Mood

Individual scenes and threads are graded partially by the degree to which they adhere to the site "Mood", or the desired atmosphere of the site and the World of Darkness in general. So what kind of environment are we trying to cultivate?

The Gothic
We don't mean you have to wear black eyeliner and listen to a band with a questionable name; we refer to the literary tradition started in the eighteenth century with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto that continues on this day in genres as diverse as romance and cyberpunk.

Gothic fiction is set in a world of pain, destruction, fear, and anxiety that shadows the daylight world of reason and the status quo. It often challenges and displaces traditional assumptions of what it means to be human by testing boundaries. Is the werewolf a human or a beast? Is the mage a man or a god? Is a vampire a soulless corpse that really should lay down and quietly rot or is the person he used to be still inside, still able to feel emotions and worthy of sympathy despite his new identity? Is the hunter a savior for keeping humanity from having to deal with these questions, or a morally reprehensible monster for murdering sentient beings that just happen to be different?

The Creeping Chaos
No one can deny that North Georgia became unmistakeably quiet and 'normal' in the wake of that fateful blizzard. The rate of domestic violence, crime, road accidents, and institutionalization went down. The politics grew more civil and reasonable. Even the impish children who made some inner city schools in the area a hell for teachers and their favorites either disappeared inexplicably or calmed down.

But all of that chaos is slowly coming back. And you know what? If you're not one of the ignorant mortals, you're the problem.

As thoroughly as the unknown events of the snowstorm cleansed the darkness that plagues the world, nothing remains pure forever.

So we encourage exploration of horror. Each faction has their own experience of this horror, but people are disappearing, sometimes killed or tortured by circumstances that don't make sense to rational minds. Things exist and act on the world that should have no power outside of the darkest part of man's imagination. Is the solution protective insanity, or acceptance and participation?

The Nameless Genocide
Everyone 'in the know' became acutely aware of something deadly in north Georgia in January 2011: a plague of divine proportions. Like God sending his angels to take the souls of all the firstborn in Egypt, cold winds swept from Atlanta to Blue Ridge and snatched away the life of anything it determined wasn't human, leaving their bodies inanimate and the human race untouched. The different factions have different theories, but nobody really knows what caused the phenomenon or whether or not it will reoccur. Most from outside of the region think the new supernatural population of North Georgia are very stupid for not moving far, far away, but what do they know, right?

But you don't really know either...

That fear hangs over the head of every supernatural, even as the terrors of the re-emerging supernatural population hang over the humans. Is dread something to be respected and obeyed, or a force to be overcome with determination and strength of spirit?