The Ghostmen. Who are the Ghostmen?
Few need to ask that question. Those who do ... wish they hadn't.
But from the beginning. Let's start from the beginning of this abysmal story, dear reader.
The beginning ...
I don't know where I should start. This world was an already dark one since the dawn of history. It has ever been. It may have looked different back then, but debauchery lurked in the shadows, biding its time ... and once it came out, there was no stopping.
Looking back at it, there were many beginnings - and also many ends. Everything that once started ... must end. It is a very natural circle of life.
Ah ... life. It is complicated. When is something alive and when is something dead? And what is that state in between, being undead?
No, dear reader, perhaps it is best to start this story at a very certain point. The most important one.
There was a war. A war between Lycans and Vampyres.
Lycans and Vampyres?
Lycans, also called werewolfes or wolfsmen, and Vampyres/vampires look very similar to the untrained eye.
Lycans can turn into giant wolflike beasts if the conditions are right, giving them superhuman strength, at the cost of their sanity. The transformation is putting them into a bloodrage and as long as it lasts, is also turning them into savage beasts without rationality or mercy.
A lust for blood is also what drives the Vampyres, although in a different sense. Blood is their very essence of life. They need it or they will succumb into petty beings. The lack of blood and the exposure to the sun is what makes them weak. As long as they manage to avoid that, they are a force to be feared.
The Vampyre nation held Lycans as their slaves for over a millenia. A thousand years in chains and suffering. Entire Lycan generations did not know anything else than bars and forced work. At one point the Lycans were no longer born. They were bred.
Over a thousand years of torment and bewailing. It was then that civil war eruptet in the Vampyre nation, tearing both their land and their power apart, allowing the Lycans to revolt after such a long time, their spirit unbroken. In the same moment the petty humans, outcast to the harsh lands in the west a long time ago, called for a Crusade. A holy quest to reclaim the land from the vile creatures that have outcast them long ago. They set out under the banner of Talamasca, singing joyful songs of conquest and honor, hiding their own darkness behind reasons they called "just".
...Skip this. What happened was nothing else but a slaughter on all sides. Centuries of war, ravaging and bloodletting has dried them out, giving rise to other smaller beings.
Among them were the Ghostmen.
So who are the Ghostmen?
The innocent soul back then would have called them ... peaceful. The Ghostmen were minding their own business after all, as long as you left them alone. Ignorant tongues would call them simple beings, if beings at all. Harmless. A joke. Primitive scum that could be ignored.
How wrong they were.
The land of the Ghostmen lies far in the north, acting as a buffer between the Lycans and the Vampyres. Every once in a while an ignorant fool would cross their land, using it as a shortcut. Those fools were either never found again or lost their minds, cowering in dark corners, telling about wild things or having lost their ability to speak at all.
These were only a few lost souls. Until now. Now the whole world was about to learn about the Ghostmen.
Perhaps it was that war between the Lycans and the Vampyres that set them off. Perhaps something else. I feel like there was something more. An unknown force.
Yes, there must have been something. Something ... different.
Ah, dear reader, history already started to fade. I can't see in what direction they started to expand.
You know, the written word proved to be of little priority anymore once they set out. But as every story needs to have a beginning, so needs theirs.
Would you be so kind and tell me?