If you're reading this, then:
1) You're expected to have played CS I & II. You're also expected to know some news of the absurdities that are to come in CS3, like the existence of vampires *kills herself in despair*, previously tragically dead characters cheaply resurrected thanks to that, fanservice that's going to destroy characterization, etc. You're also supposed to know (or you can learn right now and right here) this exciting pre-release detail: apparently in a year and a half between CS2 & CS3 Osborne had conquered a small, dirt poor country known as North Ambria... :-)
Actually, this fic won't have any vampires, it wouldn't be an 'alternative' if it did, so don't run away in horror yet. North Ambria will get a mention, though.
2) There are some references to other games in the Trails franchise, but they aren't major and you can probably live without understanding them. I tried hard to avoid anything that would actually spoil the story of those games, b/c I hate spoilers and many people who've played Cold Steel games most likely never played the prior games.
PROLOGUE. TOP SECRET BIOS
The first thing you see after booting up the game is that you aren't playing as a school student anymore. maybe that's good, maybe that's bad, you do not know yet. But how did that happen anyway?
Here's top secret information that is being told to you during the intro of the game by a voice of an all-seeing Aidios:
'Suddenly a strike of lightning (*whisper* caused by my divine powers) burnt all CS3 game writers to a crisp, but naturally they got resurrected as vampires (*whisper* by yours truly) and had to live the rest of their days as such. They suffered and suffered, until one day they realized how horribly stupid of an idea it was to bring in the vampires to CS3. They wept with shame. Then they realized more, like how other ideas of theirs were bad. Feeling guilty, they scrapped everything they've written for CS3, delayed the release and started changing things around.
And that is why, instead of playing as a boring doormate Rean, you get to play as a team of awesome Ironbloods! Your primary characters in CS3 will be:
*You see an image of a file on your screen, 'TOP SECRET' is written on its face, and it is opened up painfully slowly by an unseen hand of Aidios…*
*…and a picture of Claire Rieveldt rolls up*
[she looks professional, staring intensely into the camera with a gun in hand and wearing her military uniform]
*her CS3 bio follows in the file:*
1) Claire the Icy Maiden
Behold the Icy Maiden worthy of her title and status. She finally got cured of her ridiculous crush on a boy unworthy of her, after having a serious talk with her father figure Osborne. Now she realizes that she's married to her job, first and foremost, but if she ever considered having a relationship with someone, she'd like for that person to be, first and foremost, someone relaxing and fun, someone she could take a real break with, after yet another hard day of work and responsibility.
Having been cured of her traumatic obsession with a boy inferior to her in all ways - an obsession rooted in her own misguided feelings of inferiority - she stopped putting padding inside of her bra (a ritual apparently practiced by most women in CS1-2, which now makes her worry about their mental health) and now enjoys looking like herself and accepting her for herself.
The therapy has not yet ended, however. During the last talk she's had with Osborne she expressed doubts about her title. Why was she called The Icy Maiden, but in the games behaved so touchy-feely and wore a look of a innocence and naivete? She, a supposedly professional high-ranked soldier who'd seen her share of violence and death? Thanks to that conversation, she's realized that her personality was a self-contradicting bunch of lies and is now searching for her long lost real self.
*a page is flipped and a picture of Lechter Arundel rolls up*
[He looks professional... or is trying to, dressed in fancy clothes and holding a broadsword; b/c seriously, the official artwork had given him a sword as thin as a needle, was that an April Fool's joke or just plain disrespect? :-)]
*Aidios' voice continues:*
2) Lechter the Scarecrow
For reasons unknown and truly incomprehensible to sane minds he'd undergone surgery for CS1-2 that aged him down visually for ~10 years from the times of Zero\Ao no Kiseki. But now he's back to looking like himself and quite dashing, thank you very much! Nothing like a 15y.o. boy who could easily turn out to be Elliot's secret brother! He also changed his eye color from fake green of CS games back to natural grey of previous games...
It's a mystery what compelled Lechter to undergo these appearance changes in the first place. Did Osborne somehow force him to? Well, fortunately for him, all the turmoil with appearances resulted in no mental trauma. He's just easy-going like that, so he didn't ever care for his looks or age. But well you see Claire most likely would... So he aged himself back up, just to be sure he had some chance with her.
