In this world, Ninjago is an island nation/continent (like Australia) with one major city (guess which one) and a bunch of smaller towns and villages dotting the landscape. The NEXO Knights live on a different continent, Ashlar (named after the medieval planet from Clutch Powers), in the country of Morcia (named after the kingdom from Knights’ Kingdom II). The capital of Morcia, where King and Queen Halbert live, is Talonjay (instead of the hilariously generic “Knighton”). Aaron’s father, Dr. Malcolm Fox, is one of Cyrus Borg’s closest friends/competitors. Malcolm deals more in weaponry as opposed to Cyrus’s mostly humanitarian innovations. He developed the NEXO armor, weapons, and shields. (So you can thank Dr. Fox for the fact that the knights’ names correspond with their weapons. He’s an incurable prankster.)
Clay is close friends with Cole, and Cole will make a few appearances down the line.
The Forbidding, where all the lava monsters are being summoned from, is in fact a subset of the Cursed Realm. Unlike Morro and his ghost cohorts, who are (comparatively) freshly cursed, the souls in the Forbidding are so old that they don’t even have bodies anymore, so they just possess whatever matter they can find and return to some vague approximation of a human form that way. The reason Season 1’s monsters are all lava-based is because Jestro does most of his summons in one of two different volcanoes as the season progresses.
Sensei Wu is an honorary member of the Council of Mystics that Merlok is a part of. (More on them later.) As such, Wu is allowed one magical item to keep, which is, of course, his teapot.
Season 1 happens pretty much concurrently with my rewrite of Rebooted.
I wanted to come up with an entire magic system that was distinct from Ninjago’s but also fit within Ninjago’s lore. It wasn’t that difficult when I remembered how I made the Elemental Masters’ powers work; there’s a realm for every element (Realm of Fire, Realm of Lightning, etc.), and each Master draws power from their respective realm. The magic in NEXO Knights works similarly. Except in the case of element-based spells (such as, say, summoning fire or lightning) nearly all the magic the wizards use draws power from the Cursed Realm, specifically a subset of it called the Forbidding. However, this can be dangerous; all the monsters that are summoned in NEXO Knights also come from the Forbidding, and if a spellcaster isn’t careful, they might accidentally hurt someone (including themselves) or summon a monster.
Merlok, or Merlok the Magnificent, is one of the world’s foremost wizards. Other expert magic users we’ll encounter in NEXO Knights include a few names old LEGO fans might recognize: Majisto the Wise (named for the first physical wizard minifigure), Myron the Good (based off the Good Wizard from the Castle theme), Merrigan the Starfarer (based off the regular wizard from the Kingdoms theme), Maea the Sly (based off 2007’s evil witch minifig), Morganad the Forester (based off the dragon wizard from the Kingdoms theme) Melentius the Pyromancer (derived from “Elementius”), and Vitruvius the Sightless (based off Vitruvius from The LEGO Movie). Merlok, Majisto, Myron, Merrigan, Maea, Morganad, Melentius, and Vitruvius make up the Council of Mystics, an organization of wizards that regulates the use of magic and protects Ashlar’s inhabitants from it. The Council can’t control the intent with which spells are cast, but they’ve imposed a few unbreakable rules on all of Ashlar’s magic: • Inanimate objects are fair game; any object can be imbued with power, or with a specific spell. • Living things are trickier; you can enchant creatures, including humans, but in almost all cases, you need their consent. There is one exception; an incredibly powerful wand, staff, or book can overpower the permission barrier. Monstruix’s spellbooks (we’ll get to those) are that powerful. • Councilors can banish you to the Forbidding, as can family members and close friends, but no one else. • Once you’re in the Forbidding, it’s impossible to leave it unless you are summoned. • If you use magic to take a life, your own life is cursed; you will live forever, but feel nothing. Think Curse of the Black Pearl.
