Brown, Grey, & Green

Chapter 1: Plot Outline & Synopsis

The main characters are from a species that is intelligent but isn't quite at a human level. They live alongside humans and other sapient species in a world recovering from a major disaster, leaving pockets of civilization amidst a post-apocalyptic world. The Pockets are relatively advanced and comfortable, like domed cities guarding the last of true civilization, built up painstakingly after the end.

Grey is a young pup that lives in one of these Pockets. Something happens and his life falls apart around him, leaving him stranded in the Wilds.

Grey is found and taken in by Green, a glowing mutant with mysterious origins (accidentally mutated, the ones behind it tried to capture him, he escaped into the Wilds). Green is confident, upbeat, and strong — but (while older than Grey) he's still not an adult and the two pups struggle in the unfamiliar, harsh environment of the Wilds.

Brown is a lone traveler who's spent his life in the Wilds. Starving but surviving, he's forgotten what it's like to live a life that's more than just getting to the next day — until he finds two lost pups and remembers what it's like to love.

All three are intelligent, but in different ways. Brown has the cunning, wary intelligence of one who knows how to make it in a dangerous world. Green has the calm, calculating intelligence of one who's used to having the freedom of learning and solving puzzles for his own amusement. Grey has the open curiosity and endless potential of well cared-for youth.

Grey is used to an easy life and is borderline naive — but he adapts quickly. Just because he's never known hardship before this doesn't mean he'll let it destroy him now.

Grey's boundless, happy energy and Green's fun-loving, irrepressible confidence bring hope and wonder back into Brown's once bleak life.

Together, they survive the Wilds not as three wildly different coyotes — but as a pack. A family.

(As well, real coyote dads play ambush games with their pups in order to train them when the environment's gotten more dangerous, so Brown playing games like hide-and-seek with the pups is 100% likely and I love that)

Chapter 2: The Villains

THE BUZZARDS

Buzzard-vulture things with black feathers tinged purple, a few actually purple ones mixed in, with bald pink heads and necks. Their feet and the base of their beaks are silver-grey, while the talons and the beak tips are black. Most of them have solid yellow eyes and purple ruffs at the base of the long necks, but the girl has solid red eyes and an extra ruff of white above the purple one.

These would be more day-to-day villains. A gang of buzzards/vultures/whatever living in the Wilds. They brutally attack others to take territory and steal food. They and Brown have a special hatred of each other, going very far back.

Sometimes they'd be serious threats, sometimes they'd lean towards comic relief. They're legitimately dangerous and cruel, but they aren't the worst thing the Coyotes have to face.

Possibly there'd be other Buzzards, I haven't really decided yet, but these are the main ones. I think they'd live in an old scrapyard or at least a canon or something they've filled with scavenged scrap.

I figure that they'd keep up the simple naming scheme of the main characters, and maybe have it so Buzzards think of names a bit like trophies they win, calling themselves mostly after objects they've managed to keep from the others.

The leader — very large, but he has a hunchback that bends him enough that he's technically the shortest of the group. He almost never smiles, and when he does it's terrifying. He shares Brown's habit of not talking much, preferring to watch and think. While he lets the others do most of the fighting for him, it has nothing to do with his own fighting prowess, as he becomes something truly horrible when in battle. Possibly blind in one eye, implied to have been injured fighting Brown? I have no idea what his name is, but I've got some candidates; Boss, Razorbeak, Glasseye, Scar (if there's a scar over the damaged eye), Hunch.

The metal-footed one — the actual shortest of the group, though somewhat bulky with a thick neck. He's the second in command. One of his talon's is missing, replaced by a orange-ish metal one that is actually pretty well made despite being made out of scrap, looking almost steampunk in its design. He is the cruelest of them (except for the leader, but that's a cold cruelty that doesn't show itself often, while this guy's sadistic streak comes out much more frequently), and is possibly something of a scrapyard inventor, explaining where he got the foot. If not, then the goggles-wearing one made it for him. His name is either Claw or Talon, because of the foot.

