[Sarah]

The club was crowded, the entire city was crowded. The night was just as brightly lit as the day and no less busy. There were the day people and the night people, so at least there were different faces shuffling around.

Being used to vast spaces totally devoid of another living soul did no favors in a city crowded with people. They required skills and patience and an understanding that only other people from the city would have.

[Sarah]

For this reason, many of the gods chose to stay away. Most of them had worlds far away from this one. They had places they went where they could nurture small life in the privacy of their own solar system. Evelon was too loud and too bright. The planet facilitated an atmosphere of unbearability. Arguments became fights became wars. All too soon the gods and their servants were at each other’s throats. They were ready to rip each other apart instead of destroying the offending planet below.

[Sarah]

Sometimes their wars did make it to the surface of Evelon. Many species inhabited the cesspool of a planet, and many of those beings could withstand the presence of a god. Those that could acted as go-betweens for the willing and unwilling that could not withstand the presences of a god. The gods brought their celestial servants to the planet, but from the planet they found ready and willing followers. Even those who were unwilling ended up on one side of the war or another.

[Sarah]

In a planet bursting at the seams it was easy to fall into violence and death. There were infinite other viable planets for the life that made its home on Evelon. The problem was that Evelon acted as a suction. It brought in many foreign beings, but rarely spit its own beings out. The gods were too busy in their own ageless quarrels that they did not stop to realize the ancient root of their problems. Death and war could only last so long, and eventually something intervened. The gods were sent away in hopes to balance the suffering planet.

[Sarah]

The leftover celestial beings all but left. The few outposts being left behind, and the troops were pulled back to their respective realms. The universe knew peace for a time. Then the celestial species that had been left behind realized their gods were not coming back. In lieu of proper leadership and power the species separated and among them leaders began to rise. None could replace the gods that had been lost, but for beings that were used to being orders the new leadership was welcome.

[Sarah]

A sect of Seraphim created a council. The oldest and wisest among them got together to decide how their species moved forward. They were used to the old ways and turned their now aimless species back to a militaristic structure. They claimed to conform to Order and moved themselves to bring Order to other sentient planets. From their realm they could open doorways anywhere in the universe. Planets that had been nurtured to sentience began to bend to the will of the Seraphim.

[Sarah]

Another sect, one comprised of Demons, found among them a line with powerful blood. A ling that had mingled too closely with the gods and became more like them for it. This bloodline rose up. They abandoned their realm for another and broke themselves away completely from their brethren. They kept to themselves in that unknown realm. They had to conquer it before they could test the waters on any other planet. When they had this new realm made to their liking they were unrecognizable to their own species. The begins they had encountered, enslaved, defeated – those creatures were strong, and alien and the royal bloodline would have that power for their own. In doing so they became twisted and corrupted.

[Sarah]

Their realm had fewer doorways. Those who had found ways out did so violently and the species found its individuals stranded on far away shores. The far away shores were unlucky to have received these new Demons. Chaos ensued, mainly in the form of destruction, and by the end the doorways were lost and the worlds on the other side were left barren. Those that remained in the realm of Hell fought each other violently and saw no outward progress.

[Sarah]

Now there were whispers of gods returning, and the species abandoned so long ago had moved onwards and upwards away from their days spent in servitude. The Seraphim and Demons had found Evelon again and maintained the planet. They fought each other. The sect of Seraphim had grown to overshadow any remaining sects into obscurity. The Demons had found a queen, and years spent honing their shape to guide them to power while their distant relatives were some other species entirely. They fought each other, but not in earnest.

[Sarah]

They fought mostly as a game. Even the lowest on the food chain knew they could set aside their difference at any moment and work together. Unfortunately, the fighting was fun. Moving, and fighting, and dying – capturing territory and earning the loyalty of the civilians who were all too aware of the presence of other-worldly beings – and losing that territory, and the meetings among the leaders of the species, the game of the fight was their entertainment.

[Sarah]

Now the gods were returning, allegedly, and Evelon was changing. The changes had been subtle at first. Strange powers come to the forefront, stars moving to places they were not before, visions of great and terrible things taking of the minds of the faithful. Then the mist had come. Neither side knew whether the mist was the work of a reappearing god or not. So much time had passed that many of the gods had been forgotten, and those that were remembered were recalled only fuzzily.

[Sarah]

“Anything?” Vella asked. They’d been looking into this ridiculous mist since it first began showing up. So far, they’d learned almost nothing from it. That wasn’t exactly true… Vella just didn’t think they’d learned anything of use from it. Now they’d been tasked with figuring out what the other species knew of it. There were a few legends that only tangentially related to the mist. Some stories were floating around about this new mist, but insofar they were unfounded.

[Sarah]

“Nothing. If seems the Demons have either become better at hiding or they’ve returned to Hell,” Rhyket replied. The Demons were their equal in most ways, and to the Seraphim if anyone was to find information on the mist it would be their counterparts. Unfortunately, the queen was hiding her movements, and the Demons stationed on Evelon had more or less locked themselves in. It wasn’t normal for the species to be so quiet, yet Rhyket found little evidence of them.

[Sarah]

The only physical evidence they had related to the mist was a coloring they sometimes saw in the native species. The coloring resembled the mist, but they did not have any of those species on hand to research. They did not know if the Demons had their hands on a specimen either. It was more than frustrating to have nothing on the Demons. The two species fought almost constantly, but more often than not they worked together when strange things began happening. It was unlike the Demons to just hole up somewhere.

[Sarah]

If the Demons would not come out and openly investigate the mist surely it was because they knew something about it. Something that made it dangerous, or the information the Demons had about it was too dangerous to share. The Seraphim, especially Vella, knew how the queen worked. She shared information when it was beneficial for her to do so. From their perspective she gained nothing by keeping quiet about the strange mist plaguing Evelon.