The mountains of the land, wreathed in their seemingly ever present damp mist, peered high over the valley and city that laid nestled between them. It was these peaks that sheltered a strange focal point, one wherein light was never quite bright enough and day never seemingly long enough. Not for lack of either, but more that every day between the frequent and pouring rain, they existed as a boundary to the outside world and contained it from the restless, peering eyes. A surprise it would not be to anyone who expected those strange others to seek out a place like this, or rather that they merely existed here all along, but it mattered little which it truthfully was; this place, this darkly forested and rigorous terrain, concealed from all others deathly and grim secrets.

Here shadows of men existed, trapped by their own doing or that of others. The downturn had not been kind to this remote place far to the northwest, its once more densely populated and growing industry laid bare now. Those who had not escaped it found it ever more difficult now and with each passing year more and more people and businesses seemed to vanish. Entire swathes of the already grey, wet industry and its concrete now more hollow than ever. Crime flourished from these things, born of desperation and ever increasingly fewer means to enforce the law of the land, but in large part that there was so much open to it now. The peering eyes and resistances had fallen to the wayside, these troubles becoming just another piece in the greater puzzle and accepted as much.

The further north one drew toward the border, the more remote and desolate things became. Driving through these mountainous passes, one could find only the rare town of no more than a few hundred at best. Commerce and trade along these routes, once frequented by rolling convoys of trucks, had become more quiet than most any era those alive now could recall. These people however, did not envy those to their south - those of the sprawl. As while they knew life was more difficult, more problematic, their communities would persist with some semblance of consistency.

The west, beyond the mountains, laid the sea and with it some coastal gatherings that remained. Once, these fisheries and their fishermen, often plunged into the cold waters, but few ships stayed today; many having abandoned the profession. These ghost towns dot the coast, remnants of the earlier days when legality and industry were more favorable. Now? Now they stand as testament to how far the world has fallen...

It took wars and foreign powers conflicting to unsettle the global power, but really more than anything it was the darkness in the hearts of men - the greed and want crushed their economy and industry. As was proof in this city, the wooded area of Silverstone; its name having been inherited from prospectors countless years past. But even these shadowed souls paled in comparison to those of darker things yet that dwelled among them, hidden in plain sight. True fiends, true [i]monsters[/i], more than men call this place home as well. Not that they had no others, but that this situation of isolation and misery is easily exploited.

These [i]things[/i], these others, are not numerous but they can be varied.

Some feed on the lifeblood of their victims to grasp at what was once their own life, others wander restlessly without definitive purpose or reason to exist, cursed for eternity to feel a drive that they cannot answer and cannot find. Others yet are shells of their former selves, furiously grasping for any tie to humanity they can maintain. These terrible, terrible few falter often, evading their own destruction by sheer myth - by being legend; things of mockery and joke.

But they are very real.

A real enough threat that the surrounding land to the north of the city of Silverstone, in the town of Jennings, has come to witness in small part. No more than a thousand-five-hundred in its population, it was formerly one of the most stable regions in the state. Protected by its great granite mountains, surrounded by passes, filled with fresh water and lumber, it had few wants or worries short of harsh winters and winding roads. That has changed however, as a recent incursion of unusual attacks by the wild life have surged beyond any expectation.

There's no doubt its wolves, but there's no explanation as to why or even how.

Yet...

[@RedXCross][@Kidd]