Monstruix the Great was once a Mystic Councilor, but his growing ambition caused him to be cast out and banished to the Forbidding. He’s not the only bad egg the CoM has had; overly power-hungry magicians such as Mallock the Magnificent (later Mallock the Malign) and Willa the Wisp were also cast out, but they didn’t do nearly as much damage. Before his banishment, Monstruix wrote five spellbooks that the Council buried. The Book of Fear, the Book of Rage, the Book of Greed, and the Book of Chaos are compilations of Monstruix’s most dangerous spells. The Book of Monsters details his favorite summons. Monstruix placed a spell on the Book of Monsters that allows him to communicate through it. This is how he talks to the ex-Royal Fool Michael Jestro from his limbo in the Forbidding. When all five books are together, they can be used to write the Book of Life, which can be used to summon Monstruix and free him from the Forbidding.
SETTING THE SCENE
On this day, December 17, 2421, Clayton Griffon Moorington, Lancelot Cuthbert Richmond II, Aaron James Fox, and Axl Ignatio graduate the Talonjay Academy Chivalrous, home of all those who hope to join the Morcian Legion and take their first step in becoming royal knights. As the celebration gets underway, Royal Fool Michael Jestro is given an offer he can’t resist, and lets something ancient and evil out of its cage…
Clay, Lance, Axl, Macy, and Jestro were all born in the year 2401, (on July 3, March 30, October 22, August 5, and December 2 respectively) and are as such all 20 years old. Aaron was born on February 16, 2402, and is 19.
-last edited on May 24, 2020 21:20:26 GMT by F.I.R.E.
Post by F.I.R.E. on May 24, 2020 21:19:15 GMT
Season 1: Alliance of the Fortrex – Part 1
I: Graduation Day (The four star students of the Talonjay Academy Chivalrous graduate, but their celebration is interrupted; King Maximilian Halbert sends his best knights to investigate a mysterious “monster” sighting, and none of them return)
II: Champions of Chivalry (The four captive knights are rescued by Princess Macy Halbert, who wishes to join their expedition)
III: Cover to Cover (Michael Jestro escapes prison with the aid of his powerful ally, the Book of Monsters, who conjures Sparkz, a larger, destructive creature. General Christina Radcliffe-Holt places the five heroes in the care of the obscure wizard Merlok)
IV: Over Hill and Under Hill (The knights’ first official assignment takes them to an island off the coast of Morcia, where they hope to find Jestro. Macy’s botched attempt at leadership gets them in trouble)
V: Brainchildren (Robin Underwood and Ava Prentiss are placed in Merlok’s care, and inadvertently expose the Fortrex)
VI: The Black Knight (Sparkz is found in several pieces. The knights are dispatched to find the individual who managed to defeat the beast)
VII: Abduction (Clay and Axl tend to the injuries they sustained fighting the Black Knight. Infernox, the Book of Monsters’ newest creation, abducts Queen Alexandra Halbert)
VIII: Smother (The knights scale Dracomont, the most dangerous volcano in Morcia, to rescue Queen Halbert)
IX: Abject Terror (Jestro uses the Book of Fear to trap everyone in Talonjay in their own minds and make them live through their worst fears. The virtually fearless Aaron Fox escapes the spell relatively quickly, but must work to save the others)
(Season 1 is 2,901 characters, and as such won't fit into a single post, so the rest of the season will be in the next post.)
X: The Harpy (Jestro uses the Book of Rage to transform the captive Ava into Lavaria, his most powerful monster yet)
XI: Molten (Moltor returns with better armor and a new companion, Flama. The knights must trust the new blood, Robin, if they are to defeat the duo)
XII: The Seventh (The knights hunt for a dangerously transformed Ava. Jestro digs up the Book of Greed)
XIII: Distress (When Ava develops new abilities, Gen. Lin deems her too dangerous for the public’s security and attempts to take her in. Jestro digs up the Book of Chaos and uses it to reform Sparkz)
XIV: The Chaos Chasm (The knights search for the mysterious hunter that saved Ava’s life. Monstruix instructs Jestro to go to the Chaos Chasm to write the Book of Life)
XV: The Book of Life (At the Chaos Chasm, Jestro uses Monstruix’s five spellbooks to write the Book of Life and bring Monstruix back in human form. Merlok helps Ava get control of her powers)
XVI: The Morcian Legion (Monstruix raises an army of monsters and unleashes them on Morcia. Merlok finds Jestro’s rolling fort and tries to stop Monstruix himself)
XVII: N.E.X.O. (The knights join forces with a betrayed Jestro to stop Monstruix’s creature from waking up. Ava and Robin try to save Merlok)
• “Graduation Day” takes place on December 17, 2421, less than a week after “The Surge,” the first episode of my Ninjago S4 rewrite. This season happens pretty much concurrently with that one.
