The Defenders of the World (Once Upon a Time...)
Inception - Once upon a time, when the mighty Sorcerer Supreme, Yen Sid, almost failed to banish the demon god Chernabog, he begrudgingly decided to gather a young group of heroes from across the different kingdoms of the ancient world (and perhaps even across different times as well) to assist him in protecting it from the forces of evil. While the proud Yen Sid wanted to call this assemble the Sorcerer's League, his young Gaelic apprentice convinced him to pick a less eponymous name and instead allow the heroes to come up with a name for themselves. They opted to call themselves the Defenders of the World, a grandiose title they would earn together after years of performing heroic acts across the known world.
Members
Mulan the Warrior – A soldier hailing from the Far East who had saved her homeland from a Hun invasion after secretly joining the army in her father's place by disguising herself as a man. Undeniably skilled with a blade and other forms of martial arts, this warrior women's true gift was her sense of duty and talent for unorthodox strategies. For these reasons, Yen Sid chose her to lead his Defenders as they adventured across the world, a task she quickly measured up to.
Heracles the Demigod – The good-natured son of two Olympian gods whose divinity was partially stolen by the nefarious ruler of the Underworld, Hades. Even with much of his divinity gone, Heracles still possessed the strength of the ten men, and with the aid of his mentor Chiron, and lover Megara, the God-made-Mortal managed to become the Hero of Thebes, the vanquisher of his uncle Hades, and the savior of his pantheon. When asked to join the Defenders, Heracles was at first disappointed that he would not be the one to lead them (or name them the New Argonauts), but his sense of humility prevented him from succumbing to jealousy and allowed him to accept the role of Mulan's trusted second-in-command.
Merida the Archer – Known throughout Scotland as both a master archer and the wild-haired princess of Clan Dunbroch, Merida was also renowned for possessing a rebellious will that almost doomed her mother to a wood witch's curse. While a bit older and slightly more mature than she was then, Merida was partially chosen to join the Defenders, despite her faults, due to the prompting of Yen Sid's Gaelic apprentice, who was once a member of Clan Dunbroch and hoped that more extraordinary experiences would make this firebrand of a princess into a capable queen for her people.
Aladdin the Thief – Once a mere street thief from the Arabian kingdom of Agrabah, this cunning rogue had earned the privilege to marry the princess of his land after a long series of events involving a genie, a power-mad vizier, a romantic midnight flight, and an act of self-sacrifice. But even with wealth, love, and a new family, Aladdin still yearned to see whole new worlds away from his desert homeland. Thus, when Yen Sid and his apprentice came for him with their offer, he quite literally jumped at the chance, but not before getting his betrothed's approval and the Sorcerer's assurance, he would be able to visit back regularly.
Moana the Wayfinder – The young new chieftess of the Polynesian kingdom of Motunui, Moana had mended an ancient corruption that was plaguing her island home with the aid of the seas themselves, a shapeshifting demigod, and her own compassion. Perhaps more importantly though, she had reinvigorated her people's love of navigation and discovery. Given her magical connection to the sea and her mastery of sailing, Yen Sid tried to recruit her but found her initially unwilling to his League due to her new responsibility as chieftess. Indeed, it was only after her family and tribe encouraged her to follow her heart and adventure out into the world that she changed her mind.
Arthur the Once and Future King – The youngest member of the Defenders at the age of twelve, Arthur, or Wart as he was commonly called in his youth, was an orphan boy who had become King of England after miraculous pulling the magic sword Excalibur from an enchanted stone. While a shy lad unaccustomed to the duties that kingship entailed, the boy king still had a kind-heart and willingness to learn that endeared him to many who knew him. Given his youth though, even when compared to the other Defenders, Yen Sid was skeptical of the value of recruiting him to his League but was convinced by his friend and contemporary Merlin to give the boy a chance to prove himself, and hopefully learn from his slightly older heroic companions.
