Washington D.C.

The song of the spheres, a data stream produced by a monstrous stellar engine comprised of several dozen stars.... If one looked at those stars from the direction of a distant galaxy, Rhy'le, it would be in the shape of a perfect circle. The engine had bled information by some unknown means into the electronic channels of our electronic media, but only at the Fastness, an underground bunker with only two entrances/exits, located 100s of feet deep below Washington's other most secretive bunkers and sub-basements, and a working technical staff of astro-biologists, cryptologists, theoretical chemists, chemical weapons expertrs and astronomers and nuclear physicists numbering in the 100s, has been able to gather and decipher the code. But in doing so, it has produced the "Sap". The Sap is eternal, a black, tar like substance that usually produces no heat but reproduces itself through any organic matter, even simple protein soups. Once occupying any particular space, it can utilize that space as a vehicle to connect with Sap elsewhere, or spread the Sap. The Sap is produced through a means unknown, but involving the various synthesis equipment they have, their own mental energies, and wormhole space in the area. Below the Fastness, hundreds of miles down, is the Outpost. The Outpost is occupied by a mystical race of beings, horned, splotchy, mossy creatures, who have the only technology that can defeat the Sap-- Imaginotuition.

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But for now, the Sap has sprung loose by virtue of a joint Japanese/Underdweller project near one of the Underwater Hot Spots in the Pacific. That triggered massive earthquakes, seaquakes, tsunamis, and volcanos, as the japanese ignited nuclear bombs underground to wipe out the Basecamp and then cover them with molten hot magma. California and Alaska, among other areas, were devastated by the cataclysmic chain of events. Oil fires, disease, public panic and waves upon waves of violence hit upon poor beleagured west coast. While the nation's attention was focussed on recovering California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska, the Sap breaks out of the limited confinement it is in-- Old Town, built prior to the Fastness, and around which the Fastness is built to seal it. The last remnants of the 253rd Provisional Infantry Task Force is still locked in those musty, dark chambers, motionless once the last man, the last mite, was infected. Negative airpressure keeps the particles in a confined danger zone so infected microbes don't come after humans. Though there is some doubt whether the Sap's macrolyte structure (kind of a complex molecular sized building block) is small enough to affect such...

Verny, Massachusetts, a small town in the rural Northwestern portion of the Commonwealth. The town has a serious problem, one seemingly insurmountable given the supernatural origin thereof, and only three police officers to protect the 120 residents. You see, this sleepy town is the home of a doorway, a doorway to a dark place, a doorway that no one in the town knows how to close. Even after years of research into the doorway, the small town's sherriff, Earl Kendrik, has been unable to lcoate a single serious scholar, academician, professor, wizard or other expert to come in and tell them how to close it. In addition, there are no intelligence or military units willing to investigate issues of the paranormal. No such channel exists, or takes the good sherrif seriously.

So, right now, Earl Kendrik, with lazy deputy Sean Reynoldson and smart alec over achiever Rodney Danvers, are the only organized force against a steady trickle of demons, zombies and other creatures of the night that pop up from time to time.

Deputy Danvers, formally Rodney Clark Melville-Danvers, was the scion of a once propserous family, now reduced to owning their fabulous three story town house, the contents inside, and not much else. Danvers Mills, Danvers General Produce, The First Bank of Verny, etc., have all been sold, or gone out of business, during the long, prosperous history of the Danvers. All that's left now is Danvers, his controlling momma and an ailing law practice that barely pays the bills. Danvers is very afraid of woman, as his mother is prying, deceitful and malicious to him, and so contents himself with Craigslist and porn when not on duty. He of course also makes dinner for her every night that he is home, and she makes him a breakfast and lunch for work hours. When he is on the night shift, he usually orders pizza or a sandwich. Danvers never knows what to do either, usually preferring to speak to or make peaceful a situation, rather than using his authority in any firm way.

Sean Reynoldson, on the other hand.... Well, he's a boozebags, a class barfly and a notoriously brazen womanizer. He hasn't read more than a few lines of the newspaper headlines since highschool, and even then his reading comprehension could be said to be low. He has a divorce with alimony that he is chronically late on, kids from that relationship that hate him, and now a palimony suit against him by the librarian of the town, who has one child by him. They love him very much, even if he smells like a musty hamper, eats terribly, curses and generally shows disinterest and disdain in everything other than the red sox, the patriots and the Bruins (he doesn't watch basketball-- too racist). Overall, though, Reynoldson is a great cop, a canny, intuititve enforcer who keeps people off kilter just enough to respect him and be wary of him. He is merciless in his teasing of Danvers. The only guy he respects is Kendrik, although for all Kendrik has done for him, he is still jealous and unreasonably angry towards him for perceived slights.

Add to that, everyone and their mother is very well-armed in Verny, and you have a serious problem of safety and control on your hands.

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The cops had been keeping up a routine for the past three years or so. The few candidates they've requested and received from the police academy normally requested a replacement or a transfer, after only a few days. Way too poor and sleepy for most young recruits. The one guy who had stayed, a quirky, odd fellow, hanged himself in a horrible auto-erotic situation gone very awry. He had never liked hearing about the creatures of Verny.

Every evening, the night patrol would meet with Sherrif Kendrik and inspect the seal. It's a concrete cap poured over the fissure in Dunburton Falls, the adjacent ghost town with its burned down factories, closed down mine and vastly polluted ground soil. In a playground on the old Dunburton Public Schools facility, there is a cap placed at Kendrik's expense by the local contractor. Each night, he measures temp., weathering, thickness, etc. He has no idea whether such a thing can hold back the creatures again (last time, it was bat-like simians, twenty of them, who took up roost in the old Dunburton church and waged horrific warfare against the people of Verny. Each touch by one gave the victims visions of the hell they would be sent down too, and soon they would reappear as more of the simians. He had Rev. Dumphries do the appropriate rights, but Rev. Dumphries was uneasy with that given his immoral leanings (he is having an affair with a local woman and several distant men). He isn't a catholic after all, thinking that the right itself does the charm. He also didn't like doing anything with the seal, other than the fact that one of the creatures had touched him, showed him its life in hell and what awaited him, and then broke his arm. The necrotic flesh had to be scraped off by Dr. Smiley before infection set in. His arm was next to useless today, something he didn't like.