This is the home of the wiki for the Guardsmen'verse, created by Cooper West.

This universe first appeared in West's book The Protector. It is a complex alternative world where a very small percentage of the human population become Guardsmen when they reach adolescence. They either manifest as "Protectors", who are were-dogs, or as "Handlers" who are similar to Protectors but do not shift into were' form. They become bonded pairs upon reaching full maturity, sometime between 17 and 25 years old, and bonds are life-long attachments.

Primer

The Guardsmen'verse is an alternate reality. It is, however, very closely related to the modern world we know. The only difference is that supernatural creatures known collectively as Guardsmen or Warrior Pairs (there are actually a variety of terms for them in all languages and cultures, but those are the primary designations used in the English language). They consist of two bonded people: Protectors and Handlers. They are always a bonded pair, which is a metaphysical as well as physical connection, and often sexual/romantic as well. There are, however, a variety of permutations of bonded pairs recorded through history, including sibling bonded pairs, twins who are both Protectors, and Handlers who bond with two or more unrelated Protectors.

Guardsmen make up a very small percentage of the population, less than red-heads, consisting of approximately .2% of the entire human population. Some cultures have higher rates of Guardsmen than others, but they almost never account for more than .5% of the population. Their rarity makes them very prized as well as feared. Their numbers are far greater than most "normal" people assume, as they don't understand the percentages, but there are over 2 million Guardsmen in India, and roughly 600,000 in the U.S.A. The global estimate is approximately 14 million Guardsmen.

Guardsmen have been a part of human culture since before written history. There is a lot of debate about whether certain cave paintings show Guardsmen pairs or not, but there is no question that Guardsmen have been a part of humanity since the agricultural revolution happened over 10,000 years ago. Further back than that it is hard if not impossible to confirm or study, due to the fact that in death, Guardsman remains are indistinguishable from humans (or if the Protector died in shifted form, dogs). They have also existed outside of normal human social constructs, in the sense they they have (by necessity) created independent diplomatic networks, which have in the modern era coalesced as the International Guardsman Institute.

Academics who study Guardsmen history and genetics believe that Guardsmen developed "from magic" (no one is happy with that description) as a kind of sentry or warrior caste, literally designed or evolved exclusively to protect human settlements. While the assumption is that they were, literally, guards for human settlements, as civilization developed they were often fighting warriors, fearsome on the battlefield.