Aka, coffee shop AU but ✨magic✨ and technically nobody has to die >:3

(And I totally didn't think of this AU because I've been playing Potion Craft for the past few days, nope-)

So how this AU goes is the world of RQ is actually just a large, renaissance-fairytale town, with all of the different Chromatics each being in a different sector of the town and the Leaders are the rulers of their sectors instead of individual kingdoms.

Red Steves are known for their knowledge and innovation, often being the minds behind the town's greater technological accomplishments. They are also known to tend to be extremely introverted, and would rather stay in their houses or workplaces and just have deliveries made to them from other sectors rather than actually going out. However, there are still ones that are more outgoing than most, and go into other sectors of the town and in rare occasions live in other sectors (whether it be for business or study reasons). These cases are often either the ones that deliver things to their more reclused friends or started their lives in a different sector to bring some of the products of their sector to others.

Orange Steves are the craftsmen of the town, from things like carpentry or masonry to construction or restoration. If someone needs something built or made, they just go into the Orange sector and find the right shop. The Orange Steves are often called to other sectors of town to help other sectors with constructing or restoring buildings, demolition of ones that are old and unsafe, making new roads, streetlamps, or fences, helping the less experienced craftsmen of other sectors, and more. However, they're also known to be the most adventurous, so Orange Steves are always open for new experiences like mining or other professions.

Yellow Steves are known for scouting and combat, and also being the most extroverted and excitable. They're often sent out of the town on expeditions to look for new places for connected villages, finding new sources of resources, new herbs and other plants, animals, and it's not common for some to become hunters of either normal game animals or monsters. They also tend to be the ones that hear all of the town's drama, almost always going to a lot of sectors each day to make deliveries or relay different information. However, they're not gossips... we'll get to those ones later.

Greens Steves make up most of the healers and farmers of the town, given their expertise on both plants and medicines. Although, the majority of the population tends to lean towards farming because of the complicated recipes and extra schooling needed to be a certified healer. This means that there's not many healers in town, even with the occasional other color that joins in. Green Steves are known to be the calm, collected, and kindest people of the town (and are very tolerant to others' random nonsense). They also often join Yellow Steves on exploration missions, helping with foraging and identifying dangerous plants.

Blue Steves are known for having a link to the World Beyond, especially with their ability to see lost spirits roaming around and helping them back to where they're supposed to be. They are very level-headed, a bit serious, and tend to be a little secretive. They specialize in helping with problems about spirits or souls themselves. Someone knows their house is being haunted? Get someone from the Blue sector. A rare occasion where someone's been possessed by a lost spirit? Get a more experienced Blue Steve. They also can sense auras of the living, always able to know when someone has bad intentions or means well.

Indigo Steves are also very introverted, but are shyer than the Red Steves in the sense that they don't speak to others they're not close to very much. Although, they're not shut-ins, so they still go out into town to run errands. Given their connection to the Middle World, the Indigo Steves tend to work in wizardry a bit (I swear if any of you make Harry Potter jokes-). Although, none of them are very experienced in it as they focus more on spirits as well and help the Blue Steves with their soul work. The highest level an Indigo Steve would be in wizardry is novice. However, they do enjoy helping people using those magic skills.

Finally, Violet Steves are mostly their main series selves. Although they have very minor skills in alchemy, but that's after a very long time of the skill getting worse as more generations went on, and now the best potion they can make without it being very weak is a medium-grade Potion of Charm (aka Love Potion), but even then there's uh... side effects (aka their terrible attempts at making potions are why they're kinda stalker-y, and the botched potions are sort of addictive so literally nobody else drinks them). They used to contribute to the town with alchemy, but since that skill has been almost lost, they instead contribute with helping relationships. They're very laid-back, but since they don't have much to do in their sector, they're the aforementioned 'town gossips'.

The town used to be bustling and thriving with the help of alchemy and magic improving their quality of life and methods of doing things, but ever since the people's ancestors' skills have started becoming lost, things quickly devolved. By the time RQ starts the town is doing relatively poorly, with gangs of thieves and rises of crime overrunning them... even with word on the street talking about a mysterious unknown alchemist that uses dark magic...

However, one day, there's finally some good news being talked about; there's a Prismoid moving into the old, abandoned shop in the Orange sector. Prismoids are a very rare race, being known for their wide arrays of skills and talents, especially in magic. Although, there's very little actually known about them. Legends of them tell tales of Prismoids once being as common as the Steves, living alongside them until a great disaster struck and killed most of them. Nobody knows if this is true though, and everyone is dying to know more about their new peculiar addition to the town.

