Be the shroud the city needs. Walk the streets, snuffing out lanterns and hope. Be an acolyte of Gloom and spread the word.

Be the shroud the city needs. Walk the streets, snuffing out lanterns and hope. Be an acolyte of Gloom and spread the word.

Kneel at the altar of shadow.

Liquid night envelopes you. You pour forth.

Not enough slots.

No, thanks. I'm an adult.

And a coward. So be it.

Do you hear that? It's the sound of a city crying out. The light is a terrible drill, pressed into the streets' exposed nerves. They beg for the relief of night.

Why isn't anyone helping?

The light has too many sycophants. What the city needs is an acolyte of gloom. Practitioners of your craft understood that, once.

You hear a great rustling -- a million trench coats unfolding like moth wings.

Before the age of agencies and ledgers, the first spies communed with the dark. Your progenitors knelt before the Umbral Host. And thus, the dark favoured them.

Did they have... shadow powers?

So the stories suggest. Molecular ghosting. Localised eclipses. Umbral tentacles. The spooks of old wore the night like a second skin.

Shadows are not a substance. And subatomic tunneling is a quantum event, not a lifestyle choice.

All around, darkness recedes. Gone are the old ways, scorched by the glare of satellite pings and high-lumen flashlights. That is why the Host calls upon you.

What does the Gloomy One demand of me?

To do what? Dress up in leather and such?

Ideally. Latex works too. But the call is deeper and murkier than that..

Ridiculous. I don't go in for this Ombre Hombre stuff.

Echoes of the dark origins of your craft. Deny their truth at your peril.

Stagecraft, elevated by mystique, becomes myth. There's great power in that.

I don't hear any crying. Or begging.

Maybe you don't. Your kind, your craft, has lost its ways. But maybe you can find it again.