• Michael Jestro’s motivation is different; he actually has one he’s jealous, yes, but not of Merlok. Jestro’s part of a troupe, and he’s more or less the hype man for this muscled, arrogant fellow named Richard “Ricardo the Great” Gibbs. Jestro, for the most part, keeps this jealousy to himself, even though Clay is insistent that Jestro could easily replace Ricardo if he wanted to. Jestro has a total of two friends: Clay, and Margot, the troupe’s makeup artist. He feels invisible. He’s also not really following his calling; he became a jester because he was good at it (which is a bit of a retcon, I know), but he wants to learn magic. So, imagine how he must have felt to get an offer to never be invisible again, to become apprenticed to the greatest wizard on earth! Even from someone as obviously ill-intentioned as Monstruix, that’s really tempting. And as soon as Jestro accepted the offer, Monstruix used that consent to enchant his mind and make him a puppet.
• The King and Queen of Morcia now have first names. Macy’s parents are named Maximilian and Alexandra.
• Macy is not a TAC graduate, but she might as well be; her parents have mandated she receive all the same training, even though they won’t let her become a full-fledged knight. No clue why. It’s not as if the job’s beyond dangerous…
• The King’s Detail consists of the comic troupe Jestro is a part of, Merlok, and six mechanical royal knights.
• There are four Generals who coordinate the Morcian legion and report directly to Macy’s parents: Thomas Radcliffe, Christina Radcliffe-Holt (Thomas’s wife), Hector Lin, and Lance Cuthbert Richmond I (Lance’s father).
• After “Champions of Chivalry,” the King’s Detail is disbanded, since the royal knights have all been corrupted/destroyed, Jestro is somewhat responsible, and Merlok is watching over the NEXO Knights. The King and Queen are placed under the protection of the Generals.
• The reason the NEXO Knights, their shields, and Merlok’s magic are necessary is the same reason the robotic Royal Knights lost so quickly. By the way, thank you, ajtazt (https://thebrick.boards.net/thread/151/problems-nexo-knights) for bringing this colossal plot hole to my attention. Hopefully this patches it up: Robots can’t do magic. Properly built machines (like the NEXO shields) can store it, but you need a living brain to use it. Zane from Ninjago is the singular exception for a few reasons: his battery heart is powered (in part) by the first Master of Ice’s power, and his brain is almost as complicated and powerful as that of a human. I go a tad more in depth about that in my Ninjago rewrite.
• Merlok himself doesn’t revert to his digital 2.0 form until the end of the season. However, his staff is destroyed in “Cover to Cover,” and he has to learn to make do with a more modern staff that Robin and Ava provided him. Merlok can still cast spells with this new staff, but the ludicrous amount of power the spells require means that the staff has to be plugged in, so he can’t do magic outside the Fortrex until his old staff is repaired. This limitation requires him to send spells to the NEXO shields, which Malcolm Fox built for that exact purpose. However, in “The Morcian Legion,” Merlok’s old staff is repaired, and he goes to challenge Monstruix wizard-to-wizard. This ends very, very badly for him, and Robin and Ava have to upload his mind into the Fortrex to save his life. It's at that point be becomes Merlok 2.0, which he remains until Season 3.
• If the subtle implications went over your head, Robin is the Black Knight.
-last edited on Jun 7, 2020 7:29:32 GMT by F.I.R.E.