Luckily for the Steves, this Prismoid is exactly what the town desperately needed: an Alchemist.

Sabre had just moved away from where he had lived his entire life, wanting to explore what the world had to offer. He found the Chromatics' town to be perfect, and quickly bought the old building and turned it into his own potion shop, building his living quarters on the second floor. It's quite a large shop for such a low price, and there was even some alchemy equipment he could use to add on to what he had already.

Immediately, some people of the Orange sector had come into the shop once it opened, curious about both the shop's contents and its owner. In fact, the first two people to enter the new potion shop were Orange Steve (named Amber) and Red Steve (named Crimson). Amber and Crimson were greeted by Sabre as they walked in, and Sabre gladly answers any questions they have.

As they get to know each other over the next few days, Sabre starting to get more customers, Amber and Crimson become good friends with Sabre. It's soon revealed that Amber has always shown an interest in alchemy, but since it was a nearly dead skill he had nowhere to learn it. Sabre then offers to have Amber as an alchemy apprentice, helping him run the shop as he learns how to make potions.

This makes one of the major plot points of the story; a lot of Sabre's friends become alchemy apprentices and help him run the shop as his business grows. Other than Amber, I had the idea that others could be LC (Ray), Therapist Green (Sage), Time (can change his name to Chronos or something like that), and Crimson (if he stays alive lol), and they join as the story goes on. Some other characters could join too. Sabre gives each alchemy apprentice a pendant, kind of as a 'welcome to the team' gift. Amber's is an orange diamond-shaped crystal, Ray's is a lightning bolt, Sage's is a clover, Time's is a small gold clock, and Crimson's is a poppy.

Now, about Sabre, he's very formal and calm as opposed to his normal self in the main series. However, push him to one of his limits and things can get chaotic pretty quickly (such as he hasn't slept in a while or someone ticks him off enough). He rarely opens his eyes, using Arcane Sight in order to see (an old, traditional practice to Prismoids), but on the occasion he does it's usually to emphasize how serious he is (such as telling someone to knock it off if they're being rowdy in the shop). It's very intimidating, too. Even people like Nightmare (Ochre) or Rainbow Red shut up if given that look.

Sabre is surprisingly calm in most situations, even if they don't really make too much sense. He keeps everyone down to earth while trying to figure out how to fix it. He also tends to act parental towards his younger friends (such as his apprentices), worrying about their well-being or scolding them if they did something stupid. Suffice to say, the shop apprentice group gets scolded often.

One small piece of lore for Sabre; after people get to know him better, he eventually says that he left home to live closer to his son, who's in a town nearby to theirs. It's a much, much nicer town, and Sabre often says he's proud of his son and his accomplishments. Only Amber has ever seen a picture of Sabre's son though, and he found it strange that his son looked very similar to the town's original founder... bright blue eyes and everything.

Here's some possible story for other characters:

Shy/Light: Starts out as Shy Orange Steve, but has a secret dream to be a great warrior. Starts out as just getting basic potions as deliveries to some of his friends, but once Sabre's good enough friends with him, he tells Sabre about his dream to be a warrior and starts asking for potions that could help him achieve it by starting his own training. Things like strength potions to help make himself stronger, dexterity potions to help with his endurance, and as his training goes on he starts asking for stronger or different potions to keep up with his he's improving.

Eventually, he asks for a potion that ends up turning him into Light Steve. After that, he keeps going with his training until his starts the Colorless Guard in order to keep the crime rate of the town low, and keeps visiting the shop once a week to supply the Guard with potions.

Orange/Rainbow: Has lots of fun being Sabre's apprentice, learning how to make potions and helping with the shop. Over time, he starts telling Sabre about how he's always been different from the other Orange Steves, being stronger than them and things like that. Sabre helps him research history of the Orange sector in order to try and figure out what made him like that, and soon they learn that Amber's abilities were the product of his father (SL Orange Leader) using his alchemy experiments to keep him alive as a young child when Void attacked, and had entrusted him to the current Orange Leader before allowing his soul to be used to create the Orange Crystal. Amber had not become a Leader's apprentice because all of the other Orange Steve adults (including the current Leader) believed it to be too traumatic for him.

Soon after, Amber starts delving deeper into alchemy than he should without Sabre or the other alchemy apprentices knowing, wanting to accomplish what his actual father hadn't been able to: making the fabled 'Prism Stone', a powerful alchemy ingredient that increased the power of it's user greatly. However, since Amber is extremely inexperienced, there's a mistake in the process that caused an accident. Amber turns into Rainbow Steve because of it, however the effects of the Prism Stone are visible in him. Amber continues to live almost normally after recovering from his injuries, with the exception of training to control his new power.

