanding her wardrobe… and trying on all sorts of stuff. Whatever she wears, theres bound to be frills on at least one article of clothing. She also keeps a diary which she writes in when she had a day she found interesting. She also likes kids… no not in THAT way. So she might make a pretty good mother. Possibly a tsundere. Depends how you define it.

In combat, she wields a German shortsword, a Katzbalger. (She has a German name too, whee). That sword is a family heirloom that had protected many valiant nobles from evil and the like. And it talks. Its a magical sword that always keeps its edge and never rusts. And also has a bit of a smart mouth. The sword is given a name by each new wielder, and it kind of offended her on their first meeting, so she names it Cathy. (according to her, short for Katzbalger). The sword isn’t too fond of the name but has no other choice. If the sword had a gender, it’d be male. Since it has the mentality of a male and comes with a suave deep male voice.

She descended from a family of maids that had raised many small time nobles to major rulers and she wants to upkeep her family name of Rosenthal. So in this great depression where maids are just doing anything they like pretty oddjobbers in aprons, she remains stalwart and remains unemployed until she can find someone worthy. But in the end she’s broke, but fate lands her a job with a certain noble in a far off place….

Lord Francoise vi Borgeois von Burgundy di Achtung XIII, the ruler of a peaceful out of the way port town. Despite the title, he’s kind of just a figurehead who doesn’t do much. And the town pretty much runs itself. And hence he just indulges himself in the seemingly unlimited family riches and lives his days without meaning. He’s physically weak, prone to blunders, can’t take care of himself, arrogant, happy go lucky and has very shiny hair. The townspeople don’t really take him too seriously. All he does is organize festivals and random traditional things which is seemingly the only thing he’s good at. He’s also a bit of a hikkikomori and randomly spends days locked in his room playing games and watching anime and stuff like that.

One day, he decides that he wants a personal maid due to influence of something he read! So he sends a notice to the Maid’s Association. And Erika applies for the job. After looking through the CVs of all these applicants, he ends up picking Erika via a strange twist of fate. And well, he doesn’t read the special conditions for hiring Erika in small font. (Maids get to set a bunch of conditions for hiring them which varies from one to another).

And so they meet. And the first task he has for her is to sleep with him, and he gets kicked in the face and hit with the reality with the terms of hire.

> Should I suffer what I deem as sexual harassment, I have the right to defend myself as I see fit.

> I have the right to reject your orders should they be deemed unreasonable.

Which would be a few amongst a bunch of others. But she has nice measurements and frilly clothes, so he sticks with her.

And life for a maid just gets weird in this strange port town far away. For the town has denizens that are as eccentric as the Lord of it.

So we move on to the next character, her Rival.

A pretty boy Rival Butler. The other prestigious class of servants that had fallen since. The male version of the maid. With flaming fist attacks. At some point in the story, Erika crosses paths with him. They get in a fight over the last… fresh… cabbage. He tries to solve it with his charm, pretty hair and eyes but Erika is immune to that. And by some random law, they decide to settle it legally. With a duel. And ever since, they seem to run into fights over the last fresh produce. A smooth talker, a lady killer and works for a certain heiress of some business empire.

The Butcher. Yes I’m making fun of the Sephiroth stereotype. Sue me FFVII fans!

He’s gruff and crude and doesn’t speak much and is perfectly anti-social. He’s not only a butcher, he also the owner of an animal farm. Cows, chickens and pigs. And whatever edible meat animals we have around. Lambs. Goats. Whatever. Serves his customers grumpily but people are used to his nasty attitude and acknowledge that he would never shave properly, or get a haircut. He’s a bit deranged, stubborn and rather unreasonable. And apparently there are rumours floating about that he used to be some super villain out to destroy the world.

Erika is sent on an errand one day to get some high class Wagyuu Beef off this butcher. But well, it turns out that he only sells the high class expensive Wagyuu Beef to those… WORTHY OF IT. And apparently, Lord Fra— her Master is not worthy of his Wagyuu Beef. And Erika, being a perfectionist and seeing this errand as a perfectly normal errand, wishes not to fail it because of some retarded unreasonable butcher. And by some random ass law, she is entitled to buy the meat by force legally. So this butcher retreats into his dungeon like farm saying that she will never get the meat for the unworthy fool. And she has to battle through demonic starved pigs which have gone demonic because they eat each other….. then theres mad cows which are just… mad cows. And then theres war roosters who have ascended up another branch of the evolutionary chain into some special tough new rooster after winning over a thousand cockfights. Are they P*kemon?

Then theres an Attic Poltergeist. Which is also a vengeful spirit, filled with hate at the Lord’s grandfather. Who is empowered by some demonic spellbook that happened to be in the attic.

Basically the Lord finds some locked book in some curio shop and buys it. And after finding out he can’t open it, he chucks it in the attic…. this happened many years prior to the arrival of Erika.

Then one day, the attic is making many loud noises. And so, Erika is given the task of “Spring Cleaning”. And thus she goes, smack into a legion of giant spiders. And loads of webs. And thus she goes forth, killing the spiders and cleaning up the webs, since somebody has to stop this before they reproduce and overrun the town. Later she finds out that a vengeful spirit is behind all of this, and that it is empowered by some evil spellbook. So she managed to destroy the evil spellbook with her magical talking sword, and the spirit is too weak to do anything beyond a simple poltergeist. She can only move light objects and play simple pranks now, and she is forced to tell why she done such a thing. And apparently, the Lord’s grandfather’s car ran over her pet dog and she never forgiven him for it and plans to kill him horribly with giant spiders. But after some talking with the Lord, it is discovered that his grandfather was long dead… and that he tripped fell and drowned in a toilet seat. After learning of such a pathetic death, she stops being a hateful spirit and just decides to hang around the attic and sort out junk. Yes theres holes in the story, like how the hell did she die and why she haunted the damn attic and why she was oblivious to the fate of the Lord’s grandfather who was a heck load older than she is but… well its slapstick bullshit so its not really meant to make too much sense. Lets not think about it~

Then theres the Lord’s self proclaimed fiancee who is butt ugly and bloody fat, but is deluded to the point where she thinks she’s gorgeous. And she acts like she owns everything and is a narcissist. The ruler of a neighboring nation. She rules with an iron hand and oppresses her people and managed to buy herself her own team of secret service agents. I guess even secret service agents have fallen and have become a bunch of freelancers who just need cash.

And so, she tries to forcefully marry the Lord. And Erika has to stop her and her secret service agents, since its not in her Master’s best interest… nor is it in the town’s best interest either.

Then theres the Lord’s long dead ancestor. The Ancestral Ghost. He awakens one every a few hundred years and makes sure the family honour is upheld. And of course he sees his descendant and deems him a total loser with no honour. And he abducts the Lord and starts to ‘retrain him from the very beginning’. (no, not in THAT way either). And she has to rescue the Lord, since theres an upcoming festival and its up to him to take care of the formalities and other things. And so she has to fight through undead, deep into the Lord’s family mausoleum and catacombs and other bullshit that contributes to a dungeon like place full of undead. And then beat some sense into the Ancestral Ghost and convince him that despite the Lord’s shortcomings(when she says it, her words stab his heart like knives), he isn’t completely a worthless honourless loser. And well stuff like that.

And thats all I have for now anyway. Ninjas, Cyborg Ninjas, Flaming Cyborg Ninjas, Pirates… will have to wait. I’ll have to do some proper character drawings first. And I’ll think of a proper story structure some other time….

~ by depleted on October 4, 2007.