Between Heaven and Hell: Prologue
Alright. After several months of not writing, I finally write something. Low and behold, it's a new story to help keep my muse running. Anyways, read on whoever took the time to read this Author's note. The year is 2070. Anyone who knows
the history of the past millenia would expect what would be the new
modern age to be a time where the people of this world enjoy a higher
standard of living than any other point in time. They would expect
technological marvels; medicines that would seem like miracle cures
back in the early 21st century, new and
fantastic devices that would seem typical of a futuristic era, and
sources of near limitless energy to power them... Hell, they might
even picture the ever so common flying cars that had been a staple of
the future since the mid-20th century. All
of that stuff, the kinds of things normal people took for granted
did, and do, exist... At least in some form. Most people reading this know of
the horrible things that have happened in the past several years, and
how they are responsible for the future age falling into ruin. For
those of you who've been living under a rock for the past decade, or
for those who were born after the terrible events that caused what
can only be described as the apocalypse, I have quite a bit to
explain. For the sake of saving paper, I'll
just be blunt with this first thing. There is, or was, a hidden
world. I'm talking about the kind of hidden world that you would
usually find in a fantasy novel. The magic kind. You know, the one
where furs live completely oblivious to the fact that they are
surrounded by magic? Yes, that kind. All the fantastic creatures that
you'd read about in fairy tales, fairies, pixies, vampires,
werewolves, shape-shifters, dragons, centaurs, and any other mythical
being you can imagine actually exist... Albeit, they were hidden by
something called The Veil.
Yes, the veil. It's hard to find any novel with a hidden world that
doesn't have something like this. The veil did exactly what one would
expect it to do, and kept the magic world hidden from the standard
mortal, despite the fact that it was right in front of them. No one really understood how the
veil worked. All that was known about it was that it was some
powerful magical force that played upon the minds of normal furs to
keep them from seeing what is truly reality. Certainly helped to keep
people a bit calmer when they see what they think is a midget
breaking into their home... Especially when it's really a
bloodthirsty imp. Now, if they were really unlucky, they'd be one of
the very few mortals with the ability to see through the veil, which
is an ability usually only held by members of the magical kingdom.
Then there's a whole bunch of screaming involved, and, after the imp
is slain, a whole bunch of explaining to the mortal about the hidden
world. Speaking of slaying imps, there's
another rather important bit of the hidden world I have yet to
mention. The Venators. The Venators were, and are, a race of furs
with the ability to manipulate the energy around them... In layman's
terms, they could do magic. Actually, only about 60%-70% of them can
actually do magic. The rest live like normal people, except for the
fact that they live in Venator society. The magic of the Venator
people can be divided into two separate categories. First, there's
the Elemental side of it. This includes manipulation of the forces of
nature, which consist of Water/Ice, Earth, Air, Fire, Lightning, the
forbidden power of Darkness, and the holy power of Light. Note that
those are listed from most common to least common. Then there's the
arcane aspect of Venator magics. Arcane arts are most commonly used
for trivial things, alchemy, medicines, travel, and the like.
However, despite its common uses, it has seen use in combat. Being the magical people that they
were, the Venator preferred to live separately from the common
masses. This meant that they built cities of their own. The best
example of Venator cities would be their capital city, Arcancile.
Arcancile is known to be one of the oldest anthro cities in all of
known history. Its exact age is a mystery that has been lost to the
sands of time, however, its founding is firmly tied to the legend of
how the Venator first came to be. Now, since I'm starting to run out
of room on this page, I'll keep the explanation of the legend brief.
A long time ago, sometime around the end of the fifth millennium
B.C., eight friends were exploring the wilderness. Eventually, the
eight of them came to a large pool of water, and, for whatever
reason, an angel appeared to them. It is widely debated on why the
angel appeared to them, but it is known that, for that reason, the
angel saw fit to grant each of them a special power. Long story
short, all of them started fighting demons, and ended up having a lot
of kids, therefor starting the Venatorian race. Later on, the
original eight returned to the pool where the angel appeared, and
made it into a holy site, setting the foundations of what would later
become Arcancile. Now, in the modern day, there are
several million members of the Venatorian race. Most of us live, or
rather, lived in one of the six major Venator cities. Others decided
to set up shop in mortal cities reasons known only to them. There's a whole lot more to this,
but this is just the stuff that you need to know to begin to
understand the story to come. To a mortal, this all might sound like
the dream of a pot-head who smoked a really bad batch. Unfortunately,
it gets even weirder. However, if you think you can brave the
weirdness long enough to read all the way through, you'll learn the
true reasons as to why the world is the way it is, and the parts I
played in it. --Excerpt
from the first of the lost journals written by Auren Drakeson, a
survivor of the End War.