A long time ago, before The Secret World found itself in the half-light of maintenance mode, I shared some fan fiction written in the style of the in-game lore entries. One told the backstory of my Templar, and the other provided some lore justification for my at the time new Elf character.

But those weren’t the only pieces of this type I wrote. Way back when I also did similar lore entries depicting the backstories of my other three characters.

With Halloween upon us and my mind once again turning toward the Dark Days, I thought now would be a good time to finally share them. In hindsight, I’m not sure why I didn’t until now.

The Fangs of the Dragon:

Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see.

TRANSMIT – initiate Papa Legba syntax – RECEIVE – initiate mambo frequency – VOODOO IS A VERY INTERESTING RELIGION FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY – initiate the fangs of the Dragon – WITNESS – Nicholas Rush.

A man leans against a wall in a darkened alley in the bad side of Ealdwic. A light flashes from an empty hand, and he puffs on a roll of dried cannabis.

“Call me Nick,” he says, smile brilliant white against dark skin. “Only my mom calls me Nicholas.”

Ghouls and vampires and sorcerers and immortals walk past, and somehow the man with the winning smile seems unfazed by it all. Amongst all the unrelenting weirdness of the Secret World, he seems to fit in.

He steps away from the wall and fades into the crowd, his passing marked only by the clatter of the bone fetishes and ritual items hanging around his neck and wrists. So many of those chosen by Gaia struggle to adjust to their new lives, yet this man navigates the crowd like one born to it. Why?

For the answer, we must crawl farther up the branches of his family tree.

Nicholas Rush was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, but his genetic material remembers a different homeland.

Decades ago, his maternal grandmother spent the first thirty years of her life in the land of the houngan and the bokor.

The line between the secret world and the world you have known is not always sharp. There are those who live on the border, glimpsing the secret and the invisible while keeping their feet planted in the mundane. The mother of Nicholas’ mother was one such.

She left her home to find a better life for her family, but she never quite forgot the dark truths she had glimpsed in those sticky Haitian nights. For the most part, she kept her knowledge to herself, content to live an ordinary life with her growing family.

But time passed, as it does, and age loosened her tongue. When Nicholas was a boy, every visit with her, every family gathering at the winter solstice and every celebration of the anniversary of his birth, would eventually lead to her expounding upon vodou, zombies, baka, and loa.

The boy never listened, dismissing her stories as the tall tales of a bored old woman. His grandmother shuffled off her mortal coil, the requisite tears were shed, and life continued apace.

Initiate the dark days.

The Dreaming Ones stir. The Immaculate Machine’s alarms sound, and new recruits are drafted into the ranks of Gaia’s chosen. Nicholas Rush is among them.

He finds himself awash in a world full of more strangeness than even his grandmother could have ever envisioned. And only then does he come to the terrible realization that every word she told him was true.

A desperate search through his bedroom closet reveals a dusty box full of dustier books. These were his grandmother’s journals, left to him by a small line in her will, kept out of some vague sentimentality but never before read. He leafs through the battered tomes, finding spells and wards, folklore and bestiaries, rituals and arcane lore. A survival guide for the secret world.

It is but a drop in the ocean of the surreal he now finds himself adrift in, but it is more than many receive.

Thus, he has a leg up in the Secret World. He has a base of occult knowledge to refer back to, and there is something in his blood that finds this all familiar. The line of the bokor runs true in his veins.

He fits in. Insomuch as anyone does in our carnival of the bizarre.

Yet what you cannot see is the worry hidden behind his ready smile. How thin the rope he clings to is.

You do not see the long hours spent poring over his ancestor’s notes in the middle of the night, the desperate wish that his grandmother had been more thorough, that she had known more.

We hear him now, whispering into the cold night air. “I wish I had listened more closely, Granny.

“I wish I had listened.”

Knowledge can be a burden, sweetling, but ignorance is not always bliss. Poor Nicholas must endure uncomfortable levels of both.

The Wannabe Gangsta:

Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see.

TRANSMIT – initiate poser protocol – RECEIVE – initiate Narcissus nomenclature – BUT IF HE LOOKS TWICE THEY’RE GONNA KICK HIS LILY ASS – initiate the wannabe gangsta – WITNESS – Josh Nolan.

Among your kind, sweetling, it is believed that there is a hard line between dreams and reality.

This is a lie. One of the many pleasant fictions propping up the oh-so-fragile world you nest in, blissfully oblivious to the ocean of predatory impossibility all around you.

For your limited minds, it is difficult to perceive the connections between the real and the imagined. For us, it is but an unbroken continuum.

Yet this can blind us. For us, your dreams as real as the air you breathe, and we cannot always tell where they end and your three dimensional reality begins.

Let us tell you about a man.

This man is the envy of all he sees. He is handsome, talented, funny, and charming. He is destined for a life of limitless success and popularity. You will find him on a beach somewhere, knee deep in females and Franklins.

That man is not Josh Nolan.

That is the man Josh Nolan believes himself to be.

As we awaken your kind, we cannot cast too wide a net. Sweetlings are too fragile, too unpredictable, to have their illusions shattered en masse. We must therefore choose carefully.

But so little do we understand your limited minds. We look for a spark, for something special, but sometimes we do not understand what we are seeing.