The goggles-wearing one — the one that wears a pair of old-fashioned flight goggles he got from somewhere. He has a short coat of purple feathers covering his head instead of being bald, and part of one of his toes has been replaced/fixed with a metal band. He's the clever one, as much as that can apply to these idiots; he's a ditzy inventor provided that Claw/Talon isn't, and is the best flyer of the Buzzards. Having really good eyes and being able to fly the highest/longest/fastest means that he usually acts as a scout and lookout. He follows Claw/Talon around, acting a bit like his sidekick and maybe foil, and would almost certainly go with him if there was ever a coup or split in the group. When he panics, he's loud and high-pitched and repeats himself, flying away fast in a scattering of feathers. He's overall very, very talkative. His name is Goggles.

The one with the red bandana — the tallest of the male Buzzards, being slightly taller than Goggles. He has a red bandana tied around his head, with slightly-long dark purple feathers sticking out the sides near the back. I don't have much personality for him yet, honestly. Maybe he's weirdly polite? Maybe he's the reckless one? Idk. He's possibly dating the girl. His name is Bandana, though Red is a close second option.

The girl — the tallest of the Buzzards, noticeably so, with a fake pink flower on the side of her head and black feathers around her eyes that resemble eyelashes. She acts like a stereotypical gangster's girlfriend, and is possibly dating Bandana. Her name is something like Flower or Blossom.

THE CHEETAH COALITION 

(This one is named Violet or something. She's either their leader or the daughter of their leader. Actually, maybe she'll be the leader's daughter who later becomes the leader)

(Since I'm describing everybody: she's a sleek teenaged cheetah with dull, dirty purple bandana tied around her neck and pale pink-purple eyes with thick black eyelashes, resembling sharp eyeliner wings)

Not so much 'villains' as 'fellow survivors'. Sometimes the Coyotes' enemies, and sometimes their allies, they're more neutral than anything else. They just do what they must to get by and protect their coalition.

Though sometimes cold, they're never cruel, and become more friendly with the Coyotes over time. Eventually, they're more like allies that occasionally betray you (with good reasons and always making up for it later) than enemies. At the beginning, though, they're real obstacles if maybe not as personally dangerous/life-threatening as the Buzzards.

I figure the main conflict between the Cheetahs and Coyotes would be competing for limited food and other resources. The Coalition would have a large, spread-out territory (or several they migrate between), while the Coyotes just wander without a permanent territory (though maybe some favorite spots), so they'd only come into conflict occasionally.

I feel like the Coalition would occasionally freely offer aid. Especially considering Green and Grey are both pups. I can totally see them saving a Coyote's life (at minimal risk to themselves) or patching up one of the Coyotes (so long as they have enough medical stuff to spare at the time), even near the beginning. Violet especially might develop a friendship with them, though not a deep one and always with the knowledge that her coalition comes first.

Later on, though, I can see Violet risking her life to save one of them. This would be a sign of how far everything's come. Maybe there can be a moment early in the series where she runs away and abandons them to some sort of danger, making that later moment where she chooses the opposite in a similar situation all the more meaningful — they've gone from fellow survivors in a dangerous world to real friends... But she'll still sell them out in a heartbeat to protect her Coalition.

Survival's survival, after all. And even in peace time, your family should come before friends, and your own people before allies.

The Buzzards would kill a pup just because they can, because they're cruel.

The Coalition may be cold survivalists, but most of them aren't going to let a pup (a child) die unless saving him would actually harm them and their own children. Some of them will save them even if it minorly harms them (though not if it harms their children).

Violet abandons them early on for simple reasons: There's danger, she's scared, she doesn't have any loyalty to the Coyotes yet — so she's out of there.

And she saves them later because they aren't three random coyotes anymore: they're little Grey who makes her laugh, and interesting Green who can talk for hours about bizarre new things, and quiet Brown who sees her as a leader(/future leader) instead of just a kid. It's been a long time between the two moments — one was a teenager saving herself instead of strangers, another was a young woman risking herself to save people she cares for.

The Coyotes don't feel betrayed the first time because this isn't a friend yet, it's a rival for survival that isn't as mean/dangerous as the Buzzards. But it gives the second moment all the more meaning.

