"I don't want to die!"
"Then you never should have been born."
-Selena to her victim, from the Microsoft show "Love At First Bite"

The young woman sat at the back of the bar, a bottle of wine open beside her. She looks up at the young man accross the room, feeling his regard. He's young, handsome in a boring, normal way and has a cocky smile on his face she finds vaguely annoying. He sees her and smiles in what he seems to assume is a confident smile and swaggers towards her. "Hey pretty lady. Whatcha doing all alone?" She ignores him and smells his annoyed anger. "Hey, I"m talking to you!" She doesn't look up but thinks go away. He blinks, looking confused, then says "Hey, unless you're waiting for someone, I'm - " She looks up and Bernard Crown steps back at the pure contempt in her gaze. The air feeels cold even though it's summer. She smiles and he turns pale - paler than her, he realises now as fear washes through him and makes him feel painfully sober. "Go away, child, and you might live to see your next birthday." Berny doesn't ask anything, doesn't even wonder how she knows this, but just stumbles for the door and whispers a brief prayer of thanks under his breath even though it takes three hot showers before he feels warm again.

I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams.
- W.B. Yeats

The young girl wakens with a sharp cry that brings her mother hurrying over to the pallet "Mom, I had a bad dream...." The mother relaxes, slightly, and says "It must have been bad. I thought something had bitten you!" Her daughter looks up, the fear in her eyes causing her mother to stiffen slightly. Her daughter's voice is soft and somehow detached. "The sky was fire, and grass. Green and red," to her mother's frown."Something was after me, something dark and evil." "A demon?" enquires the mother anxiously. "N - no. It came from a place that doesn't exist," the young girl says with a chilling certainty. She looks up at her mother. "It wanted me. It promised to come back." Her mother ignores the sudden stab of fear in her heart and says "It won't. You're my daughter and I won't let it." Her daughter looks up and knows, with a certainty that seems both gift and curse from her dream, that her mother can't protect her.

He who cannot agree with his enemies is controlled by them.
Chinese Proverb

In a small dingy hotel room a tall, broad man with deep blue eyes steps out of the bathroom, wiping his too-red hands clean with a towel. "You were right. His men are there." The other man is shorter, wearing jeans and a t-shirt but somehow looks very elegant, even regal. "They told me." He touches a small stone on a thin silver necklace around his neck. 'The cavern in Trail. With sensors." The other man finishes cleaning his hands off. "Frankenstein." At the raised eyebrow of the other, "Science and magic, together. Never a good thing." The man on the couch nods. "He was never interested in that before." he pauses. "How have your dreams been?" The larger man steps back, his expression uneasy. "Different," curtly. The smaller man smiles thinly. "Of other worlds, perhaps?" "I hate it when you do that," with a sigh. "It explains his interest. Something is happening, and we know the other dragons will tell him nothing. That leaves you." The taller man's eyes acquire a red gleam, like the embers of a smouldering fire. "Surely you're not proposing we help him!" The smaller man looks up, and something in his expresion causes the taller man to step back involuntarily. "He took away my city, and my nature. I have not forgotten and will not forgive. We ally, because he's scared of me, and needs you. If whatever is happening scares him, Cecil..." Cecil nods, the fire in his eyes vanishing as if it never was. "Besides, if he pissess off, you can off him Ed. He thinks that." "I know. We'll need help." There is a long pause, then Cecil says "Faline? Rei?" "They have done enough. Something is happening, and it has to be met." Cecil nods and sighs. "I suppose I'd better get rid of the body of his agent before cleaning staff comes in?"

