You have anywhere from ten thousand to a hundred thousand thoughts in a single day. But it only takes one to birth a monster.
Abstractions in your mind can gain a life of their own, shaping into anomalous entities that seek anatomical existence. In olden times, they were thought of as phantoms possessing people or haunting places.
So, now it is true.
Thoughts desire actuality; Phantoms desires perpetuity. And their need for this perpetual existence is as strong—if not stronger—than that of you and I. Look around for proof.
Everything good humanity does is guided by helpful thoughts actualized into reality, and everything bad is brought on by hindering ones.
But be it either of them, whenever their core need for survival is threatened: they attack in whatever capacity they are capable of, to continue their beingness.
In that sense, nothing is more dangerous than an ominous actualized thought: a Phantom. Again, look around for proof.
A hundred years after the Night Plague, do you think anything exists outside of Sanctuary except ghosts and ghouls?
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Phantoms are the coalescence of collective consciousness with conflicting natures, and the ones who protect humanity from these volatile entities are called Vanquishers.
Born in the Gutter of Sanctuary as a bastard to a stripper of questionable age, Nijel knew he'd die young.
Yet all his life he imagined a much more mundane death: some skin infection or lung disease too expensive to cure; a bullet to the head or a blade to the gut by some random street thug with dope in his nerves and dopamine in his neurons.
But now that Nijel is possessed by a Phantom of the Other Side, his end is as obvious and absolute to him as the Vanquisher clans who rule the city of Sanctuary with their corporate connections and spectral sorcery.
His life as a bastard to a stripper in the Gutter had been ugly, but his death as an accursed orphan is fated to be beyond hideous.
The Phantom possessing Nijel will soon corrupt his soul, twisting him into less of a man and more of a monster, until he becomes a Wraith: a cannibalistic creature without any conscience preying on the weak and innocent, the poor and helpless. Then a Phantom Vanquisher will hunt him down, using their arcane powers to eliminate him.
That is how his story ends, he knows, and like so many other unfortunate souls in and around Sanctuary: he can't do shit to change it.
Being too familiar with the bleak reality of the Gutter, however, Nijel doesn't feel wronged or shackled by this revelation. Instead, he feels free.
Only those with money and power may choose their death, like the wealthy corporate tycoons and the dominant clan ghosthunters. That is the way of the world, the naked truth of life.
But even those with decided deaths like him get a say in how they live out their final moments.
And for Nijel "Whoreson" Shamrock, who always knew he'd die young, he dedicates his final moments to avenge his dearest mother.
Without whom, he'd have died even younger.
But this one decision changes his life completely. A little for the better, a lot for the worse, as he plunges into the dark world of Phantoms and Vanquishers. The lesson learned?
Never make the mistake of thinking you know how the world works.
Because… what if you are correct?