Worse still, Ash's superpowers, invested in him by the Death Goddess Kali, seem no longer to be working. Without Kali, can Ash defeat Savage and save the world? Now he is determined to conquer the rest of Azeroth so that his people will once again have a home of their own in the There, with the aid of the noble King Terenas, he forges a mighty Alliance with the other human nations. But even that may not be enough to stop the Horde's merciless onslaught.
Elves, dwarves, and trolls enter the fray as the two emerging factions vie for dominance. Will the valiant Alliance prevail, or will the Horde's tide of darkness consume the last vestiges of freedom on Azeroth? In the midst of the California Goldrush, Vannevar faces the conflicts and corruption associated with a rapidly growing vampire society.
Indeed, there are people and forces in the world of Darkness that endanger all those who exist. Learn the secrets, alliances, enemies and plans of these shadowy beings in a series of world of Darkness books that can be integrated into all of the storyteller games. The creatures and powers of Japan revealed. Come explore the emerald city of the East. Mariana is an artist whose talent is dying even as her body enjoys immortality. They meet at the Blood Club, and a spark is struck between them. What they don't know is that their meeting was arranged.
On their night of birth, the thunder was roaring and the clouds were crying. Only a few people were there to witness their birth. There was Jonathan, Selene's protector, and Ashka, a dear friend of the queen. On that very night the troubles they would never escape started.
The trouble began when Lyco first saw his children. There was a boy and a girl; they were un-identical twins. The girl was more like her father who was a Wood-Elf.
She had pointy ears, blond hair, blue eyes, would never get sick, she was light-footed, and, like the Vampires, she had fangs and retractable claws. The boy, on the other hand, was more like his mother.
More of them piled on a small table. He walked to the far end of the room and turned to look at me. Something like pride mixed with nervousness and relief.
I picked up a notebook. It was filled with writing, neat, block lettering in black ink. The meticulous paragraphs were in sections of some sort, each separated with a title and date. I thought I knew, but my ears were ringing and I had to stall.
Some are traded, but mostly I interviewed the witnesses myself or saw them happen. A recorder. A reporter. Someone else needs to take over, to pick up the trail. Do you think I want to end up like you? Living alone in a rundown house with only fantasies and fiction for company? He grabbed my shoulders. You know things. When he hit the floor he made a pathetic gasp, then sucked in a gulp of air.
I pulled out the gun. He taught me how to shoot. He turned his head and looked at me. And suddenly the position of his body, the angle of his head, sent me somewhere else. I was in the alley again, staring down into the sewer, feeling the bile rise in my throat as I forced myself to count body parts.
Then another form moved into view. It slid out of the shadows and hovered over the dismembered body parts. It was dressed in rags. Filthy, tattered cloth that made it hard to see what was happening. A fat, greasy arm slithered out and grabbed a shapeless chunk of organ meat. There were noises. Slapping and smacking and sucking noises.
The shadowy figure shifted position. There were crunching sounds. I pressed both hands to my mouth and held tight, but a desperate gasp still escaped my lips. And it looked at me. It rolled its shoulders and cocked its head and looked up at me. Even though I was on the street and it was underground, I felt as though I was an ant and it was towering over me. There was blood running down its chin and a mustache of human fat across its upper lip.
Its head had strange bulges. Its eyes were human, so human as they fixed on me, burned into me, tried to obliterate me the way the sun obliterates the night. After that, I wandered through the house in a kind of daze. There were more rooms.
Many more. An attic. A basement. They were all filled with more stories. Towers of notebooks, mountains of folders, oceans of files. Stories written on cocktail napkins, the backs of envelopes, on box tops and strips of torn-up clothing. Stories written on the walls themselves, the floors, the windows.
I knew what would happen if I left them intact. All of them. Someone probably planted something. Anyway, I know how the police work. I wonder about the guy in the alley who follows me with his eyes as I walk by. I wonder about the two bald guys sitting in the back of the diner, wearing strange medallions around their necks. I wonder what will happen next. I hope this letter gets to you. I hope I have the courage to mail this to you.
Destroy this letter after you read it. World of Darkness co-created by Stewart Wieck. Playtesters: Krister M. Taylor, Ph. You make this book possible and now there are new stories to tell. Special thanks to Torben Mogensen for providing his five dots of expertise in probability mathematics. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except for the purposes of reviews, and for blank character sheets, which may be reproduced for personal use only.
All characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by White Wolf Publishing, Inc. The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned. This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are fiction and intended for entertainment purposes only.
This book contains mature content. Reader discretion is advised. I wanted to get some candy. How about you wanted a bottle? The faint light coming through the barred windows showed that it was nearly dawn. He looked up at the police investigator. Yeah, I wanted a drink. What about it? I just went in for a drink.
The investigator sat down on the edge of the table. The man nodded sullenly. He started yelling for the guy to get out. But Mulhanney musta known. He went crazy.
He grabbed some kind of bag or something and came out from behind the counter with a bat. I dunno what pissed him off so bad. It sounded…. It sounded like an animal… and screams. Surely this old sw imming hole is dif f erent somehow. W ho ev er inWhoin lifethe denies the lif ever e denies Spirit falls S pirit f allsinto intothat that darkness death.
Same tree,same branches,same w ater level. Scared him halfto death. Bef ore Jenny could grab his arm,he splashed into the murky w ater. Besides,I dropped a silver dollar in there once. I w ant it back. Jenny could see his murky f orm going deeper and deeper. It paused at w hat looked like the bottom and then disappeared.
She moaned,clutching herself ,biting her lip,and w aited. Grimacing at the chill in the w ater,she w aded out. H alf w ay to the center,she stopped,hands to her mouth, trying to scream but w ith no sound.
Blood mixed w ith bubbles gurgled up f rom w here Tom had disappeared. Frozen w ith f ear,she tried to w ill herselfto dive dow n and help him. Then his hand broke the surf ace.
She breathed a sigh ofrelief , w hich became the longed-f or scream w hen the hand kept rising,severed at the bloody w rist. This is y ou r final warning. All right. Something lifted the veil from your eyes for j ust a few moments and now you want to know more. The first is something you already know. You felt their presence in your bedroom late at night. You saw them from the corners of your eyes as you drifted off to sleep. E very human society since the dawn of man has insisted that there are things keeping us company, things with their own agendas, things not afraid to enforce their will when we get in their way.
E ven the B ible mentions them, with its talk of giants on the earth, angels on the road, witches in caves. And did you know that there are doz ens of R enaissance paintings hanging in the Louvre right now that display metallic, lenticular obj ects floating in the skies over Italy?
B ut try as we might, the truth has a way of forcing itself to the surface. The people of P oint Whatever brought you to this moment, wherever or P leasant, West Virginia found that out. Toss the their ordeal began with the sighting of a huge, manlike creature with glowing eyes and insect-like magaz ine in the shredder.
C lose the book and put it wings. Over the course of a year, hundreds of people back on the shelf. I of making outrageous claims. Or so we assure ourselves. But at night, when the shadows grow long and the wind whistles through the trees, we shudder and remember older truths, the truths of our ancestors, who were right to fear the dark. We know deep down that the world is a far more terrifying place than we allow our rational minds to acknowledge. To accept this subconscious truth is to invite madness, to succumb to the raw chaos that lurks at the edges of our perception.
Pretending something is not there, however, does not make it go away. It only helps it to hide better — and predators like to hide from their prey, lest it be scared away. In such a reality, unseen beings hatch incognito plots against us, pulling our strings like puppeteers looming above us, hidden in the darkness beyond the stage lights.
Allegations about secret masters or creatures lurking in the night simply lack evidence. Maybe they want it that way. Welcome to the World of Darkness. But then, what are we to make of the lights in the sky over Point Pleasant, again reported by multiple witnesses throughout ? What of the odd behavior of these strangers — their odd accents, their musical voices, their unfamiliarity with common idioms or everyday objects such as a pen or a fork?
I visited Point Pleasant five years ago to write a piece on the Moth Man incident. I talked to a woman who had opened the door of her back porch only to be confronted by a pair of huge red eyes. When she broke away and backed into the house, she found that three hours had passed. And that would have been that. But the second night I was home, I got a phone call in the middle of the night.
The next day I was taking my car to get the oil changed when my cell phone rang. I found myself listening in on the middle of a conversation. Two men having a discussion about — I q uickly realized — me. They mentioned my name, my street address, the magazine. The point of the conversation was hard for me to understand. Aside from the details of my own life, their statements were all very vague and filled with euphemisms that had no meaning to me.
