We are in so much trouble -/|\- The 2nd Rogue -/|\- A Full Explanation of How It All Went Wrong

Even I think this joke is in bad taste. We are in serious shit.

14 Days Remaining.
We're all in so much trouble right now. Big trouble. The kind of trouble that makes "the stuff of nightmares" seem like a walk in the park. Ladies and gentlemen, lets have a discussion on the veil between worlds, shall we?

I've mentioned previously that there is a barrier that most entities need to pass through before they can cause havoc on our little slice of existence. While I often refer to it as a "Barrier", what it is would often be called by your average will-worker, witch, mystic, what have you, as "The Veil Between Worlds." There are amateurs, who feel the pull of the Other Side of the Veil, and want to do things like tear it away in portions of the world. After all, they say to themselves with the knowing smile of morons everywhere, "What could go wrong? It's where my power comes from, I'd be able to touch that world beyond with my bare hands. Think about what I could DO there!"

These people are stupid, they are stupid to the Nth degree. They have achieved a level of stupidity that cannot be defined using the English language. I would have to mix and match words from at least six different languages to describe how stupid they are, but I'm only proficient in English. So instead, I'll just tell you why these people are idiots.

I've visited the worlds beyond via astral projection. It is not a happy place. Everything good, bad, and undecided that's ever been thought up by man exists somewhere. People believed they existed or they already existed in some far flung corner of existence, waiting to make their presence known. I've walked both sides, and let me be the first to say that the barrier between worlds, the Veil, exists for a damn good reason. Take away the veil, and every creature from all of your dreams and nightmares gets to walk around on Earth.

The Veil has constantly taken hits for the last twenty years. Just about everyone can agree that it's slowly getting weaker all over the world. On the websites that me and mine gather on, every few months somebody asks, "What will happen if the veil breaks?" And then we spend the next week or so tossing around our theories. Just about everyone agrees that all signs point to 2012, and we get nervous. The worst case scenario involves the astral plane and the material world becoming the same thing in the most violent way possible, with all kinds of architecture and odd topography from the other side suddenly appearing where OURS is, causing one hell of an impact and smashing the world to bits. Just about everyone agrees that scenario is unlikely.

More likely if the two become one, entities from other worlds suddenly get an all-access pass throughout our world. The Jersey Devil, Bigfoot, Chupacabras, they're examples of creatures that exist on earth only SOME of the time. An earth where they exist ALL of the time? That's not a place you want to live in. All of those elder entities, things from beyond our reality that choose our reality to feed in, Cthulhu style? Guess what, they don't need cultists to tear through the Veil for them so they can get into our world, they can just stop on by and start eating everything in their path.

In my business, you hear the words "The veil will be torn away", and you drop whatever you were doing and figure out if it's real or not. No stone unturned, the veil is weak enough right now that all KINDS of bad stuff is happening as it is. Any threat of the veil disappearing will make everyone who actually understands this business panicky, nervous, and ready to go to war. Then there's that select group of idiots who say "Hooray! I get cosmic power right here and now!" Like I said, they are goddamn morons, and I swear to god I do NOT want to run into a crazy veil smashing cult. I know I will, there's always one running around, but I am NOT ready for that confrontations.

Right. Here's hoping that Specter is willing to take me at face value. Christ I wish I had some kind of credentials right about now. How do you get credentials as a bloody modern shaman with an axe to grind? Dear fluffy jumping jesus christ on crutches, how do I even get started? Okay, I know how I'd get started, I'd need to figure out the connection "A Friend" was using in the cosmic sense and follow it back to whatever hole is forming. Oh by all that's holy, I love how simple I make that sound. I sense many migraines in my future.

-/|\-

The Rogue situation exploded around the time the Summer Program was near its end. The rogues. By all that's holy I hate thinking back to that mess. Okay. Let me break it down for you.

