Let me tell you a story...

....or perhaps two stories. Maybe even three stories? Why not five? Why not several?

Why don't I tell you every story I know? The stories that don't make it into the news? The stories deemed too horrible for the history books? The stories that we tell to keep each other up at night, our only comfort stemming from the sheer impossibility of such terrifying things existing? The stories that happen to our neighbours, to those ever-distant friends-of-friends that nobody seems to know?

What if I told you all of the true stories I know?

There is a place, beyond the world we know. A dark place. Sometimes, something crosses the threshold between this other place and ours, one foot in either realm. Some of these things can only reach such a state for a short time, making small, fleeting incursions into reality. Some of them, however, have been here for ages. These are the teeth and talons in the darkness, every thing that goes bump in the night. They have been with us for decades, and have acquired a powerful taste for human suffering. 

They have been known by many names throughout the long years mankind has cowered in the firelight as the day draws to an end. Misery Makers; Lords and Ladies; Fears. They are central to all of my stories. 

I will tell you about all of Them. The truth should be out there, even if so many thousands choose to ignore it. For many years, there has always been a storyteller, like me, who records the tales of the people They hunt. The more well-read among you may draw a link between those like myself and The Archive, but I must most emphatically stress that this is not the case. The Archive serves one of Them (yes, people do indeed serve them, voluntarily and otherwise); I would never serve Them. The Archive has had an advantage over me for some time now, for they have released some of their knowledge onto a blog similar to this one. 

I refuse to allow the truth to be warped and distorted by the enemy any longer. I will publish all the old stories I remember, and any new tales I find. So gather around the fire, stay a while, and listen to a poor, lonely Raconteur as he spins a story, true as the word of a king under a mountain.

The Chinese calendar says that the Year of The Snake will be upon us soon, does it not? That seems as fitting a place as any to start. There is much I can tell you about snakes...and their Mother.