Galaxy: Moved from the town long ago in order to raise his sons in a better environment, but since the town had been returned to its former glory he moved back. He helps the Indigos with relearning wizardry properly, being very powerful himself and more than happy to teach them. I don't have many ideas for him so :b

The Darkness: The product of Void's own alchemy experiments, he created the Darkness as a way to imbue his henchmen and underlined that join his army with more power. It's can't just corrupt people though, it has to be willing. Side effect of it giving people power is it drives them insane, or creates an entirely different personality for the affected.

Shadow Sabre: The product of Void putting Darkness into one of the potions Sabre frequently uses for himself to help with his sight, tricking him into being corrupted. Was just kept in the town's quarantine until everybody figured out a way to reverse the corruption, although stayed as a part of Sabre as a kind of spirit stuck to him (everyone knows about that). While Sabre was corrupted though, cue panic from literally everybody, especially the apprentices.

Aaand now, situations:

—

(Orange Leader walks into the potion shop, and proceeds to nearly get domed by a bottle that just got flung from a different room.)

O. Leader: What the-?!

(Sabre also gets launched from the room, but quickly lands on his feet and grabs a staff.)

Sabre: Sorry, one moment, Amber accidentally dropped a Potion of Necromancy on an owlbear corpse. I'll just be a few minutes.

O. Leader: Should I just come back later, orrr...?

Sabre: Oh, no, it's alright! You can wait outside until I come get you if you'd prefer, though.

O. Leader: Uh, yeah, I'm just gonna... do that...

(Orange Leader leaves as Sabre charges back into the other room.)

—

(Context: Sabre has a list of potions the apprentices use when Sabre is unavailable for any reason, listing the potions they're allowed to make while he's gone, the list being called the 'Entirely Safe Potions' list because there's no chance of them getting hurt while making them.)

Crimson: Okay, so, Sabre's sick today which means we have to run the shop. You all know what that means.

Amber: (Visibly bored already) All of the 'safe' potions are boring, though. Can't I make just ONE Potion of Explosion?

Time: (walking by to go up the stairs, holding a tea tray) Nope, stick to the list. You know the rules, and what happened last time you broke them.

Amber and Ray: Fine.

(Time goes up the stairs and Crimson goes to check inventory)

Amber: ...

Ray: ...

(Amber and Ray immediately rush to the brewing room to make fire potions.)

- 5 Minutes Later -

(Insert flaming brewing room while Amber and Ray are being yelled at by Crimson and Time, with Sabre in the background confusedly staring at the scene on the stairs wondering what the heck happened in the ten minutes after Time checked on him.)

—

(Sabre talking with the Violet Leader)

V. Leader: It's actually nice having an alchemist that knows what he's doing around, we've kind of lost our skill with all of this.

Sabre: Well, maybe one day I could help your people relearn alchemy. You never know.

V. Leader: Oh, that's be nice! By the way, I'm just curious, do you know how to make Love Potions?

Sabre: Oh, Potions of Charm, you mean? Yes, I know how. Here, look, I made one recently just for fun.

(Sabre hands the potion to the Violet Leader, and he starts examining it.)

V. Leader: This... is a lot higher-grade than what my people make...

Sabre: Oh, it is? Well, I don't mean to steal your thunder, so-

V. Leader: Hang on, these could actually help.

Sabre: ...??

(The Violet Leader ends up buying a bunch of orders of Potions of Charm every so often to get his people to stop drinking the botched potions they make, hence solving the problem of 'addictive botched potions'.)

—

(Insert Sabre and Professor Red being competitive because the Professor actually makes some good potions, buuut can't beat the expert... still keeps trying though.)

—

And now, ✨art✨ :>

Sabre: (Calm, frankly adorable cottagecore-ish looking lil guy asking a customer what they need)

Amber and Ray behind him: (C H A O S)

So ye here's three people's designs lol-

Also DANG I DID GOOD ON HIS HANDS-

And LIGHTIIIIING- OMG I DID LIGHTING AND IT DOESN'T LOOK TERRIBLE-

Aaand this :3

Scarybre intimidating the bee man because he wouldn't stop asking for harmful potions hehe >:D

Also eye reveal-

And look at dem HAAAANNNDDDSS OMG I'M SO PROUD OF MYSELF-

Okay speaking of hands my hands are tired from all this, yeet  TwT