A few days later I left town to work on another story, and took some extra days off for a bit of a vacation. All told, I was gone for three weeks. The day I returned home to my apartment, I ran into a neighbor and mentioned that I was glad to be back. But there it was. Everything had been opened and sorted, exactly in the way I usually did it.
In my kitchen, food that had been left unopened was half eaten. Except for me. I called a few friends. Then I called my mother. At her house. Someone had been living my life while I was away.
But what could such a connection possibly mean? That someone was trying to scare me from writing about it? The government?
The people of Point Pleasant? The Moth Man himself? And why? The closer you look, the less sense it makes. Surely whoever was behind it all would realize that throwing these mysterious tactics at a journalist would only raise his interest, not squash it. It was a clumsy strategy for a government cabal or extraterrestrial conspiracy. The more I thought about it, the more I came to believe that this was a type of reverse psychology.
Someone or something wanted me to keep looking, keep investigating. Either they wanted me to get to the truth, or they had no fear of discovery at all and found it amusing, like a sort of game. Not long after I came to this conclusion, I was visited by the doll-like beings who continue to maintain a presence in my life today.
After witnessing the first, I decided to break contact with friends and family — for their protection — and started filing stories from undisclosed locations. The Moth Man is a product of mass hysteria, but somehow it leaves hard evidence in the real world.
The Moth Man is a secret government experiment in advanced technology, yet the agents sent to suppress knowledge of its existence have bizarre accents and no social skills. Take your pick. The more pieces you find the less of the puzzle you can understand. Finding the truth is not a reasonable goal. But you will never find the truth. Each mystery will only lead to more mysteries. It goes against every instinct in the human brain, but if you want to survive, you have to make peace with the fact that all your questioning and searching and attempts to make sense of it are doomed.
The best you can hope to do is record what details you can, and wonder at them. E ach shadow conceals only more shadows. Indeed, some of the most ancient stories that are still told today grapple with the biggest mysteries of all — life, death, creation, redemption and the ongoing struggle of good versus evil. The stories told in this game are set in the World of Darkness.
Superficially, most people in this fictional world live the same lives we do. They eat the same food, wear the same clothes, and waste time watching the same stupid TV shows.
And yet, in the World of Darkness, shadows are deeper, nights are darker, fog is thicker. Or so some neighbors say. In our world, there are urban legends. In the World of Darkness, there are urban legends whispered into the ears of autistic children by invisible spiders.
This book gives you everything you need to create your own collaborative tales. Horror stories, ghost stories, wonder tales, adventures or mysteries. Stories of people who suspect the truth about what lurks in the shadows, perhaps only after getting an unwelcome glimpse of it. After that, the rest of this book tells how you and your friends can tell your own stories, with simple but broad rules for doing so.
The true measure of success in a Storytelling game is how much your character interacts with the imaginary world he inhabits. Maybe the character you create will uncover some secrets of his shadowed world. Time will tell. This is not my last will and testament. Take some time to look into the history of our church. Not long after I was first stationed here, I spent some time reading up on the founding of our village. My father was a history professor and my first paying job was doing research for him, so I know my way around libraries and historical documents.
Poking around in my spare time over the course of several months, I delved past the superficial accounts found in grade-school history books and tourist museums. You know the story. Plucky colonists endure an adventurous passage across the Atlantic, find themselves in a strange new land, roll up their sleeves and persevere thanks to a strong work ethic and some help from friendly natives. The ship that carried the Jamestown colonists — the first permanent colony in the U. And though the Mayflower lost only one passenger on its journey — and hosted the birth of one — it sustained terrible damage in storms and swells, leaving the travelers waterlogged and miserable.
At one point the ship was leaking so badly that the group considered turning back. But they were just over halfway there, so it made more sense to press on. I found several accounts of an illness or plague that struck the voyagers not long after they left England, and that continued right up to their arrival at Plymouth.
Frightened crew and passengers forced themselves to stay awake until dawn, hoping to avoid being stricken. History seems to have forgotten this grisly story for the most part. I did come across one magazine article written in by a doctor and amateur historian. There were no symptoms reported, and all the victims seem to have died in their sleep, going to bed healthy and never waking again. His theory was that the deaths were, in fact, murders. O r perhaps some of the voyagers just went insane from the isolation, discomfort and danger of life at sea.
