Stephen Marley

“A time, a space, a different place/ How perfect we might be/ I would be the wind that blows/ You’d be that Willow tree/ And I could never bare the thought of you not by my side/ So I would be the warmth of day/ You’d be the cool of night”
― Stephen Marley

“Fire and sword laid waste the Earth. Darkness stalked the land. From the ashes of
defeat and the smoke of despair, the people of Earth, searching for a future,
plundered the past. It was the time of the Great Concoction, when the world was
remade.
In the thirty-first century of Our Lord, the Europe of the past rose again in the
shape of Europa. In Europa, history was reborn.
The geologic upheavals of Europa's formation resulted in an acute psychic
backlash, manifested in periodic shifts in reality and embodied hallucinations. Spatial
dimensions became mercurial in their behaviour. Entire counties could be crammed
into a field. These anomalies were exacerbated by advances in psionics which
produced dream worlds that were as close to the notion of a real supernatural as
makes no odds. Spectres, poltergeists, fallen angels, unfallen angels, trolls,
hobgoblins, vampires, werewolves and suchlike entities sprang into pseudo-being.
It was upon this ontological quicksand that the Dominions of Europa were
founded, recreations of ancient European countries, each containing several time
periods. Within each of these historical eras there existed a small percentage of
'Reprises'; clones of famous figures from history artificially encoded with the
appropriate personality matrix. These Reprises were prone to severe identity
confusion. Yet more acute was the confusion of the fictional Reprises, clones of
actors who became identified with particular roles: in these cases, it was not the
actor's personality that was encoded into clone-body, but the role he played.
By the thirty-third century, Europa was plunging into chaos. Reality unravelled. It
was a time of heroes, whimsical worlds, blood and thunder, and general Byronic
excess. Dark powers arose. Fearful villagers locked their shutters at night. Fire and
sword laid waste the Earth. Darkness stalked...
Excerpt from The Tenebrous Testaments of the House of Rue. chapter XIV. volume
CLXVII
[From Count (Baron) Dracula and Baron (Count) Frankenstein]”
― Stephen Marley, Perfect Timing