She's still not a part of their pack, and they aren't part of her coalition. They're more friendly neighbors than anything, allies, loose friends that know that survival in their world makes friendship difficult but occasionally vital.

Cheetahs in real life are anxiety-prone beings that tire quickly. This would be shown in Violet overthinking things (imagining a cheetah pacing and talking to herself at a million miles a minute about an increasingly spiralling, unlikely set of issues is hilarious to me) and only being able to run relatively short distances (though faster and longer than a real cheetah, because fiction is fiction for a reason and real cheetahs don't talk nor form coalitions with females in them either, so I can do what I want with this).

Okay, I've ranted enough about the Cheetahs now 😅 Here's a picture of more of them! Admittedly, there may be too many bandanas among them...

THE RATS

Large, fluffy black rats. Their eyes, tails, ears, paws, and noses are always some neon-ish color. Each rat has one color, but they can come in just about any color. Possibly the colored parts glow softly at night or in response to certain emotions, as a way to communicate and as a counterpart to Green? Maybe watching them would help him learn how to survive in the Wilds while glowing like a beacon...

The rats are actual animals that often cause trouble and steal food. They can be dangerous in large groups but are usually easy to scare off when alone or in smaller groups. Grey loves them and eventually bonds with/keeps one, much to Brown's protest (Grey's a happy-go-lucky, overly curious kid — he sees the fluffy things, he wants to play with and snuggle the fluffy things).

They came out so cute 😍 But definitely still with the potential to be dangerous and/or annoying pests. They come in all sorts of colors, not just these five. They'd basically be a running gag and run-of-the-mill nuisance for more grounded, low-stakes episodes.

They show up fairly regularly, and one of the most common issues the Coyotes have to deal with.

THE SCIENTISTS/COMPANY

[IMAGE TO BE ADDED]

I will make a better name for them later, I promise.

The ones that accidentally/purposely mutated Green. They're still trying to cover it up and/or further experiment on Green, maybe they even want to make more mutated Coyotes as an army.

One of the scientists defects and helps the Coyotes, eventually she even takes the Coyotes in. This would be later on in the series, and the switch from the Wilds to a civilization pocket would be an especially big change for Brown (I speak from experience that even going to an objectively better situation can freak your nervous system out if it's too different, so even with better food and more safety and everything else, there's a very real chance that Brown would struggle with the decision to leave — the pups have a good life now and he's a creature of the Wastes, so maybe it's time for them to part ways now, right? He'd calm down eventually, though). She would as well give Grey new shoes, since his would be worn out and too small by then, which is a big moment.

The defecting character and other people in the Pocket would as well serve to avoid the 'humans are the real monsters' trope, since I HATE it. I'm as well thinking that she wouldn't be introduced as a defector, instead being like a junior researcher or something that's technically one of the ones hunting Green from early on, but as the series went on she'd start thinking that just maybe the people she's working for aren't as benevolent as she thought they were — ooh! She could even have a moment where Green is trapped and she has a chance to turn him in, and instead she lets him go, as a sort of middle point in her arc where she's still struggling with herself and not quite willing to full-on defect yet.

The Company are the 'Big Bads', I suppose. They're only hinted at or mentioned for most of the series, but their impact is felt (particularly by Green and how he can't return to civilization at first because of them). They only actually appear beyond a scene-or-two later on, and actually taking them down would only happen in the final episode/few episodes. It's not really a 'save the world' type of story, so this would definitely be an escalation for the final part of the series.

THE BEASTS

[IMAGE TO BE ADDED]

Some kind of giant monster thing that's really, really dangerous. Animals, so can't be reasoned with, but thankfully relatively rare. They only show up once in a while, but they're really dangerous when they do. They aren't fought, merely escaped, and even enemies will work together to escape them.