Whatever happened, the article goes, a cover story was needed and a plague was the best they could come up with. They appeared concerned about the mysterious deaths, but no more concerned than they were about the weather or running out of food. Maybe they were just more circumspect in the way they kept their journals than we are today. The colony had a tough start. Most of the early colonies did. Plymouth lost all but 32 of its original settlers in its first winter.
And the Roanoke Island colony in the Virginia territory had no one left when the next wave of settlers arrived. The reason for this startling development is not given. Shortly after I pieced together this account, events took place that distracted me from my hobby. Some of my congregation took ill and died of pneumonia.
It was January of an especially brutal winter. There had been four deaths in the space of two-and-a-half weeks. Two of the deceased had been residents of a nursing home, one had been a young mother of two, and the fourth an apparently healthy college student. The funerals were bleak. A few days after the fourth death, I visited a family that lived up the mountain a ways.
I got there after dark. Even my four-wheel-drive had some trouble with the ice and snow that night. I parked by the road and walked up to the house. Ice-covered mounds rose on both sides of me like mountains on the moon.
The air was so quiet that I thought I could hear the faint ping of each snowflake landing on the ice. The house was a two- or three-bedroom ranch. As I walked to the front door I passed a lit window and happened to glance through. I could see into the bedroom of their youngest daughter. The girl was sleeping with a faint smile on her face. He was something of an eccentric figure. He had short, white hair, a neatly trimmed silver-white goatee, and was in an allwhite suit and tie.
The nightlight was on and he cast a long shadow across her bed. I prayed with them, gave them some advice about approaching their boy, and suggested some ways to open a line of communication. All told, I was there for about two hours. The next day the girl was pronounced dead of a cerebral aneurysm. As I stood at the pulpit the following Sunday, I felt as if death was laying siege to our community, circling us, picking us off one by one.
I looked at the faces of my congregation and wondered who would be next. I tried to sound upbeat and confident during my sermon, but it was obvious to me that my words were powerless, empty, unable to have any true effect.
Walking to the graveside, a marble statue capped with snow made me think of the man in white. I recalled glimpsing him in a hallway, wondering at his unusual way of dressing. I thought about that for several minutes, and as we gathered around the small casket, I remembered. I was visiting the nursing home on Route 11, just west of town. A woman there died of pneumonia later that week. A few days after my recollection I asked Mr.
I decided to spend some time looking through church records. It seemed impossible to steer my congregation through this dark, cold winter. I wanted to see what my predecessors had done during times of crisis. On the second day of investigating, I found a box of some very old papers that had apparently been mislabeled. And at the very bottom of the stack, sealed in some sort of plastic or laminate, was a parchment whose appearance gave every indication of being hand-written in the 17th century.
I felt a thrill of discovery, which quickly turned to horror. We have eaten the horses and dogs. The children cry. There is talk of eating the corpses. But I shall return, fifty years hence, and take what I must from thirteen of you and your kin, and each fifty years do likewise. And should there be one who withholds my payment, all shall be slaughtered. But do as I bid and your village shall prosper always, this I vow.
It is so cold. And so those of us fresh with youth now will, as we grow gray, wait for the return of the One in White. They were death records, carefully annotated. Just fifty years ago, there had been thirteen deaths among the parishioners in the month of January.
Fifty years earlier, the same. And fifty years before that. Clearly someone with an active imagination had put all these pieces together, then boxed them up and moved on to something else.
But— I visited the family whose little girl had been lost. They were taking it hard, as was to be expected. We prayed and talked.
At one point I asked as casually as I could muster if they had ever seen anyone in the parish who was thin, had white hair, and who favored white clothing? They immediately became uneasy. They claimed not to know who I was talking about, but their eyes were hesitant, agitated. Part of the grief reaction? The thing was, five people had died since January 1st.
And it was only January 23rd. That weekend I spent a lot of time working on my sermon. A resurrection story. I read it slowly and clearly during the Sunday service. Then I started my sermon. Death, I said, is not the ultimate power.