Team Dynamics – Overwhelmingly positive. Regardless of the disparate nations and cultures, they came from, the members of the Sorcerer's League were all idealistic heroes with a thirst for adventure and a desire to help others. As a result, they rarely came into significant conflict with one another. While there were initial personality clashes at beginning of their time together they were quickly overcome. Heracles and Mulan, the eldest members of the League, had a strong friendship with one another, both respecting the other's martial training and leadership skills. Merida's and Moana's similar personalities and experiences when it came to balancing their royal duties and their own desires for freedom made them fast friends as well, and they even regarded each other as sisters. Aladdin's roguish nature and personal charm made him well liked by the other members of the League. Arthur was doted on by all and treated as the League's collective protege. This was especially true in regard to his relationship with Mulan who he squired for while adventuring with the League.
Quests
- To test their capabilities, Yen Sid's first quest for his League was sending them to confront the Sanderson sisters, a trio of English sorceresses that had been stealing the youth of children for centuries. With Arthur volunteering to serve as a bait, the heroes were able to ambush the witches in Brocéliande Forest and seal them away within Merlin's Grimhold, a powerful relic capable of entrapping the greatest of evils.
- When the lords of the Southern Islands begged for noble heroes to assist them in their ongoing war against the snow queen of Arendelle, and her Coronian allies, Yen Sid hastily sent his warriors to aid them with little information or details on the origin of the conflict. The Southern Islanders made up for Yen Sid's vagueness by reciting horrific tales of the snow queen's many monstrous crimes, which included everything from executing captured prisoners of war by freezing the blood in their bodies to carnal incest with her own sister. But as the heroes traveled to Arendelle and walked amongst its capital as foreign merchants they saw no sign of the tyranny and poverty that supposedly exemplified the queen's reign. Merida was the first to notice contradiction and when she pressed Prince Hans, their unwelcome guide and handler for the quest, she found his answers wanting and all too familiar to courtly misdirection and half-truths that there were deployed by her clan's territorial rivals. Revealing her concerns to rest of the Defenders when their supposed ally was temporarily away, Merida convinced the others to abandon their original plan of storming Castle Arendelle and capturing the snow queen and instead proposed risking their own capture by meeting the queen in person so that they could determine for themselves whether she was the monster everyone in the Southern Islands claimed she was. When Mulan asked about what they'd do if the queen was evil and tried to capture or kill them, Merida is said to have laughed at the possibility and pointed to her bow as if in answer. Luckily, the gambit was a success, with the League being told by the queen herself the true history between the two warring nations. Quickly flipping their allegiance and detaining Prince Hans, the League would go on to assist Arendelle in their war, eventually succeeding in forcing the Southern Isles to end the conflict in a truce. Afterwards, once the League returned from the war, Yen Sid commended them for passing another of his tests by seeing past the lords of the Southern Islands deception. It is said the heroes themselves were more irritated by the duplicity of the test than proud for passing it.
- Saving the last dragon eggs in Urland (a neighboring kingdom to Arthur's England) from King Cassiodorus and his army of fanatical religious supporters genocidal pogrom that sought to rid the realm of dragons, regardless of whether they were aggressive or not. Aladdin's talent for thievery was vital in this quest for the Defenders had to steal the eggs from Cassiodorus' very own castle dungeons before he could publicly destroy them. The heroes took the eggs to the northern island of Berk where they could be safe, and perhaps more importantly, be properly trained to live peacefully among humans.
