No one’s entirely sure exactly when The Continents were overrun. All anyone knew was that one minute the days were harmonious, laden with peace, stuffed full of serenity and the next, nature decided she had other plans. At first, The People of The Continents hoped for retribution.
As all victims of disaster do, The People collectively barraged through the stages of grief. Initially, they simply could not fathom why their peaceful homes of centuries were crumbling from the foundations. Disaster embraced The People like a fickle long lost lover, leaving them naked and alone, fury clenched in their fists. Much like the stages of grief depict, it was pure unadulterated anger that riddled the communities first. Bargaining with The Gods only came once the initial shock of betrayal had passed through them like a winter chill.
Then came the long-lingering stage of The Depression; a needle and thread piercing each and every one one of them, sewing them together to create a blanket thick enough to submerge every soul into a darkness with no apparent end.

That brings us to The Acceptance. Once The Continents had battled The Alternates for what felt like an eon, begging the Gods for forgiveness, hoping the appearance of their unimaginable horrors would go as quickly as they came, The People adjusted to their new reality. Only once they’d endured lifetimes of suffering, blood and brutal deaths that ransacked their very existence and disfigured all of their realities, The People learned that the emergence of The Alternates could not be undone. The Crack in the Dezert was not going to be sealed. No matter how many nights were spent on their knees, bloodied hands clasped, mouths downturned into pleas of mercy.
Still stranded in the sea of grief, every suffering soul that swam the stormy seas of the Continents at that time felt completely and utterly robbed of their lives by The Gods. There was no time to analyse why the Dezert crack had appeared, why those murderous creatures had been allowed to escape their underground prison, why their bloodthirsty revenge had been wrought through so many innocent people.

After The Depression, The People pulled on the sweater of Acceptance; woollen and too-tight, it clung to their sweat-slicked skin to suffocate.
“These hellhounds aren’t going anywhere; They won’t die, they don’t sleep, they won’t rest until all of us are taken from this life”
Each community of The Continents collectively took a rugged breath and acknowledged the inevitable: The Continents were changed. Their lands were ransacked, families destroyed, homes eradicated.
The Alternates were here to stay and The Continents, divided once and now united in their pain, could not restore the peace they once knew. Until it all changed once more.

It started with the appearance of subspecies, creatures that Professors had only ever seen ancient scrawlings of. Believed to be myths and horror stories told round campfires, The Alternates were failed creations buried deep underground by The Gods (apparently) before The Continents had even fully formed. The People were aware of a time long before their existence, a world where The Alternates ruled over the land and took all they wanted from Nature. These misshapen, beastly, twisted creatures were so far from what The People recognised. Even their minds eye could never have put together an image of The Alternates for they’d never witnessed a horror comparable. These hellish creations were supposed to have been long-gone, long-dead, long-buried. Breeds of Alternates varying from huge, wyvern-like creatures to coal-sized shadows that could infiltrate through the crevices of homes into the mouths of sleeping victims. The subspecies were the start. Then, the mother breeds were discovered and they became evermore terrifying one discovery after another.

When the Dezert’s ground randomly split forming a cavernous divide between borders, they emerged. A natural disaster with catastrophic consequences. Like prisoners thirsty for escape, The Alternates must’ve felt the crack of sunlight hit their skin, heard the rip of rock splitting, and awoke from their dreamless sleep. Deprived, desperate and, most importantly, ravenous.

Clawing the walls of the newly formed crevice, slithering up from the depths of the planet and spreading their wings for the first time in many lifetimes, The Alternates introduced themselves to the People of The Continents with no bias they’d created amongst their own. Mother, child, elderly; The Alternates fed. Ripping screaming children from their beds, dragging well-built working men from their posts, chewing through defences with a viciousness the most hardened army were unprepared for. The sight of a swarm of darkness escaping from between those 2 dusty walls would haunt nightmares from generation to generation. Like a tsunami, an inescapable wave of salivating, roaring Alternates poured out from the fissure and came across the Dezert communities first. They were hit the hardest. Not many families from the Dezert survived. Then the Mountaines were attacked by the Swarm, their people’s homes built atop rocky formations being knocked from cliffs. Bodies tumbling from the mountain sides, rolling like stray boulders down the shoulders of the cliffs. The people of the neighbouring continent, The Hylls, thought there was some kind of earthquake. Their scouts believed huge rock formations were crumbling and that those bodies sent scattered over ridges were just big bits of sediment.

Once The Depression had ransacked the Continents, like a forest fire of punishing cruelty leaving desolation and destruction in its wake, the People began to understand they couldn’t submit to the ruling of these ancient creatures any longer. Succumbing to The Alternates violence, living (no, surviving) with a permanent fear gripping their hearts, the People across The Dezert, Mountaines and Hylls had hidden and cowered for years. Ironically, they eventually retreated underground after many years of suffering. Why would The Alternates return there after so many years imprisoned beneath the Earth? That’s what gave The People their ingenious idea to retreat sub-terrain and train for the Quelling. The Quelling would release them; a name given to the process of eliminating the millions of Alternates that now populated the Continents above ground.

That, although a hugely abbreviated version of events, is the history of the People and the chaos that the Alternates escape brought.

Times have since changed, dear reader.
Don’t worry, The People beneath ground tired of being victimised by their near extinction.

Now, there are soldiers trained to fight. Not in the way you’re thinking, no. Soldiers who study The Alternates nature, biology, diet, motives and movements. These people are merciless, fearless warriors. Subterranean life had forced people to evolve, physically and mentally. The lack of sunlight, the polluted air, the inhalation of dust and the desperation that filled their every day caused the People to change. Perhaps Nature took pity on them and decided to even the playing field. Too long had The Alternates ruled the Continents mercilessly. But they’d successfully, albeit unwittingly, induced survival of the fittest. The weakest of the People died first, whittling down the race to the strongest few. Those smart and strong enough to survive had retreated below and began reforming some sense of normality in their new underground home. With just the strongest of their species surviving, the People began to notice a shift in their genetics. Their composition at a molecular level deconstructed and restructured built for battle. Built for survival.
Something that usually took centuries had happened within a handful of generations. Nature had blessed the People with their own genetic mutations seemingly designed to fight back.

Now, it wasn’t entirely uncommon for some People to possess a Strength beyond humankind. A Strength that had non-gifted men cowering. This enhanced power was a primally perfect way to fend off the jaws of an Alternate. Not just by holding them agape, but by snapping them clean open.
Only the strongest of People could wield weapons powerful enough to fight off one of the grotesque Alternates that still preyed upon the People. And those gifted with the Strength understood immediately their responsibility.

Then, many children generations ago had been born with hypersensitive eyesight; perception that penetrated walls, skins and skulls. Named “Perception”, this skill was seen as a spiritually superior gift. The ability to see what what was hidden in darkness as clearly as if in light. Perception penetrated beyond the present; it could visualise outcomes, intentions and buried dreams.

The last of the genetic mutations was the Whisper. Vocal cords morphed and mutated into something quite different to the average voice of the People. Whispering was an art beheld by a lucky few. It was the ability to both slip beneath and far exceed the vocal range of the average person. Ironically, a Whisper was imperceptible by the human ear both in its lowest and highest frequency. The Whisper, when mastered, could quietly coerce and control the minds of many creatures but it could also be hurled at such a volume the resulted in The Alternates, and any others targeted, audio canal fractured and burst.