The Tale.

The Tale

 

Since the first child was born, stories have been told by humankind. With the first utterance of the name of a man who did not quite exist, he was made reality, the first denizen of a world of fantasy and fable, of wise metaphors and complete nonsense. 

 

The place he lived was made real, a simple world full of harsh struggles and valiant deeds, and as more stories were told, the realm grew, a web of a thousand thousand tales, their heroes and villains, their damsels in distress and the plucky comic relief. Some intermingled and coexisted with others, some remained cut off from the rest, their world self contained and yet still powered and held aloft by its inclusion in the Realm of Tales.

 

The beginning of the 21st century was seen as a renaissance for those of the Realm of Tales, forgotten stories presented to new audiences, renewing their influence and growing their power. New stories were being made or revamped and twisted in a new way, told on blogs or podcasts and the Realm was expanding at an exponential rate. The world was alive with imagination once again. Too much imagination, perhaps.But these things have a way of correcting themselves. 

 

Born within the mind of a mortal boy, a new story was written, and within it, a new character. Ms. Silence. Ms. Silence was, in his estimation, a hero. She erased the pages of boring books he had to read for school, scraped away the annoying baby shows his little sister watched, quieted all the nonsense stories his grandfather told him about fish and walks to school. But by her very design, Ms. Silence could see the rest of the realm, messy, disordered. And she saw a problem. A problem she could fix.

 

No one knows how it happened, but on December 22th, 2020,  the Realm of Tales was shattered, and with an unexpectedly large meteor shower to herald them, those born from it were thrown into new lives, mundane ones in the modern age, their memory of their old life completely forgotten, save perhaps as a cherished daydream here and there, fragments dismissed as fantasy.

 

They were in a new world, the town of Reve Songe, New Hampshire. A world with diners and arcades, with new mysteries to solve and lives to live. They would spend half their life there, the other half in another new realm, one where their memories were more intact. Its creation was imperfect, a fragmented mish-mash, and full of discord. Those used to being the Kings and Queens of their home worlds were displaced, and quite often, it was those who were ruthless and quick to use their innate gifts who gained power, rather than the honest and just.

 

The modern world was not without its problems as well. While the powers that be did their best to keep the refugees from the Realm of Tales contained in small communities, there were often stragglers. And quite often, these stragglers were found by Ms. Silence and those of her burgeoning cult.  In the hands of the Agency of Silence, an errant fairy tale creature finds their mind quickly overwritten, a new Agent of Silence recruited with a singular purpose: recruitment or destruction of anyone that shouldn’t be in the mortal world. At least, in the Mind of Silence.

 

Notes about 12/22/20

 

Most mortals (or those who believe themselves to be mortal) did not notice anything more unusual than the meteor shower.

 

There is data that instances of depression and schizophrenia experienced an uptick during the months following, leading to an online community of conspiracy theorists with a plethora of different theories–mostly involving the government and extraterrestrials.

 

The Agency of Silence

 

Of all the dangers our heroes and villains face, Ms. Silence and her Agency of Silence is the most terrifying. Ms. Silence exudes a powerful void, as she feeds on the destruction of the whimsical and fantastic. In the Realm of Tales, she could destroy the very essence of an individual, but in Reve Songe, her power is currently diminished, able to only consume most of memory, a seed of it retreating back into her target, waiting to bloom and be discovered again. 

 

Ms. Silence is not alone. In the Realm of Tales, she destroyed many a story and the characters within it, but she also took other individuals, changing them so they might also swallow up the minds and spirits of the displaced fairy tales and channel them back into her.

 

Silence Facts:

 

Both Ms. Silence and her agents exist primarily in Reve Songe, generally disguised as regular citizens as they hunt their prey.

 

Agents of Silence are believed to, for whatever reason, be unable to enter the Kingdom of Nod.

 

Ms. Silence’s goal is to destroy the existence of all whimsical things at odds with reality.

 

Once, she was simply The Silence, a formless creature who did nothing but destroy. These days, she has a vaguely female shape. This change is sometimes discussed by those working to rid the world of her, with multiple theories spoken of but far from proven.

 

The existence of a “base” has not been proven.

 

As far as anyone is aware, Ms. Silence cannot be killed, but she can be driven away temporarily.