Post by F.I.R.E. on Jun 7, 2020 7:28:52 GMT
Season 2: The Arbœlii and the Dæmonites
Three months after their graduation, the NEXO Knights have joined the King’s Detail, and Michael Jestro has begun learning magic from Merlok. Morcia is at peace. A supernatural calamity, one entirely unlike Monstruix’s threats, calls the knights back to action, and they encounter strange and dangerous creatures in strange and dangerous places, all somehow connected by the mysterious hunter Marko Laq.
Part 1
I: The Maw (When the Chaos Chasm begins erupting blue fire, an investigator is sent to find out why, and the knights are tasked with protecting her)
II: The Disappeared (The knights go back into the Maw to rescue Peg and find out what’s down there)
III: Rampage (Three stone creatures emerge from the Maw and march on Talonjay, and the knights must hold them back from the city. Marko Laq escapes from prison)
IV: Master of Earth (Cole Lou Hence, a hero in Ninjago and Clay’s personal friend, arrives looking for a crime lord and agrees to help the knights search for Laq and Jestro in his downtime)
V: Into the Woods (After discovering that Laq has taken Jestro into the infamous Baudewood Forest, Cole joins Clay, Aaron, and Axl as they power through the deadly terrain. Treelike creatures spring to life and attack them)
VI: Fungus Among Us (Cole and the knights appeal to the Arbœlii in a bid to escape Baudewood Grove, but Mushlord won’t let them go without a fight)
VII: Rise of the Colossus (The knights return to Talonjay to find a massive stone giant hammering away at the city’s failsafe shield)
VIII: Maze of Amazement (The knights descend back into the Maw and struggle again through the bizarre underground labyrinth, looking for the source of these attacks)
IX: The Elm of the Dark Realm (On the surface, a massive tree giant attacks Talonjay. With the NEXO Knights underground, it’s Robin, Ava, Jestro and Merlok’s responsibility to stop the monster)
X: The Dæmonites (Lance, Aaron, and Macy are captives of the Dæmonite General Garrg, who is preparing for war on Morcia. Clay and Axl, in trying to free them, discover the truth about this war)
XI: The Arbœlii (As Clay, Axl, and the Dæmonite mage Ruuna track Laq, they find themselves back in Baudewood Grove, and realize that Laq is stoking the fires of war in both the Grove and the Underground)
XII: Race to the Surface (With Robin’s help, Lance, Macy and Aaron work to escape the Underground. In Baudewood Grove, Clay and Axl must convince the Arbœlii that they mean no harm – a difficult task with the warlike Mushlord in charge)
XIII: Olive Branch (Sympathetic and trusting of the knights, Baron Baudewood and Dame Flora help Clay and Axl escape the Grove, with Mushlord’s forces nipping at their heels. Ruuna returns home as Garrg organizes a coup)
XIV: Catastrophe (Garrg and Mushlord both declare war on Morcia and simultaneously march on Talonjay)
XV: Tectonica (Rogull, Inga and Ouldron of the Stallacg Council declare their support for Morcia. Baron Baudewood and his followers do the same. Both parties help defend Talonjay from assault)
• “The Maw” takes place three months after “Graduation Day.”
• In “The Maw” and “The Disappeared,” Peg, the investigator, is in fact Peg Mooring, one of Clutch Powers’s partners (and the only one whose name I remember). Clutch himself is kind of retired by this point, but he and his team famously uncovered countless ancient artifacts, including the Constrictai Fang Blade. Peg is now a consulting biologist who deals mostly in marine life. The Maw is out of her comfort zone, but she made the exception because her tenure adventuring with Clutch got her used to this particular brand of weird.
• A wild Cole Hence appeared! The crime lord that Cole came to Morcia to pursue is none other than Master Chen, who at this point has fled Ninjago. “Master of Earth,” “Into the Woods,” and “Fungus Among Us” all take place within the time frame of Ninjago S5’s “Return of the Phantom.”
