So. This has been sitting in my Document Manager for a year. I'm extremely sorry to keep Soul Kingdom fans waiting. I have no excuses. Here's the story outline that's been done for a while..,
I've been thinking a lot about my friendship with the members of the Soul Kingdom Wiki where Soul Kingdom is written, especially since I joined MiniJen's Discord server, discovered her amazing Kingdom Hearts 3 AU Keys to the Kingdom, and a few other things happened. Soul Kingdom isn't feeling like a passion project anymore, which I never would have thought years ago. At this point, I don't know if I'm going to be finishing Soul Kingdom. But I don't want to leave you guys hanging if I don't. Especially one person. You know who you are... There are a few details set in stone, but the specifics are still a little hazy. Here's where we were taking the story, told from the perspective of Soul Kingdom's creator herself. I'll chime in when I need to via parentheses. Like with any good story, it's best to start at the beginning...
"Eons and Eons ago, there was just a blank space, neither bright or dark, with a shadow of white and a shadow of black. Depressed by the emptiness, the two painted two spheres on the space, creating the first world and sun. The sun had its own light, but even with its warm rays, the world was cold and lifeless. The two painted the world orange, blue and green, and used their powers to create the world a heart. The Jupiter Emerald and its supporters, the Ringed Emeralds, made of seven powerful gems and rings. The jewels created by the light - Power - and the rings created by the darkness - Emotion - empower one another. And with the Jupiter Emerald, the heart of the world, the first people were born. Seven of of these first people were selected to protect the heart from those who might wish to abuse it. These seven were gifted control over the powers of the Ringed Emeralds, creating the Soul Princes. (The Soul Princes were basically the protectors of the universe.)
"What would be months later, our dear mother and father made themselves a personal child they named Yiya. But upon Yiya's birth came evil, which took the form of seven Evils. (Yiya and the seven Evils were the trilogy's main villains, who the villains we did introduce were working for. We also used the term Sins as a synonym.) The Evils took advantage of the newborn Yiya and corrupted him and many people of the first world. The corrupted then tried to attack the world's heart for its power. The Soul Princes tried to reason with them, but their minds and hearts were already plagued by evil, thus Madness had been born. The Sins saw this coming and they had Yiya create his own Ringed Emerald: the Emerald of Fear. At the world's heart, Yiya used to it to bring the corrupted people into deeper Madness, thus unstablizng the heart and its supporters.
"When the Soul Princes arrived, they had no choice but to seal Yiya within the black Emerald and separate the Jewels from the Rings. By doing so however, the world began to break apart. The Jewels and the Rings were left under the protection of one of the Soul Princes, presumably among them the strongest. As the world's seven pieces drifted through the rest of the space, they continued to break up. But on each of the seven original pieces was a Soul Prince. With what power they had left, the Princes rebuilt the fragments into the other survivors' dreams and needs. They created many new worlds and even reshaped their people, until their life force was spent. But the new worlds were so far apart, they forgot each other's existence. But what's left of the core remains, somewhere within what was left of the empty space. And the spirits of the Princes resided in their "kingdoms", awaiting to select their heirs. (Each kingdom was a well known game world, like the Kingdom Hearts micro-multiverse of Disney worlds that Sora calls home, known in this project as the Galaxy of Hearts, or the Mushroom Kingdom from Mario, part of the Mushroom Galaxy.)
"After eons and eons, each were able to find a hero or a potential hero in each of their "kingdoms", who's both heart and soul carry strong light. At one point, the Jewels that represent all seven kingdoms were then scattered and in the process, the barriers of each world were beginning to break, taking the form of a meteor shower. Within each meteor shower, a Jewel was part of it, eventually finding each princes' heir and being placed in their hand. And that night set their destinies. (The meteor showers happening simultaneously wasn't a coincidence. Sly and the others getting their jewels was intended to start the chain of events that would lead to them officially taking over for the original Soul Princes, effectively becoming the protectors of what we called the "Universe of Life.")
"After each heir had received their Jewel, they had formed a spiritual link with another heir, meeting each other in a world within a dream. Though three of the heirs had formed links with three other heirs, only one heir wasn't able to form one. Shortly afterwards however, the dark ones of each kingdom formed their own link due to the broken barriers and discovered the mystery of the core, making them seek the heirs. Fortunately, they did not know who they were. However, they knew they would have to get their enemies, the heroes of these kingdoms, out of the way. (The core did have a name. Soul Kingdom. That's where the title of the story came from. I'm pretty sure we were a long ways away from actually referring to the core by that name, however. If I remember right, the villains did tease it somewhere in the story. I think they just called it "the greatest world in the universe".)
