⧽ It's happened again. Someone's mucking with the plot continuum.
—Jay, "Rambling Band"
Jay and Acacia of the Original Series. Art by Bold Font.
Protectors of the Plot Continuum, nearly always referred to simply as the Original Series (TOS) by fans, is the first PPC series, begun by Jay and Acacia. It was started on January 30, 2002,[1] not-so-coincidentally soon after the movie release of The Fellowship of the Ring. The barrage of badfic following that film inspired these two to create the world of the PPC that we all know and love. It has 26 missions in all, and for a long time had the most missions of any agent pair. (Tawaki, Iximaz, and IndeMaat are known to have published spin-offs with more missions than Jay and Acacia, and it is possible others have as well.)
It was originally posted on Fanfiction.net, but was kicked off (quite unfairly, we believe) on May 11, 2002.[2] This event is known as the Takedown. TOS found a new home on Philosopher At Large's website, Odd Lots, until Odd Lots went down in 2009. Fortunately, Miss Cam also archived the series, and almost all of it could be found there until it, too, succumbed in 2015. As of 2012, the complete series is archived at PPC: The Lost Tales.
The Original Series ended when Jay and Acacia retired in 2003 and left the PPC to its own devices. Jay has returned to the Board once, but only very briefly.
Meet the assassins as they rid Middle-earth of stray punk-rockers in Rivendell.
When Laurel and her band crash their van through a movie screen and land in Middle-earth, Agents Jay and Acacia take on their iconic debut mission.
In Rivendell, Laurel and her bandmates Geoff and Cole became guests of Elrond, and Arwen arranges for them to be dressed in "locally appropriate" clothing: a gown and robes. At the Council, the band play a rock song that mesmerizes the other attendees. Even Gandalf cheers when the band is done playing—though, of course, that may be in celebration of the end of the song rather than the song itself. Both Legolas and Boromir develop quite a thing for Laurel. The band join the Fellowship of the Ring when it leaves Rivendell at dawn.
Shortly after the end of the first mission, the second one begins.
Phoenix is Galadriel's uncanonical daughter, sent forward in time via the Mirror of Galadriel (apparently so she can work at K-mart). She creates an uncanonical Ring of Power, sings modern music in Middle-earth (perfectly, of course), and plans to break up the Fellowship to have them rescue her from orcs. Thankfully, this is prevented by Jay and Acacia.
The agents join the orcs that kidnap Phoenix, wait for the orcs to knock her out, and carry her off. Jay charges Phoenix with "disrupting the canon by joining the Fellowship, bringing twenty-first century knowledge to Middle-earth, interfering with the characters of Galadriel and Legolas, being a Mary Sue ... really annoying Acacia ... getting yourself captured like an idiot and having the Fellowship break up just to rescue you ... and yelling at Gollum."
Phoenix is shot with an arrow and her corpse is fed to the orcs. Afterward, the agents take the opportunity to go sight-seeing in Isengard, and Jay "acquires" a nice set of tarot cards to replace the deck Acacia ruined.
A transfer, a lichen that sounds like John Cleese, and reincarnated Isildur—"Izzy"—teaming up with a Jedi named Matrix—it's time to take on crossovers.
The assassins widen their horizons to the deserving. "You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps." —Especially when dealing with a case where the canon characters are totally out of their minds. Oh, the pain...
Poor Legolas has finally had it, and kills himself (who can blame him?), making Jay team up with Dee of the RPF Department to give the author a good whacking. Death to Leggy-torturers!