• If their names weren’t an indicator, the Arbœlii are based off the forest monsters that didn’t make it into the show. The Dæmonites are based off the rock monsters that did make it into the show. Millennia ago, Mallock the Malign summoned thousands of monsters from the Forbidding and into the forests and quarries of Ashlar in a bid to conquer it. The Council of Mystics defeated Mallock, but spared the monsters, under the condition that they remain within their domains in the Badewood Grove and the Underground. The Arbœlii and the Dæmonites are descendants of these monsters. To ensure they kept their word, the Council of Mystics placed a spell around the creatures’ respective domains. Under this spell, The Arbœlii physically cannot leave Baudewood Forest, and the Dæmonites cannot go above ground. However, this spell was lifted at the end of Season 1, when Monstruix was released. Jestro’s conjuring could’ve had more adverse consequences than even he imagined...
• Ruuna’s name is a recycling of “Ruina.” Ruuna herself is very inhuman, and definitely not Clay’s mother, like she is in the show.
• Baudewood is a less generic recycling of “Badwood.”
In the weeks following the Battle of Talonjay, the Dæmonites and the Arbœlii have made peace with the people of Morcia. But Marko Laq is still at large, and in hunting him, NEXO Knights learn that he is but a small part in a plan to overthrow not only Morcia, but the whole of the continent of Ashlar. Against all odds, the key to victory lies with wizard apprentice Michael Jestro…
Part 1
I: Iluminis (Marko Laq resurfaces, giving a very dangerous criminal magical powers and allowing him to escape)
II: Ascension (Laq is the only link the knights have to the reclusive order known as the Ascension. Kilian travels to the mountains to release a companion)
III: The King of Jeaness (The knights track Laq to the kingdom of Jeaness, but they run into trouble with its king, Revan Levesk, who wants the secrets of the NEXO technology. Kilian and Markham travel to Torchfire Mountain to free Nakita)
IV: Escape from the Catacombs (Jestro arrives to help the knights escape Jeaness and get back to tracking Laq. Laq, meanwhile, confers with Kilian and his allies)
V: Hunter’s Sanctuary (Lance and Macy must return to Morcia to prepare for the Summit Sovereign. The rest of the knights track Laq to the peaceful kingdom of Zarracosza)
VI: Spectre of the Shield (High Commander Holt begins to sympathize with Levesk’s position, putting Macy and Lance at odds. Merlok continues to teach Jestro. Laq surveys the Zarracoszan capital)
VII: The Chimaen Legacy (Clay, Aaron and Axl are called back to Morcia in response to Holt’s order, but their armor’s power is put to the test when Kilian, Markham and Nakita attack Castle Knighton)
VIII: The Council of Mystics (To stop Kilian, Merlok takes the Knights to the Council of Mystics. Laq, meanwhile, continues to converse with his mysterious mistress)
IX: The Wicked Witch (Willa the Wisp shows herself, bringing with her more Chimaen totems for Kilian and his allies, powers that Merlok’s magic can’t counter, and a dragon. The knights must rely entirely on their skill, but they can’t get close enough to use it)
X: Destiny's Bounty (The knights act on their first real lead on Laq; a large Jagan-made pirate vessel with a dragon figurehead. They scour the Eastern Ocean and run into some old friends)
XI: Behemoth of Brine (The knights have conquered the sea monster on which Laq’s stronghold lies, but as they scour the island on the Behemoth’s head, they run into yet another surprise: Willa the Wisp)
XII: Fool’s Errand (Jestro escapes the island and returns to Morcia. He, Robin, Ava and Merlok devise a way to rescue the knights. On Behemoth Island, Clay talks with Willa’s daughter, Ruby)
XIII: The Summit Sovereign (Willa and the Chimaen Legacy crash the Summit Sovereign, holding King Halbert and all his peers hostage. Laq invades the Council’s hideaway)
XIV: Willa the Wisp (Willa has collected all the Mystic Councilors’ staffs except Merlok’s. The knights and Ruby must help Jestro destroy Merlok’s staff before Willa can use it)
XV: Jestro the Magnificent (With Merlok permanently deleted, the NEXO Knights must rely on Jestro and Ruby to power their armor and stop Willa from razing the technological utopia of Ashlar)
This is great! 
This is great! 