Hi y'all! This is my first attempt at pitching a MG GN! It's fantasy + v.queer + thanks for looking at it!

Summary

Thirteen year old trans boy Salem lives alone in Chiron’s Edge, an abandoned and dilapidated monastery deep in one of the many wastelands of Viktrosa.

When outsiders, searching for an errant and powerful spirit that has been taking over nearby towns, enter his home, Salem will have to confront not only the outsiders, the dangerous black plant that is taking over, but also his lost family, magical lineage and past.

Sample pages + character sheets
Chiron's Edge - image 1 - student project Chiron's Edge - image 2 - student project Chiron's Edge - image 3 - student project Chiron's Edge - image 4 - student project Chiron's Edge - image 5 - student project Outline

Living alone in a dilapidated and abandoned monastery known as Chiron’s Edge, a young trans man by the name of Salem has his work abruptly disrupted by the arrival of three young government officials. They demand to search the young man’s premises to look for any clues to a rash of deaths when fellow citizens are turned to a grey-green stone. Despite magic being banned from their world, the young officers - Louis, Scout and Artemis - are Sk’dai, an exiled race of magic users who command powerful spirits called Skaddow. They see that Salem is wearing Weaver’s Gloves - another form of ancient, forbidden magic.

A menacing black plant grows all over Chiron’s Edge, and the Sk’dai suspect it is connected to the villagers' deaths when a vine from the plant turns a sword wielded by a Blue Knight spirit they have summoned into stone. Exploring magical doors and ossuaries, they’re attacked by an odd-looking plant girl with strange powers who kidnaps Louis.

After the plant poisons Louis, he finds himself in an unused undercroft, alone and stalked by the strange, dangerous girl. Surrounded by a room full of frozen grey-green statues with human faces, he tries to escape but the girl is unusually fast and strong. He is rescued by Flower-Faced, a Skaddow who has been trapped below Chiron’s Edge. Flower-Faced gives Louis a riddle to help the group unravel the mysteries of the Skaddow of Chiron’s Edge, “Find the mirror and refute what you see there”, and pulls him out of the undercroft and back to his friends.

Salem joins forces with the Sk’dai to combat the force in the black plant. They meet a small Skaddow by the name of Irrwisch, imprisoned by Salem’s ancestors but immediately and inexplicably fond of Salem.

The team fight their way through the ossuary, past a guardian dragon made of black vines, and finally make it to the centre of Chiron’s Edge. Here the group discover Salem’s grandmother, turned almost entirely to stone.

The girl who kidnapped Louis returns, and is revealed to be Salem’s twin sister, Maria… although not the Maria Salem knew!

Finally, Scout confesses that the old journal they’ve been reading belongs to Salem’s grandmother, and it reveals that Salem, too, was taken by the black plant and cloned, and the Salem they know now is in fact part of the black plant Skaddow.

As the Sk’dai reel from learning this, Maria launches her final attack, aiming to finally convince her brother to join her in replacing as much of the world as possible with the black plant.

Hiding from Maria’s attacks and barely able to move from the black plants’ poison, Louis realises that Sk’dai are the only people in the world who know how to control Skaddow. For the Sk’dai to form a bond with a Skaddow the Skaddow has to give the Sk’dai its sigil, so Louis asks Salem if he thinks he could remember what his sigil is. With help from Irrwisch and Scout, Salem finds his sigil, and with it he remembers the name he and the Skaddow of this place share - Chiron.

Salem uses the only magic he knows, Weaver magic, to etch the sigil of Chiron onto a Skaddow key. This would fold the power of the Skaddow entirely into the key as well as granting power over the Skaddow to the key holder.

As the many emanations of the black plant Skaddow return to the key, Salem’s sister and grandmother and all the vines disintegrate, followed finally by Salem himself. The whole, pure form of the Skaddow of Chiron’s Edge appears - Chiron himself! Chiron turns into wriggling black vines, before we see some threads, scattered from Salem’s now discarded bag, latch onto the last of the escaping plant. The threads and the vines knot together in elaborate braids, before finally re-forming as Salem!

Chiron’s Edge collapses, just as Salem uses his new Skaddow powers to create a magical cloth that protects the group from the falling rock.

Outside the now ruined Chiron’s Edge, the team, including the re-formed Grandmother and Maria, mount Salem’s vine-creatures to go on a new adventure together.

Dante Hookey

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