We saw the dreams of Josh Nolan. We saw what he imagined himself to be. We did not see the disapproving calls from his mother every Saturday, the rolled eyes that followed him wherever he went, the empty bank account, the messy apartment.

We chose poorly. We granted immortality to a creature who could not even properly navigate your species’ crude mating rituals.

Often sweetlings are terrified when they confront the reality of the dark days. Not Josh Nolan. The immortal ignoramus is shielded against the horrors by his own continued delusions.

He is living in an action movie, in a video game. He vanquishes monsters with a smile and a quip, caring not at all for collateral damage, for subtlety, for following the orders of his masters under the eye and the pyramid.

And when he is done, he imbibes alcohol and other substances, he dances and vocalizes and takes advantage of Gaia’s gifts to push his body beyond mortal limits.

His illusions cannot last forever. Sooner or later he will find a terror his haphazard demonstrations of power cannot easily vanquish. He will encounter horrors his wilful ignorance cannot fully protect him from.

Or perhaps his superiors will tire of his antics. The illumined ones keep their agents on a long leash; one’s indiscretions must be truly extravagant to even gain the notice of the all-seeing eye. But even they have limits. Already the woman in the blue dress tires of his leering stares.

To us, dream and reality are not separate, but to you, there is a clear line between them. We fear Mister Nolan will never be able to cross this line, to make his dream self his real self.

What is time to us? We stand outside. All things have happened. All things are happening. We see all possible futures, and very few of them look hopeful for Josh Nolan.

Let his example stand as a lesson, sweetling. The gifts of the Immaculate Machine are not toys to be squandered.

The Flame of the Dragon:

Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see.

TRANSMIT – initiate the yin and the yang – RECEIVE – initiate cauterization protocol – FIRST DO NO HARM – initiate the flame of the Dragon – WITNESS – Kamala Lakshmi.

There is a duality to all things. Darkness is the other side of light. Hate is the other side of love. Tenderness turns to violence at the flip of a coin.

Once upon a time, there was a girl, and she was kind. The people around her hurt, and she wanted to help them. She gave anything to them she could that would offer comfort, even if it was only simple vocal sounds.

She found she had gifts. A keen mind and steady hands. She saw the ways she could make the world better with her gifts.

She became a healer. Long, sleepless nights spent studying. Days spent swallowing bile as she cut into cadaver specimens.

It was never enough. She wept tears of sorrow for all those she could not save.

Once upon a time, there was a girl, and she was angry. The people around her hurt, and she asked, “Why?” Why does the world allow for such pain? Why does no one help?”

She found that the world did not value her as it should. She was told she was lesser because of the configuration of her sexual organs, because of who she chose to give access to those organs. She saw a world subdivided by arbitrary lines.

She became an activist. Long, sleepless nights spend scouring cyberspace for like-minded rebels. Days spent shouting slogans and dodging rubber bullets.

It was never enough. She wept tears of frustration for the injustices she could not right.

The girl who was kind and the girl was angry grew up to become the woman who is in conflict. Yin and yang are not always a blissful harmony. Sometimes they are a screaming tempest, each matching each other’s fury in an endless struggle.

For all the time recorded by her fragile mortal memory, she had wanted but one thing: to make the world better. That was the sole common thread between the half of her that wanted to heal the world, and the half that wanted to break it.

Then we found her.

We have observed many reactions from those sweetlings we select to stand against the dark days. Most commonly we observe fight or flight reactions. When our chosen cross paths with other sweetlings, these reactions can be messy.

Sometimes your kind are broken by our revelations. They become drooling vegetables. Do not ask what follows.

When the woman who is conflicted found her fingers breathing fire, she gave only a Cheshire cat smile.

She adjusted to her new reality with frightening swiftness. Into the night she ventured. She found the nests of those she deemed corrupt, and she gave voice to the fire within her.

Anger motivated her, yes, but something more. Something primal. Fire is your kind’s first technology, and it awakens something childlike, something joyful, in your meat minds. The smile never left her face all through that burning night.

A few hours of impulsive fury. A poke in the eye of the society that had tried to break her under its heel. A small act, but enough to send out ripples, echoes.

Those echoes reached the ears of something ancient, something vast and terrible. The Dragon’s coils shivered in time to them.

Enter the agents of chaos.

They find in her something familiar, something they can use. They bring her into their fold. They never ask her opinion, but it matters not in the end. She would have said yes if they had asked.

Revelation comes in the rainy streets of Seoul, and the woman who is a tempest feels she has come home. In the Dragon, she sees kindred spirits. What she is told of their philosophy sets her imagination aflame, and she happily fills in the blanks of what they leave out, painting herself a picture of beautiful and terrible freedom fighters.

No longer is there conflict within her. She can heal the world by breaking it. She has found the cure for that which ails civilization, and it is the Dragon. A cauterizing flame to burn away the rot. Radiation therapy for a sick society.

Now, she is unleashed. The Dragon roars, and its flame consumes anything unfortunate enough to cross its path.

Hippocrates’ post-mortem disapproval is no concern of hers. You cut off a limb to save a patient. You destroy a society to save a world.

The tempest rages on. Yin and yang see only the harsh contrast of black and white, not the shades of grey where they meet.

As the Dark Days fall, the flame of the Dragon burns ever brighter. But is it a bonfire to ward against the darkness, or merely an end in flame instead of shadow?

Be seeing you, sweetling. By the firelight.