"During the dark ones' schemes, the seven heirs went through different events occurring in their worlds. Two heirs had met their Nobodies, (Kingdom Hearts term. Long story. This was referring to Link meeting Aaron and Sonic meeting his double that I can honestly never remember how to spell the name of without looking at the Soul Kingdom Wiki) two heirs were transported to the worlds of two other heirs (referring to Sly meeting Sora in his worlds and Ratchet meeting Rayman in the Glade of Dreams) and one heir and his Nobody had to fight their greatest enemy. (Which was referring to a Mario and Luigi vs Bowser fight that we never wrote, but I'm confident it wouldn't have gone like those fights traditionally do.) And in a short amount of time, they all came together. One by one. And one by one, they discovered together their destiny. (Referring to becoming the new Soul Princes. The mysterious mark on Sly's hand that we mentioned in a few chapters was a symbol representing the new job, and, eventually, the power he got as a result. The other 6 Jewel holders, Sora, Ratchet, Rayman, Mario, Sonic, and Link, got similar marks and elemental powers related to those marks At the time they learned the truth behind their situation, they would learn about their elemental powers. Sly's power was control over time and space, AKA "Dimension", Sora had water control, Mario had power over fire, Sonic had control over wind, Rayman had control over darkness, AKA "Shadow", Ratchet had power over electricity, AKA "Storm", and Link had power over Earth. We were getting there... The mysterious book I've mentioned in recent chapters? I think that was written by the old Soul Princes. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it was a way of giving the new Soul Princes, Sly and the other Jewel holders, the info they needed to know to be able to do the job effectively. When they gathered at the Great Clock In Ratchet's Galaxy Cluster, the Princes would learn our story's big reveal, that they all share a universe but were too far apart to notice until now. It would likely have changed how fans looked at these franchises forever...)
"But the Evils they were fighting along the way were just pieces of them. The real Evils were trapped with Yiya at the core. And when the heirs opened the door to the core, the Evils took the heirs' Nobodies and possessed them. In a race to save them, the heirs and their friends followed and defeated the villains and the Evils, freeing their Nobodies and Yiya from the curse.
"However, the happiness was not to last. As the friends started to head home, the portals suddenly shut on the Nobodies. (Sequel hook cliffhanger at the end of our first story, the Color Series. The Nobodies were Link's double Aaron, Sly's dad Connor, Ratchet's dad Kaden, Sora's friend Roxas, and a few others.) And whenever something is left at the core, it is forgotten by everyone. Little did the heirs know, however, was that the Evils had also taken refuge in their hearts after their defeat and the purification of Yiya. The Nobodies knew this, and with the help of the original princes' spirits, they were able to escape the core to save them. But they didn't reveal themselves right away, well aware that they don't remember them." (This rescue mission was, if I remember correctly, going to be the main focus of the second story of the trilogy, the Faux Paradox Series.)
"The Nobodies had eventually managed to restore the memories of the heirs and purge the Sins from their hearts. (How they did this, I'll leave up to your imagination because the Faux Paradox Series never went into full production.) After defeating the Sins, the heirs and their Nobodies were permanently reunited with each other. The heirs later explored new worlds to make alliances and friends, as well as coming in contact with those of different realities." "With the help of their new friends and allies, the heirs got out of many jams and troubles of being captured. They had also recruited seven assistants, which were dubbed as the Guardians, to help protect their worlds from evil, though one of them was convinced that it was simply a dream. They even gained their own army that lives in another universe, which will come when their universe is in danger. (The Guardian recruiting mission was going to be a way to keep the fans happy during what I'm pretty sure would have been a long wait for content. It was also a way to introduce some characters that would have been important in our second sequel story, the Future Series. The Soul Princes' army was something I don't think I asked much about. It may or may not have been a Skylanders reference, but I'm not sure on that. I just know that the Skylanders did eventually have a role to play in this franchise. The Future Series was a LONG way off from planning at the time, but here's basically what it would have been like.)
"Later, the Seven Evils had another plot in mind. One so diabolical, they even went as far as to brainwashing their benevolent 'brother' to proceed with it. Each Evil had went and possessed one of the seven Guardians to cause mayhem in their worlds. One of the guardians, however, was lucky enough to not be possessed as his existence was unknown to the Seven Evils, leading one of them to possess a friend of a Guardian. (Don't ask who, I honestly can't remember.) The heirs saw through their plan and freed each Guardian from their possession. They even aided other worlds in order to understand the purposes of life.
"The heirs had later encountered the Seven Evils one last time and as a last resort, the Seven Evils had merged with each other to become the rumored Original Sin. The heirs had fought back and the Seven Evils were sealed away in the black Jewel for good. (This is where the Trilogy officially ended, so if you want to end it here, you can, but we were planning one last story, Spirit Odyssey, as an epilogue, as well as a way of bringing in characters from other original stories we had been working on at the time. Here's the idea we had, framed as a Story Mode for a Soul Kingdom fighting game. We actually did quite a bit of writing for it, most of it before I joined the group.)
"After the defeat of the Evils, the kingdoms linked to one another, allowing the inhabitants to visit other worlds. Little do the inhabitants and heirs know, however, is that a greater threat lurks within the darkness and threatens to spread mayhem throughout the Kingdoms, with the Seven Evils working for this same threat. It's up to the heirs and their friends to stop this threat, with the help of eight individuals from different lands: a princess and her spell caster friend, a young thief, a duo of a friendly rival, a courageous werewolf, the spirit of a legendary king and a girl raised by despair that fights for hope. Where will this new journey lead this universe? May no one know till it has happened."
And I think that's as far as we got in the overall planning for the Soul Kingdom franchise. To this day, I owe a lot to this story, but I've moved on. It does feel good writing out our plans though...