"I'm another king and a robber
I'm a brother trampling on your dreams
Before they stand in the way of mine"
--Lovex, "Anyone Anymore"

I'm going to make a ~fancy timeline~ someday that has ages and context for all of this, etc. But since Papyrus's AU is pretty well-fleshed-out already, I thought I'd make a CliffsNotes version for now.



*In Papyrus's world, Kul Elna sort of...became....a gathering for thieves because of its close proximity to the Valley of the Kings. It wouldn't surprise me if the tomb-builders of Deir el-Medina (and argh, Takahashi, for using that name for the place) and the people of Kul Elna had some traffic with each other.

*Papyrus doesn't remember her family very well because she took them for granted. Her eldest half-brother, who was a quietly manry source of inspiration and admiration for her, was the first to die before the massacre even happened: for the Items to be made in seven days, it logically follows that the shrine was prepared in secret beforehand and Aknadin was just waiting to pitch the idea to his brother. Papyrus's half-brother suspected shady dealings and discovered the shrine. He was never heard from again.

*Papyrus hid in fear at first, which is how she survives in part. Once the killing is done and the ritual part of Item-crafting begins, she watches for a little while but it's all so confusing and she's scared out of her mind after all the killing so she runs into the desert. Minor miracle, she makes it back "home" but the only thing left alive is an egg in the shadows where she'd watched.

*Egg hatches into a snake with wings that takes care of her. They leave the village after about a week, to try and find grown-ups to help/just because she doesn't know what else to do if she stayed. Diabound is greeted as a god in the first village they go to, but after she hears talk of the Pharaoh's great victory and the Millennium Items - and that the villagers might want to show her to said Pharaoh as the child who owns a god - she freaks because she recognizes "Pharaoh" and "Millennium Items" from soldiers talking and gets the heck out of there.

*PERIOD OF HOW DOES SMALL CHILD SURVIVE ON HER OWN I AM NOT SURE YET FOLLOWS but after Diabound sort of causes trouble for Papyrus with the whole "winged snake" thing, it gains the ability to shift to a humanoid form. Diabound looks like a Ryou, though she never manages to seem more than 12 or 13 years old (some parts of Papyrus's soul still frozen at the prepubescent, scared kid). But I write about Diabound in detail elsewhere.

*Papyrus remembers that being a thief is a Noble Thing to Be - or rather, extrapolates as much as she grows up from a mix of things that bother her, people's reception of her, and what memories of Kul Elna she retains. She's basically just trying to survive at first, though there's a vague notion that the ultimate goal's to get to the capital and kill the Pharaoh.

*She gets to the capital when she's about hit puberty and realizes she's a bit over her head. The older she gets the more she wonders about what exactly Diabound is - it isn't normal to have a companion whose true form is a snakeangeldemonthing, that much is for certain, and only people high in the chain of command seem to ever have monsters at all.

*She probably (80% sure?! I'm trying to work how he fits into this) ends up with a priest always lagging one or two steps behind her ~life of crime~ as her reputation grows. She got past him on her first tomb-robbing gig, and he, being pure of heart and mind but also ashamed of his failure, has been on her trail ever since. Think Javert in Les Mis because I thought it'd be interesting to give her a foil for Established Justice before she's at the level where she can tangle with Atem and the priests proper, but I'm not sure if he really fits. Either way, she doesn't really give a damn about his existence, and may or may not be aware she has a stalker.

*STUFF WHOSE ORDER I'M NOT SURE OF:

--Getting the scar. Current idea is that she gets it all on the same day, and it's the same incident where she learns the Pharaoh is dead, but the more I look at the two perfectly-parallel scars on her cheeks I think of claws, not knives. So. Maybe a ka fight? But it's definitely an incident connected to Her Tragic Past because of the way Takahashi tends to accentuate the scar when TK mentions Kul Elna.

--She and Diabound meet Kisara, if only briefly. Papyrus is not so impressed, but Diabound is touched that someone has the same "feel" she does, and promises Kisara that if they ever find Kisara's "person", they'll be sure to find her again and let her know. This becomes a point of contention when the "person" is revealed, upon invading the palace in the canon incident, to be a priest.

