Stormbreaker: Origins
Prelude:
To my beloved readers,
To most of you, the brave crew of the starship Stormbreaker are mostly a mystery. Not much has been thoroughly explained about all of the many characters you meet and follow throughout the course of The Stormbreaker Chronicles. Most of them are sort of a mystery. But I am here right now to say that that will no longer be the case.
As it happens, the Stormbreaker Crew's true origins come from many years ago. As long ago as my 4th grade year, I lived in a large house which sat in the middle of a cul-de-sac. And every single afternoon after school, I would have over someone who, at the time, was my best friend. A kid by the name of Danny. I'm going to spare last names, but if he does ever read this, he'll know who he is. Using a series of toy lightsabers I always kept upstairs in my room, Danny and I would venture out to my front yard. Together, Danny and I went on all sorts of adventures, most notably our Star Wars series. It followed the journey of Noah and Danny Skywalker (my first name is Noah, and we were 8 years old, so name originality wasn't high), on their daring adventures across the galaxy fighting the Empire and saving the galaxy.
Well, these daily hangouts continued until the summer after 7th grade. Up until then, Danny had started hanging around another crowd, one whose influence wasn't exactly kind in nature. And one day, halfway between 7th and 8th grade, Danny stopped calling.
And to this day, he refuses to so much as look me in the eye.
So you know what I did? I rewrote all of our Star Wars adventures, and killed his character off in chapter two! Think of it as an enormous, figurative middle-finger to that asshole I'm better off without.
But, before Danny ditched me, I had made a new friend: a girl by the name of Hannah. Now, she was a unique case. Unlike me, she had a more "traditional" upbringing. her parents were very religious, as well as strict, and couple that with a socially-impaired stepfather and a severe case of introvertedness, and she was a walking anxiety machine. Meanwhile, I was this happy-go-lucky goofball-ass kid, with an enormously-extrovertive and hyperactive personality, and very fun and progressive parents and a happy childhood.
We became friends almost instantly.
And that's where the rest of Stormbreaker began to grow. Over time, Hannah developed herself online, taking the name "Fornara" on several sites. Many years after she developed this name, a character in her likeness would be developed using a variant of that name. Turn Hannah's personality on its head, and boom! Nara Mukure was born.
Now, the rest of the crew's a bit different. Kaz, D'razz, A'laan, and Nova are the only other characters who are based off of actual people (Winson and Rei are true OCs). But let's start with the others.
At the start of my junior year in high school, I met a group of really awesome people in the marching band: two guys named Jacob and Austin. Austin's this really salty, drop-dead hilarious guy who loves techno music above all other genres, and isn't afraid to drone out things with Monstercat.
Jacob is a lot like me, in some ways. Loud, outgoing, and brash are three words I'd use for him. He and Austin had been friends for some time, and I made friends with both of them rather quickly.
Meanwhile, on days when I didn't have after-school marching rehearsal, I began to befriend one of the most interesting characters I've ever had the pleasure of meeting: Ethan.
In a lot of ways, Ethan is kind of a paradox. With the way he dresses, you'd assume he's a total hipster douchebag; bright red hoodie, big, thick-rimmed glasses, a gray beanie cap, and skinny jeans are his usual attire. But when you meet him, he's one of the most naturally-kind and charitable people I've ever met. It's almost scary, in fact. I suspect that guy's a secret mastermind planning great things. But I digress.
It was about the start of the second semester of junior year that I first remembered old Noah Skywalker. I figured, "You know what? I oughtta write a book about this guy." So, I changed the name to Nova Xaris, and went on from there. The planning for Stormbreaker took way longer than I'd ever anticipated. And as time went on, I began to reach out to my friends, asking each of them if they wanted a piece of the action. All responded positively, and the rest of the Stormbreaker Crew were created soon after. D'razz was based off of Ethan, Nara off of Hannah, A'laan off of Austin, and Kaz off of Jacob. And then the characters did something extraordinary:
They transcended the bonds of who they'd been based off of and became their own people.
Now, the purpose for all this Origin story ridiculousness is because the following chapters of this story are each the backstories of each of these characters, written by the person whom they're based off of. I will include in the posted versions of each the author's first name and last initial.
And to kick things off, we have Part I of the Story of D'razz, as written by Ethan.