Fictional Antagonists
The Keepers
They never smash anything. They collect, they file, and they call it preservation.
Who they are
The Keepers are an invented faction created for The Folklore of Nick Reynolds. In the story they operate out of a tower that only exists behind a door that only appears for someone carrying something worth taking. Inside are floor after floor of small drawers, each holding something a person stopped being able to say out loud.
Their argument is tidy and completely wrong: that a story locked away is a story saved. The saga answers it in Issue No. 21, when Nick declines the Crown and hands every drawer back to the porch it came from.
The Keepers, the Curator, their crimes, their organization and every supernatural event attached to them are entirely fictional. They do not depict, resemble or refer to any real person, official, employee, business or institution.
Dossier
- Classification
- Fictional antagonist faction. Invented for this comic series.
- Method
- Collection and filing. They acquire debts, favors and finally stories.
- Leadership
- The Curator — an office rather than a person, worn like a pale coat.
- Artifact
- The Ember Crown: never lose anything again, if every story goes through you.
- Machine
- The Night Engine: a wheel beneath the roads that consumes recognition.
- Weakness
- Refusal. A story still in use by the person living it cannot be filed.
Where they appear
- Issue No. 11 — Archive of the Keepers
They rewrote the story first. The story fought back.
- Issue No. 17 — Sparkfall
A mark nobody remembered getting. A brother nobody wants to fight.
- Issue No. 18 — Tower of Locked Stories
Everything stolen is filed. Everything filed can be opened.
- Issue No. 19 — One Crew, One Flame
The Crown shows each of them the thing they never say.
- Issue No. 20 — The Longest Night
The roads forget themselves. The porch lights do not.
- Issue No. 21 — Mr. Delco Rises
Beat the Keepers without becoming one.
The Folklore of Nick Reynolds is a work of fiction set in a heightened, fictionalized world. Antagonists, supernatural events, organizations and story conflicts are fictional.