Enemy Within: Forethoughts

Here I am going to put my musings about this new endeavor of mine..  

The exact moment of when it started is unknown. Many believe he turned his attention to earth around the time of The Great War. Whether it was the massive death and destruction of WWI that invited him or he was the grand instigator of the war, no one knows. One thing is certain the Earth has been slowly decaying towards apocalypse ever since.

The Shadow

The Shadow is an unseen veil or cowl that blankets our planet to corrupt and destroy. However, living in the Shadow also grants protection. The Shadow construes our perception of really and prevents us from seeing what truly exists in our world. Beyond the Shadow, elves, orcs, dwarves and other ancestries live, breathe and interact alongside humans. Beyond the Shadow, magic is real and horrors unspeakable invade not only our nightmares.

Shadowed humans won't see the greenish skin, enlarged ears or other racial features of a goblin but instead see just a small, ugly child-like human. They won’t see the fur covered legs or cloven feet of a Faun, instead may see a human with malformed legs, or one using canes to walk. Magic is also unseen for what it really is to Shadowed humans. Most of the time, the human brain will rationalize the effect of magic as something more mundane. Some scholars believe that the Shadow is a protective blanket placed over humanity by the Earth Mother to shelters us from the insanity that is the Demon Lord.

While humans are blinded by the Shadow, other ancestries are not. Ancestries other than Human are able to see, hear, smell, taste and interact with things beyond the Shadow as normal. This is because non-human ancestries are as much of the Shadow as the Demon Lord himself. In fact, because they do not belong here, in our space and time, most of them have a very difficult time with technological advances of modern society.

Occasionally, either by accident or by invite, a human is able to step beyond the Shadow and become part one of The Unfortunate. Being an Unfortunate allows the human to witness and interact with the world and all of his horrors as never before. Once a human becomes one of the Unfortunate they gain access to paths and traditions open to all other ancestries.