[Monthly Contest Vote] January Juxtaposition

[Nomadic]

Voting runs through the next seven days. Let us know who you think best captured the theme of the setting and/or of the contest in general.

A juxtaposition of my setting Dynama Enigma, and Casket Valley by Steerpike (with his permission of course)

Reconstruction after the Civil War was not a pretty affair, especially after the Civil War in Dynama Earth.

The Ku Klux Klan arose during these hard times, but didn't last for very long. They were foolish enough to kill a dragon hatchling, and the United States soon learned the harsh lesson of incurring a dragons wrath. Not only did the mother dragon hunt down the Klan members that killed her young one, the incident was enough to set off all of the dragons in the surrounding areas to war with the southern humans. Eventually the army had to step in, and when all was burned and done with, the south wound up having to segregate like it wanted to.

1930:
The south is a powder keg. Not ready to explode, but it's still worth being cautious over. White humans and "nonhumans" with "colored humans" live in seperate regions.

Dragon Shires
Dragons claimed large amounts of territory for themselves after the negotiations with the United States were over with. Each dragon controls a certain degree of territory. These are known as "shires", states of which tend to vary on dragons. Dragons own and control all of the land and air space in their shires, and allow creatures to exist there on their own accords. Naturally White humans are typically not allowed in most shires, and frankly it's illegal to anyways (exceptions can exist however). Naturally not all black people live in Shires, and still live in cities and other such areas. However there are plenty of black people that sided with the dragons. Typically colored people tend to be tolerated if not outright accepted in shires (although there are some dragons who just hate humanity in general).

One such shire is a place known as "Casket Valley" a swampy bayou which is ruled over by a serpentine dragon who's only known as "Bathsheeba". A wicked soul who loves her some terror. She permeates her swamp with horrors and nightmarish monsters that she probably unleashed from the plane of shadows. No one quite knows her motivations (if she has any) for doing all of this, but it's making the surrounding areas a hellish place to live. Monsters sometimes come into small towns and stir up mayhem and kill. No one dares go into the swamp to try and do anything about it though, as that would be a death sentence.

Will not everyone who goes in their dies. There are a few who came back. Those who do however usually lose their poor minds. Psychiatrists who come from out of state tend to be highly skeptical of these mad ramblings. However natives when queried about all of this just tend to nod their heads and shudder.  There have been a couple of people who come out of Casket Valley relatively intact. They don't like to talk about it though...

[ic=Maelwyn the Seven-Fingered, Harbinger]"Some say the monsters are all dead, wiped from the world in the purging fires of the One God Sôl.  Some say that it is only the corrupting influence of demons that threatens men in this world—that if we all followed the true faith, their guidance, we would be saved.  Some people are fools." [/ic]

Nestled into a valley outside the city-state of Feloria, Casse-tere, the stark and Spartan home of the Harbingers is a bleak and desolate place.  Lying near the Ghostwood—a famed and haunted forest, it is a kind of bastion against the creatures that dwell within.  And these creatures do dwell within these woods, even if the Church denies it. 

The Church of the One God Sôl has the world in its tight grip.  Magic of all kinds are feared and squashed out, and any thought which strays from the Orthodox teachings out of Shardmoore meets the sudden boot heel of the Inquisition.  But here in the guild alone, kept secluded from the zealotry of the world, lie some last vestiges of the forgotten religion of the ancient pagans, and their gods and goddesses.  Only here is the knowledge preserved of the ancient and foul beasts that haunt the world—that world the Eye of Sôl is supposed to have made safe for humanity—and how to kill them.  It's a dirty little secret that the One True God needs the servants of false gods to do His dirty work. 

The Harbingers hold access to a massive library of books on monsters, magic, and the occult.  Many of these books have been banned by the church, which has multiple times tried to acquire them.  But Church Inquisitors are not allowed within the walls of Casse-tere.  The purpose of the Harbingers is too important, whether the church wants to acknowledge it or not.

It is true that there are no longer great masses of hostile creatures around every turn, but in the shadowy corners of Avayevnon, things still creep at the corner of the eye, sidling up next to us, and snatching those we love out from beneath us.  And those monsters that remain are those cunning enough to escape detection, and survive at the hard, harsh edges of the world—the worst of them all.  At the fringes of civilization, in the miasma-choked villages of the unfortunate masses, people begin to realize that there are beings that would prey on them, like their lambs for slaughter.  When predators come stalking, the Harbingers are the last defense—if the monsters bred within the walls of Casse-tere are not enough to take the monsters that plague you, then nothing is.  And for what their Writ of Service costs, they had better be up to the task...