Our story begins recently after the end of what's commonly referred to as "The Viking-Era", circa 1000A.D.

     As all of Europe bends the knee to a new religion; Christianity, Pagan holdouts living in Iceland believe the end of their way of life is fast approaching. After weeks of petitioning their pagan gods for guidance they mistake a coincidental audience with extra-dimensional travelers for divine providence. These bizarre barely-humanoid beings who call themselves "Kowaltho" claim to be the god's chosen observers of Mankind come to reward their faith by transporting them to the realm of the god's where their way of life will be preserved for all time. In truth these beings are akin to exiles having been violently expunged from another unknown world and have selected iron-age Earth as a safe realm to hide and regroup.

     On deliberation and witnessing more and more Christian missionaries making landfall each week they accept this "gift" and find themselves transported indeed to a new world. But it's nothing like what they expected...What they believed to be a heaven of sorts turns out to be a Lovecraftian hellscape of grotesque monsters where human beings are the lowest of the low on the food chain. The air is toxic. The sun never seems to fully rise and all day ash falls from the sky, obscuring the hordes of hideous and unspeakably-shaped creatures. They believe they've instead been transported to Svartalfheim, the shadowy realm where dark fae spirits and creatures reside. A place utterly hostile to human life as we know it.

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     Half of their people die from either predation or simply fall victim to the world's toxic atmosphere and lack of basic life-sustaining elements in just the first month, or so they estimate as telling the passage of time in this place is nearly impossible.

They try to find shelter in the bizarre and alien structures that form what appear to be long-deserted outposts, presumably left by their malefactors before they themselves fled as well, only to find themselves unable to contemplate the meaning and usage of its machinery and functions.

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     The Kowaltho, however... They have underestimated the true strength of humanity as a species; It's ingenuity, versatility and adaptability in the face of adversity.

 

     Fast forward one-thousand years.

     In rural America, teenagers plan their prom as adults wake every morning to grind their 9-to-5 jobs in small-town America. It's a town like any other different from it's neighbor's only in it's own local "Folklore" and local legend involving the woods being haunted and off-limits to all. Most people never even consider such superstition pointing to the fact that "There's nothing supernatural about the woods: It's just where the old nuclear plant was located and the government fenced off the area in the 70s after there was a serious accident while the plant was still being built".

     In truth it's the eventual migratory home of our previous intra-dimensional travelers the Kowaltho having eventually fled to "the new world" to benefit from it's total lack of civilization, never expecting the largest and most powerful nation our planet has ever known to gradually grow up around it. For centuries, generations and generations of very select few local humans have been made prithee to their existence and proximity to these creatures in a symbiotic relationship going back nearly a thousand years. A handful of human families do what is necessary to perpetually mask these beings existence and in exchange their various trade's and institutions find themselves blessed with uncanny success such as the local mine producing a steady supply of Cobalt, despite no geological explanation for it's presence.

 

     All has been well for hundreds of years and would continue to be so if not for the unbelievable speed at which "these humans" seem to be unlocking technological advancements, every year making it harder and harder to disguise their existence with the advent of satellites, camera-phones, a world-wide-web of instantaneous data and information transmission and countless other advancements. The travelers have come to realize that they are on borrowed time and seeking a solution as their existence accidentally becomes known to a handful of young adults and others "not of the pact". Then, just when it seems thing's couldn't get any worse, something begins to stir in the heart of the ancient machinery they once used to bore conduits to other dimensions for travel and migration. Despite the fact that "where those primitive humans went, back to that place, surely nothing could have survived", something is indeed beginning to "push through" back into this world with increasing frequency and strength.

 

     Finding themselves facing a doomsday scenario on two-sides they make the cataclysmic decision to bring these "local humans" who have discovered them into their confidence, revealing their own history and culture and "crossing their fingers" that together they and their new allies can find a solution before it's too late.

 

     To make matters worse, a young girl with bizarre scarification tattoos and an inability to speak English has appeared unconscious on the local sheriff's doorstep after collapsing the previous night. Her body showing signs of long-term abuse, exposure to toxic conditions and traces of human flesh between her teeth. She's almost entirely uncooperative, seemingly on a mission of some type and repeatedly attempts to escape the hospital while not spending hours each day sharpening sporks into weapons and stealing the shoes of her local hospital room-mate, our protagonist "Sam", a local girl suspected of having tried to kill yourself. The only clue to her identity and origin being the eyewitness testimony of a local drunk who swears he saw her running through his field being chased by a hideous monster that seemed to defy description. He attributes these events as related to the recent occurrence of local livestock, pets, and now even humans being found all-but devoured by an unknown predator. A group of local teens are suspected as responsible for the disappearance of their schoolmate, claiming that while breaking curfew to get high and drunk at a bonfire in the woods they were accosted by figures wearing animal skulls for masks and eventually chased by a hideous creature, saved only by the interruption of another, smaller creature they had never seen before. However it's description seems oddly similar to several sketches found in the belongings of a local historian, a native-american member of the local confederated tribes.

 

     It's a story about vengeance, vulnerability and the struggles that all life, be it alien creature or teenage girl have in common with one another against the backdrop of a universe seemingly unaware of our own existence. It's about grownups who once were kids themselves believing they were destined for big things, coming to terms with a life that seems relegated to "paying bills and waiting to die" rediscovering the value of every breath we take.

 

     That's our story, in a nutshell. Thanks for reading and we hope that in 2024 you'll find yourself revisiting our world from the comfort of your couch as you watch the story progress on your television screen.

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     Any and all business and logistical inquiries can be forward to showrunner Ethan Casner at PaleRider4136@gmail.com