Welcome to Gaia! ::

At first it was just a faint flash of light and a rumble in the distance. Like a soft roll of thunder. People went about their lives. Arguments didn't stop. Lovers kept kissing. Those sleeping didn't stir.

Stories had been passed down to the people of the city-state of Crosshaven that told of Ancient beings of incredible power, but those stories were generations old and the people thought they were just fairy tales. The people had heard rumors of the otherworldly man named Nairu walking among them, but they had paid him little attention. They had seen the devious Elenca, who spoke of their annihilation at the hands of "greater beings" but they had written her off as all talk. There was a church that still worshiped the Ancients and exalted them, but almost no one believed the priests when they spoke of the Ancients' wrath and their capacity for vengeance. And everyone had seen the strange floating fortress casting its shadow on that little church, but as odd as it was, it was a town full of oddity, and no one gave it much thought. They could not have imagined what was to happen next....

What they might not have known was that Crosshaven was built at the crossroads of a thousand different worlds, and the invisible gates to these worlds sealed long ago by the real Ancients kept out untold evils. No one even dreamed that two Ancients: Etar who had come to enslave the people, and Nairu who had come to enlighten them, had just come to blows, fighting one another for the right to claim the city. Before the people knew about it, it was too late---the gates had been thrown wide open by the impact.


* Inside a little tavern in Crosshaven's underbelly, the young Governor of the city-state, Nate Nevermore, his lady, Morigan Black, and their entourage were in the midst of a confrontation with the underworld princess known as Deathsinger. As the argument continued, the tavern rattled with sudden force, the lights went out, and the walls began to buckle. The earth shook and the night sky outside turned red. Howling inhuman sounds whipped through the air, like frantic whispers in ancient tongues.

* In a bowling alley yet to be opened, entertainer, part-time mystic, and would-be superhero Myles Million sat having just rescued technical genius Torrence Tearwater and Constable Jones from the clutches of Tearwater's rogue creations at Daedelus Robotics. But safety was not to be found there as the walls came down.

* An escaped Daedelus robot called Sophia sought her freedom at the Church of the Saints, but was hunted by the robot Jerikah. In the chaos that ensued at the church, Sophia dismantled her pursuer and escaped with the parts into the forest. An oddly-dressed girl matching her description has since been seen about the recovering city.

* A shapeshifting spy and informant known as Jimmy the Slip was the last person to see the charming and powerful individual known only as the Errand Girl before she rushed to the defense of her town. Errie hasn't been seen since.

* In the forests around Crosshaven, a pale girl and her partner, the bizarre Lovecraftian bounty hunter sent to destroy the Ancient Nairu, watch the battle rage and wait. What freakish horrors are they creating to assail the battered town with at the opportune moment?


Spilling out into the streets, people saw the Church of the Saints crumbling in a gout of white fire, and its embers rained in the sky. People panicked as earthquake after earthquake swept through the city, great winds ripped trees and buildings out of the ground, and the sky filled with a legion of inter-dimensional invaders.

The Governor activated the military and ordered an evacuation to shelters, but before he could organize further, catastrophe struck once more as the ground began to crack and open up under his people and swallow them. It is not clear whether or not he and the other leaders had time to realize what was truly happening, or if he ever knew that his actions would be futile, that the Crosshaven Army would be completely overwhelmed by the sheer destructive force that been unleashed upon the city. What is clear however is that he was not there to see the end of it. The Governor was among the first to fall casualty, slipping with many of his fellow citizens into the blackness of the split earth. Chaos soon gripped the entire city. It was a battle of Ancients and the town was caught in the middle. People started to simply vanish. Some, caught in the crossfire were hit with waves of light from the fight, their bodies just disappeared into the smoke. Buildings crumbled, crushing those trapped within. Static electricity hung thick in the air, bursting into life and claiming more victims. And as the death toll steadily climbed to unbearable numbers the town became silent.

Then, as quickly as it had started, it was over. The ground stilled and grew cold, the sky bled to its normal black.

In the end the Ancient Nairu emerged the victor. The invading armies of Etar retreated to their home worlds, where fresh troops lay in wait for a second wave. Thankfully, it never came. In his last act, Nairu slammed the gates shut and sealed them tight with all the binding energy he possessed blocking all inter-dimensional movement into and out of the region for the foreseeable future. Then he fell from the sky like a limp dove, seemingly into oblivion.

Some of Etar's powerful Gifted remained trapped in Crosshaven, but soon the citizens of the city fortunate enough to have survived turned the tide and defeated them.

In the aftermath, a quarter of the city had broken off and crumbled away, the Church of the Saints was a seared hole in the earth, about half of the City's homes and businesses were damaged beyond repair, and more than six thousand citizens were confirmed dead. Vast numbers were missing, gone without a trace or evidence of death. Most had just vanished into the nothingness, and others had fallen into the earth. Searches recovered precious few bodies, and in the end, the missing numbered 1906. Among the lost, the city's leader and many of its officials, public figures, local heroes, and public servants.



