Jon: You do realize moving requires more than simply dumping boxes from one space to another. *eyes mass posts of story-in-progress*

Writer: Meh.

Akela: *sniffs around the piles of world building and sets to gnawing happily on one of the story bones* I have backstory!

Writer: Hey, hey, I need that!

Akela: Mmmm... *gnaw*

Jon: You could at least label them... *pokes one of the boxes with a foot*

Box: *growl*

Jon: ... Please tell me I imagined that.

Writer: Technically, you imagine everything.

Jon: *is not comforted*

Muse: Hey, how's it going? *enters apartment, beers and scooby snacks in hand*

Akela: Beer!

Jon: Snacks!

Box: *mutter*

Writer: *headdesk*

Because the last one was pretty boring... *pokes it with a stick* Bleh. :P

------------------------------------

Sometimes the last thing the world needs is a hero.

The struggle between the Hinds and Hounds has been going on for millennia. Drawing both the dead and the living into their fight for control of the Veil, the two sides are ratcheting up the violence to the point of full scale war.

Both Hounds and Hinds treat their human anchors as mere tools in their struggle for supremacy, but the bonds weren't always one-sided affairs. Back in the distant ages when the Powers that Be first closed the Veil, the humans were a vital part of both hunt and herd. Now, as the violence reaches new highs, it's up to a small pack of Dogs to try and recreated that bond.

We've got three worlds to play in here, and I guess I sort of need to start laying out the groundwork for them. *cracks knuckles* Time to put some science in my fiction. ^_~ *grin*


Life
Okay, so Life is the easy bit to define. That's reality (well, fantastical reality, but still). It's the normal everyday world. No magic! None! BWHAHAHA! Erm, yeah, so technically I'm really stretching the definition of 'urban fantasy', but c'est la vie.

Veil
This would be the bit in-between Life and Death. Sort of like a no-man's land between the dimensions (only they aren't really dimensions). Things from the Veil can exists in both of the other planes, but have very very minimal influence over them without an anchor. The Veil critters are actually concentrated Veil-stuffs, so technically the whole darned thing is alive. (Although the bit that isn't critters isn't sentient or even really that aware.) So Life and Death are both actual places and the Veil is sort of a membrane that separates them.

Death
But Death isn't the afterlife so much as a purgatory. Folks only hang around there until they 'let go of living' at which point they vamoose to points unknown. So it's not Heaven, nor Hell, and thus I suppose I should root around and see what I can find about purgatorial destinations in the various religions. Want to keep it as non-religious as possible (which is amusing considering the implications of the basic concepts, but oh well ^_~;) Each person brings their world with them, to some extent, when they die. Thus it's sort of a patchwork of times and places, each group (or individual) have their own little fiefdom. Since folks don't stay permanently there, it's not like you have everyone who ever died still hanging around...

[more rambling to follow]