In fact, he's so easy-going that he doesn't mind being called a Scarecrow, a title that sounds vaguely insulting and is genuinely puzzling. The game lore states that he's so good at striking secret deals that he received that nickname just for that, but what are we supposed to make of it? That all his amazing negotiation skill amounts to is scaring people to death with threats, thus 'scarecrow'? I wouldn't call that much of a negotiation skill, but... game logic.
At any rate, he finally discovered his true love (b/c the game would never give him one, all women existed just for Rean!) in Claire, but he doesn't know that she's free of her Rean yoke yet. And he genuinely has no idea how any woman is going to put up with him. But he had no idea how Osborne was going to put up with him and he did (which Lechter greatly admired him for), so he optimistically believes that there is a way to be his usual intolerable self and yet somehow be tolerated.
*a picture of Millium Orion rolls up, hugging an Osborne-gifted teddy dear to herself and sticking her tongue at us*
3) Millium the White Rabbit
She's always sticking around with the Ironbloods as a part of the team. Well, she's always around even when nobody wants her, which is a part of her charm. She finally dumped her robot, realizing that it's more interesting to fight on her own than rely on it, and is now doing her best to be as obnoxious as possible. Well that too is a part of her charm, kind of.
Like Claire, she got cured of a stupid crush by Osborne's surprisingly therapeutic grandad talks. How? He told her the hard truth: her crush only existed because all other females in the game had to have crushes on Rean and Millium was the only one considered unattractive enough to be left for the favourite of the girl audience: Jusis!
Millium was devastated to learn about it... but after accepting the truth she felt better. Now that her fake feelings are gone, she feels more true to herself and is eager to continue discovering who she really is, Jusis be damned.
At one point she came up with a sensible question: gramps, but why was I meant for Jusis if he's a girl favorite, wouldn't girls feel.. I don't know... jealous of me? And Osborne told her another hard truth: right, that's exactly why Jusis kept rejecting and insulting you, Millium...
She cried again that night and resolved to be involved only in real relationships from that point on. That said, she also felt better when she understood that all those cruel words that Jusis told her - even going out of his level-headed character for that - weren't really meant by him. He didn't choose to tell them, he just couldn't help it.
Her White Rabbit nickname mystifies her, just like it does everyone else around. Secretly Millium thinks that someone compared her face to that of a rabbit, a rabbit face, you know? Like horse face. How unnice. Why did they create an annoying character they disliked so much she wasn't even worthy to be a part of Rean's harem - as insulting as it would've been for her - and then gave her a ridiculous nickname, to boot?
Regardless of all these blows to self-esteem, Millium believes that she's a fine girl, and even if someone else is cruel and unfair to her, she always has her gramps to remind her that she's a fine girl. Gramps is the best, and he knows better than them!
*a picture of Altina Orion rolls up*
[she looks wistful rather than empty-eyed]
4) Altina the Black Rabbit
She makes a surprising comeback in this edition of CS3. She was totally irrelevant in CS2, but strangely she stuck around for CS3. The reason is that after looking at Claire's true-to-herself new appearance, she stopped dressing like a child prostitute. It was all Duke Cayenne's fault, Altina said. He only agreed to have her around if she dressed like that, to her dismay. Even worse, he demanded from her to call everyone around perverts. After hearing her out, Osborne agreed to allow her to still be on the Ironblood team, recognizing that she is, indeed, a fine girl, just like Millium. She just doesn't know herself, b/c she had no personality before. At all.
Now there's still not much to say about Altina's personality, as it's still shallow and resembles an autist, but she knows for sure that she doesn't want to be totally irrelevant anymore. She got rid of her robot after Millium told her that she's even more irrelevant if she has one. They got kinda close over all this stuff and now Altina is looking to Millium for guidance.
