title: Shadows in a Timeless Myth
author: Bohannon, Teresa Thomas
description: The Lindsey Mountain Massacre was the stuff of legend—the spine chilling, wicked-cruel kind of story that evil-humored folk like to share on a dark and moonless night. It held all the makings of a fine and frightful tale, a blustering blizzard of a winter storm, a candlelit, backwoods mansion in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a Christmas Eve celebration in the year of nineteen and one, good folk killed by a vengeful haint... or a rabid bear—depending on who was doing the telling. Truth be told, no one ever really found out exactly what did happen or why, nor even realized just how far from the truth all their old stories fell...'til more than a century later, when folks 'round Lindsey started mysteriously disappearing and dying...and the ancient ones returned. From the nevermore mists, lost among dark realms of nothingness and myriad points of twinkling light, in a place that had never really been before or since, the Fates appeared, and with caprice and whimsy created all that followed as unscripted players on a stage designed for no more mind or purpose than to lessen the burdens that neverending eons of time lay upon the creators themselves. Vampiri, Sorceri, Faielri, Demorni...four distinct races, each imbued with a different bit of life and gnosis drawn from their creator's very souls—each with a Magick all their own. Each, in turn, allowed to play their own unique roles upon this wondrous stage and reign over all its beasts before fading away into an eternal life within the Paths of Mist. Each leaving the world, with their passing, a little less perfect, a little less Magick, a little dirtier, a little plainer...a little less desirable than before. This is the tale of three who dared defy the Fates...and the humans who paid the price.