Prologue

War. This word has been the focal point of our lives. North American settlers wanted freedom from the king, so it became our revolution. When a Serbian assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand, it sparked the First World War, and yet its end solved nothing. Of course, you cannot really call something the "first" without having a "second", so then Adolph Hitler comes along to invade Poland, and again we erupted into World War, and again the war solved nothing, except remove another Power hungry lunatic.

To this day, the struggles still rage savagely throughout our world. Not all are seen, though, and not all are waged by humanity's hand. There is one that's constant, one of which is more severe then any and all; the War between Good and Evil.

It is of late that the hopeful light of good has been enveloped by the dark. As it is in the sky, only a few specks of light still shine through the blackness that is consuming all it sees. Those few protectors of the light, those that have given all, whose lives shall forever be remembered, have sacrificed their own lives to vanquish the darkness. Only the darkness is growing.

Deep in the night, in the shadows of damnation, the darkness, the disease, the plague from the seventh level of hell spreads like wildfire throughout the world. More and more fall victim to it every night. The plague is Vampirism. Thought to be only a myth in the time before men, Vampires have began to show themselves again, only this time, there is no one left to stop them. Any who try are murdered, fed on, or turned into another fiend of the night. One by one, they fall in vain defeat, adding to the plagues, becoming what they once set out to kill. Some retain their voice of good, and they try to use the turn to their advantage, but they too fall in time.

So it goes on, the Vampires keep feeding, keep killing, and they keep growing. Their numbers have grown so great, that they completely control most modern cities. Their hands firmly grasp society's Scepter of Power, and with each new passing night, they become more and more powerful, with no one there to stop them. Or, so they thought.

There are more to the old campfire ghost stories than most people know. Not all you see is what it appears to be. There are more than just those few Vampires, and what's more they are on the side of the light. There are forces sent down to protect us, be it from God, or anything else you deem worthy of a deity. You'll never see them, or you may, but if you are one of those to see the warriors of this eternal strife, you're likely to be brought into it, or become just another face lost in the shadows.

Now, there is a group of immortals known as the Lycanthropes, Lycans for short, and Werewolves by myth and slang. These are but only one army in the war, but they too are the most common and feared. They do not care if a mortal or two see them in their true forms, mainly because in doing so, the human will probably go insane at the sight, or merely forget about it the next day, shoving it aside as a drunken illusion.

Lycans hold honor in their eternal conflict with the Vampires, they keep it secret, and they see to it no harm comes to the mortals. Gaia, their goddess of the Earth, has sent them and they do all in her name. Although there are still a few bad apples on every tree, there are more who keep strong to their supernatural roots.

One more race thrives in this war; they are "The Mages". Human born, society raised, these people are immortals who in every aspect appear to be a normal, everyday person, but there is more to them than that. They're granted some magical gifts, and many more can be learned through training. After reaching maturity at the age of eighteen, they only age one year every century. This causes many of them to relocate to escape all of the questions raised by their longevity and apparent knack for being the only one to come back from a battle. The only way for them to truly die is to either be decapitated, or to have their heart removed from their chest. They're very powerful, but there is one draw back.

Being that they are human born, they are given the one attribute that all humans are, free will. This means not all are good-natured warriors for the light. This stems from when their powers we first realized, back in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, back when wars were fought on horse back with swords and shields. Entire armies would be slaughtered, and yet, the same few men and woman would always return from the battle, seemingly without a scratch on them. This lead to the beliefs that they were all demons, and that they had caused the deaths of countless others, and the only reason they lived was to come and slay the villages as well.

After a while of torment and excommunication, some began to believe this. They began to use their gifts to go against other people, their own families, friends, and everyone else who dared judge them as demons. And thus, the armies of evil grew one step further.

The odd thing about these people is the fact that their nickname was not always Mage, as a matter of fact, back when they first appeared, the only magic they had was their immortality. It was more commonly assumed that they were cursed at that time, not magical. Yet, as time moved on, they began to gain stronger and more powerful abilities. It has come to the point now that the very fabric of reality no longer holds any sway over them. Point in fact, they can change reality to suit their needs.

These forces have been sent here by God and Satan, Heaven and Hell, making the Earth their battlefield, and any who stand in their way are made to join the ranks, or die with the rest.