Jesus triumphed over death, and through him, so will we all. How we have personified it into the form of the grim reaper. Imagine if death was a man, I went on. If he walked among us, picking us out like a farmer choosing lambs for the slaughter. I connected that to the image of Christ as the lamb of God, who triumphed over death. But if death is a man dressed in white, then Christ comes clothed in garments purer than white. I finished the sermon in a more conventional way, urging prayer, trust in God and support of each other.
But I had seen some of the parishioners shift in the pews, glancing at each other uncomfortably. I was sure my words had an effect. That evening there was a knock on my office door. I replied and in walked Mr. Crane along with five other men and women. The church council. None of them did. I can take it. Why all the long faces? Eckerd, I think. I left a message. How did you know that?
Eckard chimed in. The others gave her a dirty look. They looked shocked, their eyes bulging at the mention of the number.
Crane licked his lips. Eckard added. Who could I talk to about this? I only knew of one person, and I resolved to go down to the chapel and speak with Him. My desk faced the only door. There was no way anyone could have entered unseen. It was as if my muscles had been turned to stone.
My head refused to turn. Crane said. Instead, I felt the pressure of a hand on my shoulder. Moving my eyes to the right brought slender fingers just into view. Pale fingernails with fine white hair on the knuckles. The sleeve of a white suit-jacket. We each have our place in Creation. Its touch had been very light. Something more precious than you can know. Now that I know about you? A connection was tripped in my brain. I staggered across the room and grabbed a bookcase for balance.
There was no one else there with me, no one I could perceive. But everything reinforces the realization I came to that night. It waits in the shadows, hovering over our heads, crouched behind the bushes. Worse, it might draw the attention of the thing we want to ignore. Now I realize my duty is to keep them closed. To keep from them the awful truths that would strip away their ability to function.
Like the church council that night. They were dimly aware of what was happening and struggled to keep a newcomer in the dark, all the while straining not to learn more than they already knew. The Elements of Stylish Horror This book presents rules for playing a type of roleplaying game called Storytelling.
In this type of game, the traditional elements of a story — theme, mood, plot and character — are more important than the rules themselves. The rules serve to help you tell stories about your characters in an interactive experience. The triumphs and tragedies of your characters as they try to survive and even thrive in the World of Darkness are the main focus, not dice rolls or lists of traits. Storytelling games involve at least two, although preferably four or more players.
Here are some of the key elements that both players and Storytellers should keep in mind when telling stories in the World of Darkness. Merely asking overarching questions is enough to capture a theme. Those who participate in these conspiracies should uncover as much of them as they can, lest investigators become unwitting pawns in the games of greater forces.
But drawing back the curtain on one mystery reveals even more curtains, each hiding new secrets. Yet, characters can certainly work to reveal more than would otherwise be known, and so free themselves from these dark influences.
While each story has its own central theme, the looming theme behind them all explores the dramatic ramifications of a world of supernatural secrets. Storytellers and players alike should be mindful of this theme when they feel the need to return to the roots of the game. Where are they? People pretend nothing is out of order and go about lives as usual.
Whether this behavior can be traced back to the ancient depredations of supernatural creatures or to fear of the occult, people refuse to recognize it. They are asleep to the realities around them and refuse to open their eyes. Even those who do confront the shadows do so with a sense of dread. Exploring the unknown promises rewards, but also risks unforeseen consequences. Are the potential rewards worth the risks? Every step into mystery is onto unsafe ground, and few march boldly into the night.
Atmosphere — Threatening Symbolism Combine theme and mood in the fog-bound streets, rave clubs, towering penthouses, midnight woods and cloistered sanctums of the World of Darkness.
Everything in the World of Darkness has foreboding significance. Nothing is necessarily what it seems. A dead tree might secretly harbor a bitter spirit. A car might be a reservoir for magical energies that could kill the unwary.
Everything is a cipher for something else, lending mysterious significance to otherwise coincidental events. Dare you open the letter? The World of Darkness rarely communicates its secrets directly. Instead, mysteries can be read in places and things all around — symbols of deeper, unsettling truths. Many people are willfully blind to these messages, fearing what they reveal. Meaningless happenstance. Looked at from a global perspective, it seems the same. Looking closer, though, the details differ.
Nobody goes to the old quarry anymore. That new nightclub is so cool, but creepy. Did you see that guy who kept staring last night? The advantage to playing a game of contemporary horror is that it can take place in your own backyard, literally.
