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| Super powered manga characters! |
You are a Cantor. A member of one of the four Supernatural Clades of humanity. You know that things have been hidden from the everyday world. Magic, supernatural beings, not-so-human beings exist and our world is constantly under threat by monsters from other worlds. All of these things have been hidden from mundane view by a great Reality Veil that resets reality every night at midnight in an attempt to repair any damage done to it and prevent monsters from getting through.
Of course, with reality around here damaged as it is, things get through. Mean things, nasty things. Things that want to use this raucous and chaotic city as their base of operations to eventually conquer reality.
Our job is to stop them.
You can probably channel and shape fire, air, water, earth or some other exotic elemental force like Order or Spacetime. You were born with it. A gift from your parents, or your grandparents, kept secret from you until you’re ready. Now you know what it’s for.
They call us Cantors because we hear a voice singing a single note every time we draw the energy of the Worldwell, the force of creation. When the magic fills us up, we hear that note in our heads, and when we channel the energy into the world, everyone around us hears it too. And for those things we hunt, it's the last thing they hear. Yes. We're weapons.
We don't do this alone though.
Together we're the Eternal Symphony. Most of us anyway. It's an old, old, old institution. It used to be monolithic, like the Church, but today, things are more progressive in the sense that we're more diverse and free now. Some say too progressive as some of us have some positively stupid ideas about how to protect reality.
The Eternal Symphony used to just be just "The Symphony". We had our partners, those who could bring the ideas of the world to life just as we could channel its raw elemental power. They were called Icons and in the Symphony they were known as the Infinite Symphony.
What happened to the Icons? They all went mad. Or will be mad.
During the Great War, some idiot had this crazy idea to use the power of the chaos between the worlds to buffer the Earth's defenses. The device backfired and tainted the Mindforge, where the Icons draw their power. Now it’s driving them all crazy.
Yeah not all of them are crazy yet. Granted some of them are pretty stable. But eventually, they'll snap. They can't help it. Their power source is tainted. Eventually we'll have to put them down. But not while they're still useful. They help as best they can, but we'll always have a wary eye on them, and put them out of their misery when they finally lose their humanity.
The Icons aren't the only ones of our brethren to fall. They're just the latest ones. The first ones are still out there, and still a thorn in our sides. They're called Reavers and they are monsters. They feed off the life energy humans and other supernatural beings to fuel their own destructive abilities and they enjoy it. Literally they do. Their brains release endorphins when they sense pain coming from a victim. They claim that the best way to "protect" everyone is to rule over them as their secret masters. We've been at war with them ever since. But still they do protect reality in a way. I remember once in an encounter, we would stop fighting to go kill a monster that had entered our territory. Though they think of themselves as dark heroes I think they're just sadist hedonists with a messiah complex.
Of course, our ancient enemies have always been the primal, malicious forces that enter the world to corrupt it. We collectively call them the Wyrm. They come from the chaos between realities. Like viruses seeking to invade a healthy cell, they slip into our Reality, and begin multiplying. Yes. Multiplying. Wyrms have the ability to infect other people and places with their reality, transforming those things into versions of themselves. They've been trying to get at us since time immemorial. And the sad thing is, this is what a Tainted Icon eventually becomes... which is why we end up killing them. The Wyrm do not reason, they do not negotiate. They only exist to propagate. Never forget that no matter what lies they put in front of you to seduce you to follow them.
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