Altina's nickname sprang up from her lack of knowledge of herself. Having no personality, she resolved to at least become an opposite of someone else, like Millium. It was a genius idea in its own right. Just think about it: how many people who don't know themselves, instead of choosing to blindly imitate someone else, resolved to be an opposite of someone else? It was supposed to keep Altina safely from losing herself once again in someone else's personality. As desperate as her strategy was, it was unusually smart, and Osborne in particular was certain that she had a lot of promise.
*a picture of Rufus Albarea rolls up*
[He looks just like in official artwork *shrug*... but not like his 3D model that doesn't look much like artwork, if that makes sense]
5) Rufus the Jade Rook
This one is too busy to be a part of the Ironblood team in the field, but he frequently contacts them. Strangely, he didn't have to come to terms with any trauma b/c the writers allowed him to live without it in the first place. What a lucky guy!
Rufus happened to show a hilariously dumb side to him at the end of CS2. Lechter took to calling him Rufus the Doofus, at least when he wasn't around to hear that, as Rufus had shown that he failed to understand the concept of social equality properly and hoped for all peasants to become nobles... Everyone around was so amused by it that they never corrected him, it was too funny to pay the price of never hearing it again. As a result, he is now a resident clown of the Ironbloods, although he doesn't know it.
Why his nickname contains a word Jade when his first name literally means Red is beyond anyone's comprehension, maybe because he likes greenish clothes? But it was already beyond everyone's comprehension why his parents called him Red in the first place, so everybody has gotten used to everything about Rufus making no sense.
The only person who knows what his nickname really signifies (except the coloring, even he doesn't know that!) is Osborne. But the latter had shared that with me, grateful for the alternative to CS3, so here goes :-) In chess, a rook is a powerful piece - powerful in its own right, a second most-powerful piece on the board - that possesses a unique protective move for the king that no other piece is capable of. In short, it can move to cover the king with itself, if it happens to be close enough. It's called castling, short or long (depends on distance between the rook and the king), and it can only be executed once. Here's an example of short castling:
(Ugh, this site deleted the link automatically, so we all have to live without the example now).
Rufus happens to be the most handsome male character in the games - not Jusis, that one is limited to class VII - but strangely nothing has ever come of it. Perhaps he's there just to be a rarely seen eye candy or something. Even Rufus doesn't know. But he's secretly very happy that he's left alone on that account and isn't forced to pair up with someone and then be forced to insult them every step of the way, like his poor brother. Jusis had been complaining to him incessantly that these days it's enough for him just to see Millium to lose his head and start behaving like a low-born swine-hearder, insulting her with common words like 'fool', even though normally he's an extraordinary polite young noble and considers losing his cool weak and unworthy of his status.
* a picture of Gilliath Osborne rolls up*
[He looks powerful and oddly pleased, surrounded by the Ironbloods like in a family picture]
6) Gilliath the Mastermind
Yeah, you haven't misheard. Well, c'mon, why call him Osborne when everyone else gets called by their first name, is it some kind of agism? :-) Alright, alright, just kidding...
Unlike Rufus, this one had suffered through some trauma, although he remained coolly unaffected by it. The trauma he went through in Ao no Kiseki he'd brushed off as 'Falcom's smearing campaign'. Back then everyone in the game pretended that he was a 100% monster rather than every peasant's in Erebonia favorite person and their beacon for equality. Really, no one ever mentioned that he'd done a single nice deed at all or had a single nice idea at all. Coz that would make people like him instead of hate him, and that's not the point of a smearing campaign... right? No? Well, even if you disagree and you hate him, he doesn't care what you think of him anyway. :-)
This one became notably handsome in CS games for some reason, in comparison to his old self from Sky: the 3rd (where he was quite ugly) and Ao no Kiseki (better, but so-so). This gradually beautiful aging mystifies him, but like Rufus, he feels relieved there are no consequences to that. Unlike Rufus, though, he's really sad about one little thing, even if he'd never admit it to anyone: even after living for 54 years, he has no proper family. A villain must be so villainous that he can't possibly be living with a family, right? Not even with just a wife? Nah, villains don't have wives, they can't be married, period.
The way that Osborne copes with his loneliness is by considering the Ironbloods his family.
*the top secret file is closed and promptly burnt for your own sake, because if Osborne ever learns that you've seen the last paragraph you'll be a corpse*