- When Loki and Hades joined forces to bring down their respective pantheons and divide the Earth amongst themselves in the aftermath, the pair decided to frame Heracles for the theft of the divine hammer Mjolnir as part of their plan, knowing full well that doing so would lead to war between the Theoi of Olympus and the Aesir of Asgard. While Odin and Zeus prepared their pantheons for all-out war against the other, the Defenders were forced into hiding, Yen Sid being unable to risk the ire of the two pantheons by directly shielding the group. Hunted across the across the Earth by Thor and his Warriors Three, the heroes were eventually corned by the thunder god and his companions. When Heracles' dogged assertions of innocence failed to convince the Son of Odin, the strongman of Olympus asked for a trial by combat against him in a last-ditch effort to exonerate himself and save his friends. Accepting the duel, the two fought each other unarmed, using their strength as their only weapon. While Thor was indeed mighty he wasn't as skilled at brawling as he was with his famous hammer and Heracles came out the winner of the duel, forcing Thor to concede after catching him in an unescapable grapple. While Heracles could have simply killed him to win the duel, Heracles' willingness to show mercy was what ultimately convinced the thunder god of his innocence, more so than the actual duel itself. Working together, the two groups were able to surmise that only Hades and Loki could have been behind it all, and tracked down the deadly alliance to their lair in the pocket realm known as The World That Never Was. Only after fighting hordes of undead and heartless abominations did the two groups manage to bring the duo to justice, retrieve Mjolnir and avert the war of the gods before it could even truly begin.
- Using Moana's connection to the ocean, the League forced the armies of two rival underwater kingdoms, one a technological marvel and the other inhabited by mermaids yet both coincidentally named Atlantis, to stop their onslaught and come to the meeting table. With Moana serving as the ocean's representative, a peace treaty was finally negotiated between the two kingdoms, ending over a century of warfare.
- An attempt to rescue Princes kidnapped by the newly crowned Grand High Witch Maleficent and her coven of fellow sorceresses from being sacrificed to the legendary Black Cauldron in a bid to resurrect the Horned King (Maleficent's former protégé and lover) went wrong when their male teammates were magically enchanted by Maleficent to do her bidding, thus forcing the remaining female members of the Defenders to make their escape and gather their own powerful alliance of women. With the assistance of Yen Sid apprentice's magic, they quickly gathered the spouses and significant others of the enthralled Princes, many of which were already plotting their own individual rescue attempt, and brought them together for an assault upon Maleficent's tower in the infamous Enchanted Forest. While the battle was arduous, with Mulan almost being cut down by a spellbound Arthur and Merida confronting a vengeful witch whose home she had accidentally destroyed, the Defenders and their royal allies achieved victory when Princess Aurora took up her husband's sword and lunged it into Maleficent's heart. With her death, the Princes and the male Defenders were freed from her magic and her coven quickly scattering to the winds in retreat.
- Perhaps more than any League in history, the Defenders traveled across the known world and beyond. While some of these voyages were quests on Yen Sid's behalf with a specific purpose in mind, such as slaying a rampaging chaos dragon known as the Jabberwocky in Wonderland or rescuing bewitched children trapped on Neverland from the mad boy immortal Peter Pan and his even madder fairy minion, most of them were simply expeditions too far off kingdoms and dimensions and were more focused on exploration and learning than dangerous questing or monster slaying. To name just a handful of the myriad of places they visited; the Defenders traveled throughout the bright continent of Africa and were granted the rare privilege to enter the highly advanced civilization of Wakanda, seeing the legendary onyx panthers that dot the kingdom firsthand. They were even allowed to take a few of famously indestructible starmetal weapons native to Wakanda as parting gifts. The heroes also, perhaps unknowingly, bore witness to a civil war between lion prides that was taking place in the African savannah. In the north, they repeatedly visited old friends and allies, such as the dragon tamers of Berk and the ice queen of Arendelle, but also made it a point to go further north and see the trolls of the Valley of the Living Rock and the arctic kingdom of Freezenburg. Using a raft made by Moana herself, the Defenders traveled across the seas, visiting the beautiful and peaceful isles of Izayoi and Hakalo, both which were islands that Moana's people had traveled to during their last golden age of exploration. They also barely managed to avoid being turned into donkeys when they were momentarily ensnared by the hedonism of Pleasure Island. More obscure kingdoms like superstitious Drusselstein, barbaric Udrogoth, and infamously stinking Odiferous did not escape the Defenders notice either, though most in the League found these journeys less than fulfilling or and even a bit mundane. In contrast, their trips to different unearthly realms like the lion ruled kingdom of Narnia, the fey-inhabited Pixie Hollow, the strange realm of Oz ruled by the child queen Ozma, the even stranger kingdom of Mewni with its own dynasty of mighty queens, and the surprising wholesome, if sometimes disturbing, Halloweentown was anything but boring.