What drives people crazy is trying to understand reality. Reality is terrible. It can kill you. Given time, it certainly will kill you. The reality is pain -- you said that! But its the lies, the evasions of reality, that drive you crazy. It's the lies that make you want to kill yourself.
- Ursula Le Guin, "The Dispossessed"

The young man screams, a high wordless howl as his legs breaks with a soft, crunching noise. Another bat decends, and a hoarse voice says "Doggy boy was after that girl. I could see it..." The first man waits, then says "Healing fast," dispationately. His silver-coated baseball bat comes down again and the young were jerks and tries to crawl away. The second man laughs with glee and swings again, and again, and again. The young man whimpers and attempts to curl up as blow after blow breaks bones. The second man stops, uncertain. "What if he reports us?" The first man shakes his head, lighting a cigarette. "He won't." "But they heal fast." The first man nods. "That's why I brought this." He pulls out a thick, silver chain and some tent pegs that look ... wrong, somehow. "It'll hold him, and he'll heal." The second man looks down at the slowly healing were. "Broken?" In an almost childish glee. "Oh, yes. Broken forever." The young man looks up through the pain "No, please...." his voice cracking. The first man kneels down, and holds a small knife to the young man's eyes, then says in a far too gentle voice. "The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart: And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee." The knife blade is pushed, almost delicately. The young man screams as his eyes are blinded. The first man stands. "The blowtorch should make sure it's permanent." The second man speaks. "Praise the lord." They pound the pegs in and tie the chains around the broken bones. The young man writhes as the fire burns his eyesockets last and the first man kneels down, his breath terrifyingly clean. "May you be forgiven."

Oh, my friend, its not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left.
- Hubert Humphrey

The young man sighs and shakes his head "When I was your age..." The young girl flying above his head rolls her eyes. "I know, I know. People didn't do this in public. I'm just getting the kite for the boy." The young man snorts. "It's always about boys, isn't it?" The girl sighs, mutters "you should know," and flies into the tree, coming out with a kite which she brings down to a wide-eyed young boy and his equally wide-eyed mother. "Here you go, miss." She smiles and the mother recoils. "You're teeth." The girl's smile fades slightly. "It's ok, you're not my type." The mother blinks, then laughs sharply, a little surprised. "Thank you." The young boy looks at the girl, then says "I want to be like you when I grow up!" The girl blinks, astonished, then shakes her head. "No. You don't. Be human, and like it." Her voice has a slight resoance as she catches the child's eye. The young man shakes his head slightly but says nothing. The mother looks at her, understanding something from the way the young man looked at her. "Thank you ..." The girl smiles, painfully. "Being human is better." She looks down at the boy. "I've got a friendly pet dog you could play with, if you like?" The boy looks up at his mother, who hears the young man sigh. She looks up and sees something, a need, a longing in his eyes that stirs something in her. She smiles at them both. "Jamie would love it. And if you'd like to come over for dinner...?" She hesitates, blushing, and the young man chuckles. "Kathy can bring her dog. It's a retreiver," with a twinkle in his eyes. The young girl watches them walk away and shakes her head. "Being friends with you is a very weird experience, Simon." The young man smiles. "I didn't touch her, or the boy. And it's not Simon, here. I'd rather be normal." The girl smiles in reply, mocklingly. "Some of us never get that option."

Can you imagine a world without witches,
A world with all people the same?
Where the only known dragons are hiding in books,
And children are terribly tame?
A world without magic would be sad indeed.
I cannot imagine the pain
Of having a world where there's no Santa Claus,
Where wizards are searched for in vain.
- Robert F. Potts, from "Can You Imagine?"

Welcome to Lords of Life and Death, a free form game set in the modern world where vampires, magic, weres and other things of legend exist but humanity has only realised it for 20 years. This is that world, the world of 2020. It's a world in turmoil, with a massive market crash having crippled many nations. People are trying to adjust, trying to keep up to the changes in the world, but dark undercurrents of hate and fear are becoming common, and more widespread as governments flounder, unable to deal with both the supernatural and natural problems at the same time. In America the cities are broken, the government a shambles and other nations rejoice at their new freedom even as dark creatures move in, seeking food in a new all you can eat buffet...

Into this world come the PCs. Worried, yet?

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