Background Story for Custom Setting
Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2015 5:44 pm
The supernatural is real, our best defense against them, is the belief it is not.
Once upon a time monsters walked openly and terrorized the world. For a long time we fought them. We would rely on powerful champions, magicians, psychics, totems and the aid of friendly spirits. For a long time we were losing. There were too many of them, and not enough of us with the power to face them. Then a discovery was made, if these creatures fed on our emotions, perhaps we could poison them.
Initially it was to enhance the belief in superstition. Pour salt in a line, hang garlic above the door, use Wolves bane and it would keep them away. Pray to the good spirits, or to the gods, or to angels, and you’d be protected. Using these superstitions to focus our emotional/psychic energy from fear to confidence we could change even minor inconveniences to impairing or incapacitating defenses against the supernatural.
The problem with this was the superstitions only worked when the individual was a strong enough latent psychic or if the entire community believed. When a traveler would try to share these secrets with other communities, sometimes they’d work, other times they wouldn’t. It was unreliable defense, although it was better than none.
It would be those places which were protected from the supernatural that would attract more and more people. As the population grew there would be generations who had never encountered the supernatural. These people would stop using the old defenses, and for a time there was a slight uptick in supernatural beings, particularly those who look like us or use our bodies.
This belief problem got even worse during the renaissance. The scientific method requires a degree of skepticism. Men of reason would try to test these superstitions from a neutral standpoint, and inevitably they would fail. Individuals would then believe these men of science, and the whole scheme was on the verge of falling apart.
This was a troubled time. Science was catching up to, and surpassing magic. Those who believed were being pushed to the outskirts of society. However our worst fears never came to pass. These enclaves of science remained mostly free of supernatural incursions. This lead to another discovery. Disbelief, mass disbelief, was more poisonous to the supernatural beings than the belief that we could defeat them.
However there remains one problem. Regardless of how much we don’t want to believe it, the supernatural is real. When you are in a well-lit city square with a 100 other disbelievers these creatures are repelled. When you are alone in a candle lit cabin, or walking down a dark alley, that is when they’re able to manifest. They are desperate to make you believe in them again. Thus we remain on the fringes fighting them when they appear while keeping both them and ourselves a secret.
Once upon a time monsters walked openly and terrorized the world. For a long time we fought them. We would rely on powerful champions, magicians, psychics, totems and the aid of friendly spirits. For a long time we were losing. There were too many of them, and not enough of us with the power to face them. Then a discovery was made, if these creatures fed on our emotions, perhaps we could poison them.
Initially it was to enhance the belief in superstition. Pour salt in a line, hang garlic above the door, use Wolves bane and it would keep them away. Pray to the good spirits, or to the gods, or to angels, and you’d be protected. Using these superstitions to focus our emotional/psychic energy from fear to confidence we could change even minor inconveniences to impairing or incapacitating defenses against the supernatural.
The problem with this was the superstitions only worked when the individual was a strong enough latent psychic or if the entire community believed. When a traveler would try to share these secrets with other communities, sometimes they’d work, other times they wouldn’t. It was unreliable defense, although it was better than none.
It would be those places which were protected from the supernatural that would attract more and more people. As the population grew there would be generations who had never encountered the supernatural. These people would stop using the old defenses, and for a time there was a slight uptick in supernatural beings, particularly those who look like us or use our bodies.
This belief problem got even worse during the renaissance. The scientific method requires a degree of skepticism. Men of reason would try to test these superstitions from a neutral standpoint, and inevitably they would fail. Individuals would then believe these men of science, and the whole scheme was on the verge of falling apart.
This was a troubled time. Science was catching up to, and surpassing magic. Those who believed were being pushed to the outskirts of society. However our worst fears never came to pass. These enclaves of science remained mostly free of supernatural incursions. This lead to another discovery. Disbelief, mass disbelief, was more poisonous to the supernatural beings than the belief that we could defeat them.
However there remains one problem. Regardless of how much we don’t want to believe it, the supernatural is real. When you are in a well-lit city square with a 100 other disbelievers these creatures are repelled. When you are alone in a candle lit cabin, or walking down a dark alley, that is when they’re able to manifest. They are desperate to make you believe in them again. Thus we remain on the fringes fighting them when they appear while keeping both them and ourselves a secret.