You can populate your hometown with all manner of secret terrors, imagining how the local conveniencestore clerk might really be the thrall of a supernatural creature.
Perhaps he helps his master to feed by collecting the corpses of the homeless people who sleep in the bushes out back. Or your blowhard mayor might be a member of a secret society dedicated to keeping the spoils of power within a small clique, preventing others from awakening to their true potential.
Characters in the World of Darkness can blur the line between reality and the occult. Exploring a world of mystery that tries to keep itself hidden. A world that punishes those who look too deep. But those who refuse to look suffer even worse.
There are no easy answers, and knowing is not half the battle. Cancelled following Dr. Some people think of me as some kind of Indiana J ones. P ause for laughter. They imagine I spend my time pushing through cobweb-infested catacombs or hacking through the jungle with native guides at my heels. W e continue to search for cryptids, whose existence is hinted at by folklore, cultural tradition and physical evidence.
These animals and others draw the attention of thousands of cryptozoologists every year, many of whom are credible scientists. But I propose the existence of a special category of cryptids. These sorts of beings turn up in our history and folklore time and time again. And about half the time, the escapees are never recovered.
That includes larger beasts like monkeys, ungulates and big cats. F erals If you wanted to hide from humans, the most obvious solution would be to place yourself as far from civilization as possible. The key strategy for finding out more about them is, I think, not to go looking for them in their own environment. All you can do is hope to get lucky. The edge of a field, where an ice pack blends with the ocean, the border between a desert and a savannah.
These are all classic edge environments, where organisms can easily be observed moving from one ecoclime to another. In the case of feral anthrocryptids, an edge environment is a place where a relatively small human community abuts a large, undeveloped wilderness.
Even at that, the ocean passages are difficult to cross, especially in fall and spring. There are no towns or any permanent structures on the island. Among the most notable is the case of Oscar Johnson in H e was a logger who was taking time off to do some fishing. H e reported that one night while sleeping on the beach, he was picked up in his sleeping bag and carried almost five miles inland. When he was finally set down and able to get out of his bag, he found himself surrounded by a group of large, hirsute creatures that had the combined features of men and apes.
He said he was kept prisoner for six days and given meals of water and raw fish before he escaped. The beach is pristine and the forest, just a hundred yards away, towers over you like an army of giants.
At night the northern lights seem close enough to touch. Yet one night my guide and I were awoken to what sounded like the howling of wolves. The next morning, there were several rows of footprints slide 4 that led from the beach straight into the surf. These are clearly some type of animal print.
But as you can see from the tape measure in this picture, the prints are huge. They continue right into the water. Drink w ater. Put off questions till later. The Unearthly There are other ways to keep a low profile than to hide. An approach successfully used by many organisms is camouflage.
There are many variations on this strategy, from protective coloration — blending into the background — to mimicking another species. I also have several citations of them being encountered in airports.
Descriptions of these beings vary, but there are two commonalities to most encounters. The first is their physical appearance. Their voices are musical, strangely accented, and they wear cologne with complex scents. Habitat What would it take to conceal yourself among a large group of human beings? First of all, your best bet would be to set yourself up among a large, cosmopolitan group, the more diverse the better. In areas where people are used to crossing paths with a range of ethnicities, languages, clothing styles and behaviors, any flaws in your disguise are less likely to stand out.
It would also help to have economic resources at your disposal. Money buys privacy and discretion. They are also sighted at exclusive resorts, nightclubs and hotels. Pause for laughter. The only residents are the staff of a scientific research facility located at the center of the zone.
I found this to be the case when I visited as a graduate student. N ot only were our radios and televisions unable to receive signals, our walkie-talkies were inoperable. Our first day there, we were on our way to the research facility when our jeep stalled.
As we were bent over it trying to find the problem, we heard footsteps behind us. I remember turning around and wondering if I was imagining things. I saw a tall person standing there. I tend to think it was a man. The truth is, he could have been either male or female. He had long hair that was so blond it was almost white. He wore simple clothes. A pale shirt, gray shorts, unremarkable hiking boots. My professor said hello and asked if the stranger was from the research center.
He nodded. We stared at each other for a few awkward moments. The stranger had a slight smile on his face the whole time. By the time we turned back to the stranger, he was gone.
