'Grateful' Old Notes

In spirit of this month's theme 'Old Projects' I am uploading some of the more intriguing notes for my Grateful project that was started last year and unfortunately stopped temporarily. Many changes are being made to the project as a whole, more concept pieces are being made, a map of where the story takes place, and changes to the overall story as well.

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-The family discuss a trip to a town as a special celebration for the triplets. Let's call this fishing village 'Infusio', Latin for 'flowing - pouring in'. It will be modeled after many different fishing villages and cities but will remain different in design than the island of the The Ouv Isles or other coastal based communities. The most accurate real-world depiction of what I plan for Infusio is the floating fishing community of the Tanka Peoples, located in Ningde City in Southeast China's Fujian province, which holds at least 7,000 fishermen and their families.

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The story will basically cover the adventure of the triplets in the fishing city, after being separated from their mother and aunt. They will learn a bit of fishing, of different trades, and vaguely how the politics of Auferetu and the outside world's negativity threatens their way of life.

Things to Happen:

-The kids stand in the middle of a street market, as the sun begins to set and festine lights are activated.
-One of the fisherman allow Cantionis to touch a type of squid, one that grows 'flowers' and she describes its 'presence' and how she 'sees' it.
-The western-most fishing village of the west of Auferetu has begun small-scale sabotage attacks to steal catch and prove a political point.
-Dring a thorough 'investigation' of some food, the children overhear the cook and a bystander discuss the Eastern Auferetu kingdom's recklessness and hostility.
-It should end with the family reuniting on a tour boat passing into the river of Colossus - OLD. At that point the tour is stopped on her base; and Cantionis is in complete awe, even to the point she is muttering ███████ █████ █████ but no one hears this.
-As they exit the river back into open sea the communication device goes crazy with static and panicked yelling. After the Captain is able to calm the other end down you hear a quiet Celene cry "She is... she's.... she's bleeding... badly."

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The Legend of Gladius

During the first brainstorm session for the project, an intro chapter was intended to give background info on the Gladius family, the Island of Tod, and the conflicts between Veritas and Auferetu over Middle Ground. This idea, however, was scrapped early on due to how unnecessary the information was in relation to the main plot. One does not need to know every bit of political intrigue spanning decades-long, in order to enjoy the antics of three children exploring a market without their parents.

Chapter One: Grateful Outline Notes

The original outline notes were vague in the description; while this was great for creative freedom it created a problem. Figuring out how individual events transitioned or fit in place near each other was difficult in this format, and is largely the greater reason why the original comic outline has been scrapped in favor of a re-do.
The story starts the same in all scrapped versions; the family is getting ready to leave their estate to travel to the nearby town of Infusio to go shopping. One of the kids, usually Servius, would get in trouble for running around the house and consequently hold a short conversation with Sabinus and she sips coffee by herself. Eventually, everyone is waiting outside the house for a carriage/wagon sort to arrive, as their neighbor is the one giving them a ride into town.
This is often where the notes split, the original outline call for a sudden wave of people arriving as it is around noon now. By this time the family already mentioned going on a special tour to end the day.
As the triplets are separated from the adults because of the large number of people, they agree to find the location of the tour, as they were in a part of town they've never seen. Antics ensue, the adults are shown once during this time, and then only ever mentioned off-hand by background characters.
The kids visit a small number of booths, due to limited currency on hand, and their main goal being that of meeting up with their family and not necessarily shopping. This area of the story is especially vague in all old notes and will require heavy brainstorming when it is picked up again.
Towards sunset the triplets give up on their search, fearing they missed the tour already, and stumble into a museum type building. The owner, referred to in the notes as S.P. learns that is it their birthday and gives them each a small knick-knack. While the kids ogle at the items within the museum type building they can hear the door open and a few familiar voices come out.
In the notes, these voices belonged to Sebastian Faust, and his mother, who entered looking for potential gifts for the triplets. Sebastian comments about how they just saw their mother and aunts right outside. The kids exit the building and reunite with their family, and find out that the location of the boat tour was right next to the museum.
It ends with the family along with the Faust family on the boat tour. This version does not have the dramatic scenes as the other versions did.

Special Notes

This version does include a special interaction between S.P. and Cantionis; in which her gift was a special spiral necklace, and S.P. comments that it will help her should she be in the water and need it. S.P. also tells the triplets that if they ever need help, no matter the time or place, that they could also come to her. Another special bit this outline had that isn't seen in other noted versions is that of Cantionis on the boat; it is ingrained in her as a character that Cantionis is terrified of the open water. No real explanation is given for this, as she avoids the topic at all costs. Now because her family went on the boat ride, Cantionis made it a conscious effort to stay as close to the center part of the boat as possible, for the entire ride.
While it doesn't help push the narrative in any way, it was included as an interesting bit with it's own reasons.

Location:

The main location of the story will stay the same, that is to say, it is the relatively decent sized fishing community of Infusio. Home to a few thousand and spread across the North-Western coast of Veritas, Infusio is the main market place for Veritas as a whole, aside from that of the Eastern Groves. The entire community shares a calm yet friendly demeanor for the most part, and have a sense of comfort and home even to the most damning of strangers.

Characters:

Aside from a few small adjustments, the cast of characters remains the same. The Gladius Triplets, Vita, Servius, and Cantionis still remain the main protagonists to the story, with their mother and now both aunts, (as opposed to just one of them) as secondary characters, and a character who didn't previously have a name (now is referred to as S.P.) has joined the fray.

Overall Theme:

During my initial thought-process, I wanted there to be a lot of background political tension as a sort of background set up for the next story. However, to properly set up this mess of who's right and who's wrong, much more details would need to be included, and that would ruin the intention of the story being focused on three innocent children. While there will definitely still be some small talk of tensions, names won't be called, and the only things said are vague, as many times in my personal experience to not outright say something is scary in front of children.
The overall mood will be lightened up, to better that of the children's mindset, a new environment with new people and interesting new things and foods, with no parents yelling at them to stop running in the streets or not eat a lot of sweets. There will be elements to be found as slightly unsettling to adults, who may know when something isn't necessarily right, that children would have no problem with