A rare grouping of them destroyed Grey's original city (at least that's what I'm going with for now). Maybe it will stay a freak, tragic incident or maybe I'll tie them to the Company somehow (maybe that's their evil plot, finding a way not to control the Beasts so much as call them to an area and let them do their thing — which would be devastating as the Beasts are solitary by nature and while a strong enough Pocket could repel one, no-one would have any idea what to do about entire groups of them)

More forces of nature than anything else, they'd be used sparingly but devastatingly, derailing things and upping the episode's stakes every time they do show up. Grey will have some nightmares involving them, and might freeze instead of running the first time he sees them again after they destroyed his home.

The Beasts are known first by deep rumbles that you feel rather than hear, the boom of their footsteps that's not a loud sound so much as a far-traveling one, the sandstorm that travels in their wake from the dust kicked up by their travel. You know one's coming before you ever see it, and you still know that escape is more a chance than a likelihood no matter how far off it is.

Who knows, maybe that's what Violet saves him from?

I think I'll maybe base them off rhinos and/or porcupines but giant. No matter what, they'll be monstrous and alien creatures that are bigger than life and the single most dangerous thing in the story.

Chapter 3: Deeper Dive Into The Main Characters

BROWN

A too-thin, brown-coated coyote with watchful, solid yellow eyes and one bent ear. His tail- and ear-tips are blackened, looking burnt — whether or not they actually are burnt is something he never explains. He wears a dark brown, tattered old scarf that's just as burnt as his ears might be; its origin is another thing he never explains.

He calls himself a creature of the Wastes, and he never means it dramatically because he never means anything dramatically. His coat blends in with the sand and the dirt, his eyes can spot a buzzard coming from kilometers away, and his paws never falter no matter how far he has to walk to find the next source of water. Getting to tomorrow in the Wilds is a special kind of skill, and it's one he didn't need to master so much as refine, because he was born tied to the land in a way that's almost not a metaphor.

Thinking about getting to next year, next decade, is something a lot harder for him to learn. The future's never guaranteed in the Wilds, and it's easier to just try to get to tomorrow, as hard as that already is. Then he has two pups in tow and all of a sudden, not thinking about their futures is too hard for him to do. His thinking can't stop at tomorrow when he has to think about teaching Grey and Green what it takes to reach adulthood.

Brown is a creature of the Wastes. His pups are not. Green is loud and he's bad at hiding because he glows and his mind can be bent to work as it must to survive the Wilds, but it lines up more naturally with the ways of laboratories and science in a way much more like a human than a coyote. Grey is a soft thing, gentle and joyful, and the wastes demand sharpness but Brown doesn't want to see him become sharp. They are made for the steel and spark of the Pockets as he's made for the sand and stone of the Wilds.

Brown changes a lot for his pups. He stays quiet, careful, one who keeps to himself. But he learns to see the beauty of the stars because Grey is fascinated by constellations and wants stories about them. He learns to be a little less patient, because infinite patience with Green's boasting will never help him grow. He learns that friendship may be difficult in the Wilds, but it's far from impossible. He learns the feel of warm coats pressed against his at night, and that it is something he can never unlearn.

So while he remains always a creature of the Wastes, he learns to live away from the Wilds in the middle of that bizarre thing called civilization. He learns to shake the sand from his coat and keep his gaze nearby instead of on the distance. He learns to rest his paws. Because Grey and Green need him to, and being needed is another thing he can't bring himself to unlearn.

Brown is cunning and prefers to trick others into dealing with his problems/enemies, or just avoids them entirely if he can, but that doesn't mean he can't fight.

He's grown and lived in the Wilds for a very long time, if not all his life, and he's survived. He prefers to avoid conflict, but he does fight — and when he does, it isn't pretty. He's vicious, he plays dirty, and he fights like a cornered animal trying to survive and willing to risk a limb for a few seconds more. The Buzzards and him have fought directly before, and they're a lot more wary of going again than he is, as much as he's the one trying to avoid it more.

Brown is quiet, patient, careful. Slow until he's not. He doesn't talk much, and when he does it's usually because it's necessary. He isn't lacking a sense of humor entirely, it's very dry and doesn't come out often (moreso as the series goes on, though). He's practical and survival-oriented, but he has a softness to him that's hard to see until it has a chance to come out; it's why he keeps his scarf, and why he keeps two pups he has no business trying to raise, and why he keeps going day after day.