The incident left us both badly shaken. We realized later that the stranger had carried no water bottle or hiking gear of any kind. N ot even a sun hat. And even though the terrain around us was flat as a pancake, the stranger had vanished in seconds, leaving not even a footprint. When we reached the research facility, the staff assured us that there was no one in the area who met that description. Certainly no one could have hiked that far into the zone without provisions, and a routine aerial survey later that day showed no evidence of any vehicle but our own.
The Outsiders The third group, outsiders, might also be termed zoophantoms, suggesting something that takes the illusion of an organism but may be of a different order altogether. But I believe that a detached, clear-minded approach to investigating them is the best tack.
S lide 6 , pause for laughter Outsiders come in many forms, from animated balls of light to spectral visitations to simulacrums of seeming flesh and blood. Sometimes they resemble a deceased loved one, or a stranger whose identity is discovered later. Some of them seem to act mindlessly, wandering without purpose or repeating the same behavior over and over again. Others may act deliberately or even maliciously.
Habitat Careful observation of the data, and application of simple models of animal behavior, yields some interesting theories about these cryptids. First of all, they seem very territorial. Outsiders do not seem to like crowds. Outsiders have an affiliation with human emotion. They tend to turn up at places of emotional turmoil. These places appeal to them, but only after the action is over, sometimes centuries after. If human emotions leave behind some type of subtle energy or vibration, perhaps these ephemeral creatures feed on them.
If their choice of territory proves unlucky — the house is sold, the old castle is refurbished — they rely on startling behavior to try to reclaim their areas. Example: Cemetery of St. James, London, England Two years ago a friend of a friend described what seemed to me to be incidents of outsider activity. I was particularly intrigued because the events occurred in a cemetery.
To me, the possibility added credence to the idea that outsiders are not the souls of the restless dead. After all, nobody actually dies in a cemetery, and the deceased usually had no attachment to the place during life. There are plenty of visitors to provide sustenance, but no permanent residents to intrude on your privacy. Long story short, we spend the night in the acre Cemetery of St.
James, in the Highgate section of north London. Over 16 7 , people are buried there. Every so often a disinterred body is found, causing quite a stir. My associate had connections that got us permission to remain on the grounds after dark. After the sun went down, the gravestones and monuments seemed to take on different shapes in the corners of your eyes.
Or so we thought. Maybe some of you will figure it out. History is a lie. If creatures that walk and talk like people exist, how long have they been here? Ancient legends certainly seem to describe some of these beings. Are the superstitious ravings of our ancestors true? Maybe there really are such things as vampires, werewolves and sorcerors — and always have been.
Are there beings who actively work to falsify the evidence of the past, covering their tracks from all records, written or otherwise? Perhaps the facts are right but the reasons are wrong. What if he was transporting something away from the Old World and into the New, a land he knew existed thanks to legends and map fragments? Ridiculous, of course. Contemplating these sorts of wacko conspiracies helps us to imagine that all conspiracies are merely the result of overactive imaginations.
But what about less prominent events in history, those that are still shrouded in mystery? For instance, what caused the Tunguska Crater in Siberia? The official explanation is that it was a meteor.
And yet, in the World of Darkness, nomadic hunters of the time reportedly swore to a French journalist that strange creatures were sighted in the region. Peasants whispered for years that those who traveled too close to the crater at night would sleepwalk for months afterward. Rubbish, some people say. Case solved. Viewing history through the lens of supernatural machination allows us to mine the past for stories. The entire tapestry of history, from the invention of agriculture to the nuclear bomb, can be interpreted in a sinister light, with warring forces of occult beings and secret societies using ignorant humans as pawns in their eternal games.
What could we achieve if only we could remove the veil from our eyes and see things as they are? Human potential is limitless, hampered only by our own unwillingness to question and deal with the ramifications of reality.
Beware, however, to whom you address any questions, lest you become enlisted into the armies of the night and wage their wars instead of your own. And that was how I learned the secret history of the world. After a time, the ancients desired servants to dwell with them, servants who walked upright and had 5 7 5 6 5 pleasing shapes, and who could speak. But these animals retained their wildness and did not make good servants.
They were the Second Children, whom men called demons. And these were the Third Children, called mankind. And mankind served the ancients in peace and contentment.
Mankind knew not death then. Those whose bodies became worn and aged were sent to sleep in the shadow of the Earth and returned after a time restored to health and youth.
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