Time passes, some things mend with it, and some stay broken. The city is in shambles both physically and socially. Public infrastructure has all but broken down in places, though the electricity and water are on, there are frequent outages. Half of the remaining population has fled the city. People who still have homes to protect guard them from the rougher elements with martial force.

The streets south of downtown just aren't safe anymore. In the absence of proper authority, Deathsinger and her gangsters of the south side rule the lower half of the town, and the only people keeping her from ruling the rest of it are an electric superhero and a vigilante constable with a quick gun.

Crosshaven's old radio station keeps broadcasting a looped message over and over again. It sounds like human voices, haunting wails and a few scattered words. The hopeful few believe they are the voices of the lost, crying out for rescue from some distant dimension in which they are still stranded, but there is too much interference to be sure. To this day there remains no scrap of evidence to speak of what came of the nineteen hundred and six people who vanished that day, and little reason to hope for their survival.

Governor Nevermore II has been formally declared dead, and soon the rest of the lost will follow him, their names inked with the words "presumed dead" in the town's official rolls, as a city struggles to move on from their tragedies and grasp once again at an elusive normal life.

On this date, a year after the great destruction of that night, the survivors of Crosshaven gather to remember their lost, and to witness a new Governor step up and take the reigns of their suffering city. Her name is Morigan, and she is a light of hope among the mourning. With her in command, the city must now say goodbye to the past, pick up from their losses and forge forward into a new age.

Of all who survived the night of destruction, he might be the one with the heaviest burden of guilt to carry. Guilt, however, is no longer in the hollow one's nature. He doesn't feel the emotion of it, but some invisible force draws him through the shadows every night, searching the remains of the town for signs of a little girl he once took under his wing as a prodigy.

On that night, Nate slipped right through his fingers plunging into an abyss of a hole in the earth that might has well have opened all the way to hell. The hollow one would have been content to just watch the Governor fall to his death, but his ancient bond to protect the Governor drove him to leap after Nate. The man fell faster than he could chase in the insubstantia, and was lost.

When he returned, after his oath drove him to search for ages, the little girl was gone, and he has not seen her since.

Maybe she died in the destruction.

Maybe she is among the lost, and is somewhere stuck in some hidden dimension, never again to return.

Maybe she believed that Hollow had died, and simply scurried off on instinct to find other means of survival.

He has walked among the shadows of the city since then, searching for her, like a mechanical doll with a programmed mission. He also looks for the remains of his charge, not in hopes of saving Nate, but in a personal hope that he can finally prove him dead beyond a shadow of doubt and secure the reign of Morigan, who is a more gentle master.

He can be seen, a haunting figure on the rooftops and in the doorways of the city, watching like a hawk, circling the city like an animal pacing the bars of its cage.

Still the bond holds him within the city's borders.

Still his rage smolders with the desire to shear through the vestiges of captivity, and punish the descendants of those who have kept him here so long.

Still he wonders if Morigan knows that if he were ever freed from his bond, that she, nearest to him, would be the first to die.

Nick had been content to spend a quiet exsistance in his farm, mechanically tending to everything. How long had it been since he had seen another person... or Nate for that matter. He moved as mindlessly as the robot he had purchased to help around the farm. Days turned into weeks, months, nearly a year. Then it happend. The very earth itself shook, and for the first time in that long year, nick felt. It was sorrow. Then he returned to his house and sat. For the entire year he sat, letting the earth rise up to take back his neatly grown field of corn, all but the few acres managed by the robot, who was even now starting to fall into disrepair. Letting himself go to the slow pull of time. Where is nate? Where is my friend? Why has he not come to see me? How long now? Two? Two years? ....Am I... Am I dying? ... Yes... I must go see him one last time.

And so Nick lay down to rest vowing to go to see nate soon. Unknowing that he might well see him soon, but just not in this life.





((Dear Crosshaven,
I know I havent been here for you when you needed me, and I probobly could have stopped by more often, but im ready to make up for all that. For the next two months I will be in a place where I will likley have little or no access to a computer, but after that time there is little that would make me happier than to rejoin my family here.

Sincerley, and with love,
Nick))

Charlie has always had an ability to make light of even the darkest situation, however, the war that Crosshaven was struck with, and the destruction that it has caused, seems to have killed a piece of that in her. Thomas remains a crucial part of her life, and together, the two of them have saved many citizens.
Charlie has been working as a reporter under the ghost writer name Sam Mist for The Crosshaven Post, an underground paper that keeps the public informed about reports of mafia and gang activity as well as attempting to bring some hope to Crosshaven.