--A brief and ill-fated attempt to get "in" with the Deir el-Medina folk. Diabound works among them for a while (she learns how to spin and handle cloth as an artisan) while Papyrus, living on the edge of town yet apprehensive about returning to Kul Elna proper, steals from the thieves in Deir el-Medina instead: the tomb builders were also often robbers. This little escapade is brought to a halt when someone tries to take Diabound as his wife, or at least lover, and she can't quite take one for the team and accidentally poison-fangs the guy through the lip. Oops. Papyrus groans at the time, but it's funny in retrospect and Diabound never lives it down.

--Wall phasing. It happens on a tomb-robbing incident where Takahashi-Egypt actually employs the only kind of physical "trap" the ancient Egyptians used, to my knowledge: the two of them get sealed in. Papyrus refuses to give in, her anger and rage and determination to get out of this rise, and Diabound in her desperation to save Papyrus's life discovers she can slip through the rock. (Need a reason she can't just move the wall with ka-strength, even if she doesn't have Spiral Wave yet. As I say, work in progress.) After they get out alive, they go for a joy-flight across the desert, exulting in themselves and throwing gold around at random. They basically have a really, really awesome, relieved, WE'RE NOT DEAD! AND NOTHING CAN STAND IN OUR WAY! incredible bonding moment.

--If she has a stalker-priest, showdown with him where basically she manages to trample on everything he's ever believed in (though life chasing her has done a lot of that, too) and kills him without remorse. Idiot.

--Various rollicking escapades of thievery, bravery, and attempted woman-wooing, to be elaborated on at a later date.

*Perhaps after fighting the stalker-priest, who does have his own ka, Papyrus and Diabound are approached by a priest of a distant temple. He offers to take them under his wing because of Papyrus's great innate heka and Diabound's rare nature as a physical ka. The prospect of learning what Diabound is intrigues Papyrus more than Diabound herself, so she goes along with it for the chance to get information out of the old guy. It turns out he's the former owner of the Ring and a co-conspirator in the Kul Elna massacre (check the scans, it's the same dude). He's been dismissed from the palace in disgrace because the evil in his heart has grown because of the Ring, which in turn is absorbing all that evil, and he commits Some Unspeakable Sin. (He therefore wants to use Papyrus as an instrument of his own revenge/comeback -- if he delivers this "dangerous thief" he'll be a hero, but if she's strong enough to defeat the Pharaoh, too, well. Not going to complain.) After training with him for a while, Papyrus and Diabound discover this fact, squeeze the guy for detailed information about the Items, kill everyone and emerge with a more definite idea of what they have to do. It's here that Papyrus's main revenge goal switches from "kill Pharaoh" to "steal the world." She gets her coat from this event, and upon Diabound tailoring it to fit her instead, she crowns herself King of Thieves and returns home.

*Home is unpleasant. It brings back many memories, and also guilt for having not worked in earnest sooner towards vengeance. That it's inhabited by the angry spirits of her dead family and neighbors, though she can't identify any of them individually (they've had that stripped from them), doesn't help. But it's a good place to use as a base, and if she's going to form that contract with Zorc it makes sense to keep an eye on that tablet. There are houses in Kul Elna full of random stuff she's taken from tombs. She barters some of the stuff that doesn't scream "FUNERARY RELIC" for food in nearby towns etc. - the commute ain't so bad if you ride Diabound.

*As indicated, she starts robbing tombs in the Valley of the Kings in earnest now, perfecting her technique and working up to her enemy's final resting place. This is where she's pulled from - getting ready for a raid on the tomb, with every intent of emptying Akhenamkanon's tomb entirely. It's...pretty much where Bloom is pulled from, and I do apologize for that, but it's just...where makes the most sense so Diabound is still a "god" ka in nature (even if I'm not sure I'll ever play her in the DR) and Thief King is a little closer to sane....

*Even with all this I'm sure I've forgotten stuff. I've been thinking about this AU for literally months now as I research Ancient Egypt - I'm still not comfortable with how much I know, so correct me when I screw up, because it's going to happen. If something Takahashi says or does contradicts historical lifestyle "truth", however, I go with Takahashi (mostly as regards clothing, religion, etc.) because that's technically canon, that's this Egypt. I won't amp up the "pale and weird = monster" thing as much with Bakura and Diabound, however, because of the amount of diversity apparently present in ancient Egypt. If you confirmed to the society, to some degree that made you Egyptian.

*That said, Papyrus ain't interested in conforming. ~_^