- The last great quest the Defenders of the World would take would be their confrontation with Chernabog, who had been summoned back to the realm of mortals by the Sanderson triplets, who themselves had broken free from their own imprisonment due to Merlin accidentally destroying the Grimhold in one of his sporadic moments of fey madness. When Merlin regained his sanity and realized what he had done, he alerted Yen Sid who tasked the Defenders to once again deal with the sisters. It was ultimately this fear of being recaptured in the Grimhold that prompted the sisters to risk their souls, and all of humanity's as well, by summoning demon god at Bald Mountain. When the Defenders finally tracked the sisters to Bald Mountain, Chernobog was already loose and rampaging across the countryside, summoning an army of demons, undead, and witches to his side. Believing that the heroes would be unable to deal with Chernobog themselves, Yen Sid forcefully dismissed them and battled the god of darkness alone. It would be a fatal mistake. Old age had finally caught up to the antediluvian Yen Sid and though he weakened Chernobog considerably in their battle he could not banish the demon god once more and was killed in his attempt. With Yen Sid dead all hope seemed lost with the monster continuing his literal hellraising that was quickly killing hundreds of innocents. Refusing to allow such evil to continue and wishing to avenge their fallen patron, the Defenders gathered a host of their allies and friends. Knights from England, ice golems from Arendelle, dragonriders from Berk, Atlanteans, Olympians, Asgardians, talking woodland creatures from the Enchanted Forest, and other such allies joined the Defenders army and confronted Chernabog's infernal forces. With Mulan leading the army Chernabog's forces were overwhelmed, and the demon god himself was banished back to wince he came when Mulan, borrowing her squire's famous sword, gave him a terrible blow.
Dissolution - With Yen Sid dead his apprentice took him his mantle as Sorcerer Supreme. Being far younger and more capable of defending the world by herself, the Defenders were offered the opportunity to disband and return to their homelands. While more than willing to continue, a longing for home had begun to affect each of the heroes and thus they solemnly accepted the offer and disbanded, but not before having a massive celebration for their time together and swearing to visit one another whenever possible.
Final Fates
Mulan returned to China where she became an even more revered general and hero of her nation after repelling another series of Hun invasions.
Heracles' life would be one of tragedy and triumph. Shortly after returning to Greece he would marry his beloved Megara and start a family. Unfortunately, Hades' magical manipulations would cause Heracles to murder his own wife and child while temporarily driven mad. Seeking redemption, Heracles went through a series of labors, that the last of which took him to the Underworld where he battled his uncle for the last time. While both died in the battle, Heracles was rewarded for a life of noble acts and courage by being reunited his family in the Elysium Fields.
Merida went on to become the wise, if fierce, leader of her clan after he father's death. Unsurprisingly to those who knew her best, Merida never married and would instead pass on the throne to the oldest of her triplet brothers.
Aladdin finally married his betrothed Jasmine and would rule Agrabah as her prince-consort until the end of their days.
Moana sailed backed to her homeland bringing with her treasures, and perhaps more importantly, maps from her journeys. As chieftess of her tribe, Moana bravely took her people further then they'd ever gone before.
Lastly, the events of Arthur's life as an adult are far too long for this chronicle to record. What is relevant is that Arthur's actions as king of Camelot would make him a nigh mythic figure in British history.
Author's Notes – I'm disappointed with this one. I feel as if I could have done much more with a Disney League, but inspiration seemed to have abandoned me halfway through. My prose felt weak too. Oh well. I at least hope you folks out there enjoyed the chapter.
Anyways, the next League writeup is reviewer's choice! Either a funky Blaxploitation League set in the 70s or a totally radical 80s League focusing on sci-fi adventure and a bunch of other 80s tropes and genres. You can blame the newest season of Stranger Things for why I got interested in doing the later. Say which one you want me to do in the reviews.