GREY

A grey coyote pup with a big pink nose and wide, too-large ears darkened at the pointed tips. He has soft paws and a fluffy chest and rings around his eyes, all snowy white, the color curving along his belly to spread under and around the edges of his tail. His eyes are large and curious and dark, solid blue. On his hindfeet he wears light pink sneakers, a child's idea of fashion, which get beat up over the series but remain a sign of his origins in the Pocket.

He's the equivalent of around eight at the beginning, and maybe eleven or twelve near the end.

He has a pet rat. This rat is possibly named Vermin, which would be a name given by Brown that was not supposed to be a name so much as a complaint but stuck anyways. I haven't decided the color of this rat yet, but possibly blue or pink to match Grey's eyes or shoes respectively, or green to match Green. Or maybe yellow and I could name it Sparky instead.

He collects rocks, and twisted bits of metal, and interesting twigs and leaves. Not much of the latter, though, because plants aren't all that common in the part of the Wilds where they live. He makes Brown carry them in his scarf, and Brown's not entirely sure when he agreed to do this but he does it anyways. When his collection grows too large to carry with them, Grey arranges it all in pretty patterns and leaves it behind, in the hopes that someone else will get to enjoy it.

He has one special stone that he keeps, a smooth grey river stone that looks blue when wet and has wavy patterns across it. It is not a stone that belongs in the Wilds and he loves it and it's a little too big to fit comfortably in his mouth but he carries it around with him anyways. He calls it his pebble, despite the fact that it's larger than a pebble, and so everyone else calls it Grey's pebble as well. The plot of one thing could be it going missing and him getting really upset, and the others have to help him find it, with him eventually getting it back of course.

GREEN

A muscular coyote, well-built but not bulky, that never seems to get slimmer no matter how long he goes without food, and is maybe a bit stronger in his legs and his chest and his shoulders than he looks like. His coat is dark black, but his paws and his underbelly and the insides of his thin, sharp ears are all yellow-green and neon. His tail is pure yellow-green and acts like a signal reaching up behind him when it glows, and his eyes are the same green and never completely lose their light even when the rest of him dims. He's built low and thick, like a tank, like a hunter, but his mind works more like a technician's or a puzzle-solver's than a fighter's.

He's the equivalent of maybe fourteen at the beginning? And like seventeen near the end? I'm not entirely sure.

The thing about the coyotes is that they aren't humans. They can scavenge, and they can plan, and they can coordinate — but they don't make things.

They can live in a human society and use what they make just fine, but they don't build things on their own. Green builds things.

Green makes a satchel that falls apart every five minutes and he hates that it does but they can carry more food now so Brown considers it to be a tiny miracle. Green figures out a way to fix up ab old steel storage box and store rain water to drink from later. Green makes a sled out of a piece of wood and some plants to pull it with, and it's very hard to do without thumbs, but Grey cheers when Green pulls him around on it so it's worth the effort.

Coyotes are smart, it's a hallmark of their species, but they can't make cities like humans do because they can't build anything. They as well can't glow. Brown begins to suspect, over time, that Green's mutations run further than any of them know.

He's as well the only one who half-understands the ruined things they come across, because Brown is of the Wilds and Grey is too young to know how anything really works. A rusted water pump, one of the few electric towers that's survived the test of time, a old mining drill that hasn't been used since the world ended — Green doesn't necessarily know what they are and he isn't necessarily right when he tries to guess, but if someone can make them do or be something useful, it's him. He's boastful to a fault and always thinks he's correct even when he really isn't, but he does have legitimate reasons to pride his own mind so much.

He's fast. He's not agile nor flexible, not like a coyote should be and not like Grey and definitely not like Brown. But he's got muscles that won't go away, and he can't keep pace with Violet but neither can most of the other cheetahs, and he can still get close. He can run in a straight line and plow through nearly anything weaker than stone and keep going long after Brown would've collapsed, but add a twist to it and he'll stumble over his own paws trying to turn around. He's built thick and low and solid, the body of a tank housing the mind of something much different, not quite a coyote but not quite not.