Our first encounter with the Second Rogue, who we will refer to as Rogue General, should have filled us in on exactly what was going on. I bet you guys see what was happening by the time I get to my next post, or at least have a guess. Rogue General was at the head of one of the larger, less impressive Higher Planes armies. Rogue General had decided to go after The Presence. I didn't know what he wanted with her at the time, but I could feel her panic. There were a tense couple of hours as Time Lord did some fancy political maneuvers and got his army from his most recent past life back onto the field of play.

I mostly sat there and prayed she would be okay. These were my earliest days. I was just some joker with a bit too much talent and about zero luck back then. Now I've upgraded to having a bit too much skill and even more abysmal luck.

I wish I had been a larger part in keeping her safe during that whole mess. I wish I hadn't been a helpless spectator. If I had seen everything, I might have made a few guesses about what was REALLY going on. I'll just point out that someone you care about doesn't get two visits by two different world conquering jackasses without having a couple of irons in the fire. When I figured out all the connections I missed back then, I shat bricks.

These were my early days. I've had 8 years to learn how to be a scheming, brilliant, crazy bastard. I've learned how to be paranoid, and to question everyone. Back then? Back then I was a charming, if somewhat useless tool. For better or for worse, it was how I had to be. You see, I was the spanner that got dropped into the works.

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A Full Explanation of How It All Went Wrong:

Right. So In my last post, I explained the overall situation that our world faced in the cosmic sense.

Now, the Higher Plane forces had all kinds of advantages. Fortresses, the backing of all the local creatures that wanted to live their peaceful lives, and much better trained soldiers. I mean, when you get down to it, the lower plane guys have always been on the wrong end of this particular battlefield. They made up for it with cannon fodder, ungodly amounts of cannon fodder. Their favorite trick was to create their soldiers from mud and sticks, very weak entities that weren't worth very much, but made up for it by hitting surprisingly hard and being able to attack in mass groups.

Every basic Higher Planes foot soldier was worth 10 of these Clay Soldiers. The problem is, that these Clay Soldiers would always outnumber the Higher Planes foot soldiers about 12 to 1 or 15 to 1, and that wasn't counting the actual intelligent demons and entities that were part of the Lower Planes army. However, with all the advantages I listed above for the Higher Planes armies, you'd think that the Lower Planes armies STILL wouldn't stand a chance.

Then the Rogues, with their Higher Planes armies, staged their coup against the High One. Keep in mind ladies and gentlemen, I've been expressly avoiding the terms "Heaven" and "Hell", and "God and the Devil." They are misnomers, and not even close to accurate to describe the places I'm mentioning. There IS a heaven, and there IS a hell, because people believe there is a Heaven and a Hell. The places I'm talking about are a more generalized, murkier locations that represent Entities that have been mistaken as "Angels" and "Devils" in the past. When I DO end up in situations that directly encounter Heaven and Hell, I'll be the first to tell you, but it doesn't happen very often. In any case, The High One is not Judeo-Christrian God, not even close. He's more like the great king of a vast empire that happens to be placed in the same conceptual area as where people would say "Heaven" is. If you have a headache yet, I apologize. It's an unfortunate part of my line of work.

I'm rambling, the point is, that they staged their coup. Now, the Rogues intended to cut the head off the body, take control over the Higher Planes in one fell swoop, and institute their rule. 5 of the greatest generals of the army, with the full support of the soldiers from their individual fiefdoms. It was go time, and their plan...

...Flopped. They took control of a portion of the Higher Planes near the celestial palace and had to run like hell. The sixth army never arrived. There was a sixth rogue and a sixth general. Neither arrived when they needed him to. Their forces escaped destruction, choosing to hide in the Astral Plane of Earth RIGHT before this conflict started. Keep in mind, that their force accounted for about a quarter of the overall armed forces that were going to be facing off against the Lower Planes army.

So now the Higher Planes army is smaller, and split on two fronts, fighting its former soldiers AND the incoming hordes from the lower planes.

I bet you can see how things would go to hell pretty quickly. But I haven't even GOTTEN to the part that really messed things up beyond all belief. I'll get into that next time.