NaNo Prep 2013 - The Threefold

As part of the lead up to NaNoWriMo, I'll be posting possible story ideas to expand before November.  This time, an idea I started playing with on the commute to work a few years ago.

The core idea is that three university students are recruited for their magical talent to defend the city against supernatural threats.  Each young woman represents a role, either Warrior, Priest, or Wizard.  The Warrior represents the Body, the physical.  The Priest is the Soul, the spiritual.  The Wizard, not surprisingly, is the Mind, the intellectual.  The young women are recruited by a mentor who acts as a link to other similar cells.

The mentor, Teri Pulham, was once in a similar cell as the Wizard of her trio. Something, currently undetermined, happened to the other two members, letting Teri move up as her mentor.  As part of her duties, Teri has to recruit, make sure that she has four full cells.

Cue Holly, Astrid, and Miriam.

The main characters, Holly Black, Astrid Young, and Miriam Goldman, get recruited as a cell.  Teri's approach is to let the new recruits figure out among themselves, though she has her own recommendations already in mind.  Teri thinks that the athletic Holly would be perfect as the Warrior, that the math major Astrid is ideal as the Wizard, that the devout Miriam should be the Priest.

Holly, Astrid, and Miriam have other ideas.  Working on their own, and to be shown in the story, they three of them wind up swapping roles, with the philosophical athiest Holly taking the Soul role, the out of shape but wargaming Astrid taking Body, and the common sense driven Miriam taking Mind.  Teri has no idea what's waiting for her.

The cell network came from the idea of "magical numbers".  While I don't put much into the idea in real life, in fiction, the numbers work.  The numbers 3, 5, 7, and 13 hold mystic power.  Thus, each cell has three members.  To coordinate with another cell, the mentor must bring the two groups together, for a total of seven magic people.  A serious threat that brings a mentor's full cell network together has thirteen people involved.  The cell network doesn't allow for a group of five to form naturally, though.

The lack of the group of five led me to the idea of the opposition for the story.  Teri's new cell runs up against Kimberly's group of five, which needs a proper name so I can refer to them at least in notes and in my head.  Kimberly still needs to be fleshed out a lot, though she does have a henchman, Melisande.  The Threefold are outnumbered, which means they need an edge to even the odds.  I'm hoping the swapping of the roles will help there.