She has also been working as a spy, bringing any information that Thomas picks up about gang activity to the detectives or police, while being careful to avoid any corrupted officers while doing so. She is very proud of everything that the two of them have accomplished, and has no intention of quiting. Her biggest fear though, is that one day the gangs will learn who she really is, and come looking for her.

It happened so fast, he remembers blood blurring his vision and pain that seemed to drill into his forehead. When he woke up he heard nothing but screams and the sound of metal and stone crushing into one another. His leg was pinned under a car that had been turned over onto him and he was bleeding from a gash across his head. Hours went by until someone finally stopped and helped. He was lucky, his leg wasn’t broken, but he needed stitches; however, there would be time for that later.

He hurried through the panicking streets, until he reached the apartment, when he arrived, there was nothing but rubble and people digging, trying to help those trapped. He dived in, calling out her name as he tossed stone and brick out of the way, it felt as though his insides were crushing in on him, and when he felt the tears he stopped, hid his face with his dirt covered hands and prayed for the first time in fifteen years.

He spent months asking anyone he crossed if they had seen Rose, but no one had. Everyday he would stop by the apartment and dig along side the construction workers, looking for her body, but he would never find it.

Two months ago, after healing the leg of an old woman, he heard the familiar sound of teleportation, “Rose!” He looked up, and there lying on a ledge of a window was a black rose and a piece of fabric with a note scribbled on it:



He remembered Lliam telling him about the city that the two of them had come from, it would be a long trip, but it wasn’t impossible. And so, with only the few possessions he owned, he vanished from Crosshaven, not to return again until he had found her.

He was giving a lecture on the fall of Rome, later the irony would not be lost on him. "In 323 Constantine became emperor after a civil war and established his eastern capital at Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople." There had been blessedly few students in the classroom. All doing a variety of things which he was pretty sure did not include listening to his lecture. At the very least no one seemed to notice as he trailed off mid sentence, his gaze fixed on some point outside the window. He walked to it, it's panes were vibrating slightly hesitating a moment he opened it. A rush if cool air mixed with a strange odor, the odor of freshly overturned earth could best describe it, ruffled his hair. By now his prolonged silence had alerted even the most aloof of his students, all of whom were staring at him intently.

"Is everything alright professor?" asked one of them.

"There are no birds" he said more to himself, his eyes locked in the courtyard which was usually full of them.

It started as a low rumbling noise as if something large was coming closer but just outside his line of sight. The moment it took for the information to register was almost a moment too late."Get down", he yelled just as the ground began to shake. Books fell off shelves and screams could be heard but no one was moving. Summoning as much strength as he possibly could he tired to produce a shield around himself and his students. The atmosphere became heavy around them, the air began to rotate faster as he called his power to him. But it was too late the ground shook once more violently knocking him off his feet and sending a large book shelve crashing down on him.

All went dark.

In the darkness he heard screams of pain, the rumble of people walking over falling objects, names being called out. He opened his eyes slowly he felt sore all over his head pounding something fierce. He took a deep breath and coughed a fit as he drank in the dust filled air. The shelve had not completely fallen on him, a desk had been merciful enough to be in the way, so he had been protected mostly from all the falling objects which, as he now climber out from under his little protective cave he saw looking up, to be composed of most of the ceiling. He climbed up and out of what was left of the classroom in to the gaping hole in the wall. He stood there agape as he looked at what was left of the historic university, the largest in the area and a historic building, his home. But not even that horrific sight would prepare him for what he what lay behind him.

The university stood at one of the highest parts of the city. From there he had a front seat view at the chaos that was ensuing down below. People running, yelling, beams of light he knew well enough to be arcane gifts everywhere. He stood there for a long time not sure what he should do. "Professor, professor please" one of his students called from somewhere behind him waking him as the ground shook once more. He had to help the people here first and protect them as best he could he decided. Sending a silent prayer to those below he turned his back on the city and headed back to the collapsing structure.

After a long time, he decided it would be safe to venture out. Things had been quiet and the need to know what had happened to his friends became pressing. He went to the nearest structure, Naturae. As he made his way down his heart beat hard in his chest. He feared it might be destroyed. He knew that fear was the reason he had avoided coming down for so long. He breathed a little easier and stepped a little lighter when he saw it still stood. It was in bad shape but it still stood. He stepped through the front door the light outside made it hard to see in to the darkness inside.

"Mike?" he called to the darkness.

With a long stick of lit incense in her hands, she slowly lights one candle after another.

Again and again, she goes through the same motion, touching flame to bare wick, with a snap and a tiny woosh of fire.

Then she is finished, she steps back.

1906 candles, candles for the lost. One of them is for her mentor, another for her rival. Many others for children she took in and friends she nurtured spiritually. Gone, gone before her eyes.

She has not lost her faith yet. But she has come to the brink, the very thinnest part of her resolve.

By day, she maintains the church and keeps it as safe from vandals as she can. By night, she searches for a trace of the lost Ancient, Nairu.