What price do we pay?

[Michael T]

It's been almost a week now since I last sleep, after what occurred during my absence I have been unable to stop thinking about it. I don't think I can type it let alone talk about it. I know no help for anyone who might try and help me, I was forced to make a choice on a scale of an entire cultures fate. I feel maybe I made the wrong choice almost every time I slow down enough to have my thoughts begin to drift to random things.

I really don't know what I am hoping by posting here, maybe that I'll be able to talk to someone about it eventually. Maybe I just need to vent some of what I have in side my head, or I am going mad. I looked in the mirror a few minutes before logging on and did not reconize the man stareing at me. I guess I am changed more than I was told I would be by the war, I think I got the raw end of the deal on this one.

Sorry to babble I'll stop now.

Michael T.

[Ron Caliburn]

Micheal,

We have to make choices like that in this line of work - it's all a matter of scale.

Suppose we've tracked a monster to it's lair and find it there about to consume a child and naturally we intervene. In the course of the battle the child gets knocked into the way of an imminent harm at the same time we get the monster at our mercy. We have time to save the child or destroy the monster - but we can't do both.

Do we destroy the monster or save the child? If we save the child we've saved a life but the monster escapes and by the time we catch up to it it may have killed dozens more. If we kill the monster we have potentially saved dozens of lives, but that child dies.

Each of us would have different reasons when we make that decision. But we make that decision or we fail in our mission.

Some of the decisions we make are ireperable - there is nothing we can do to mitigate the effects once we've made that decision. Other times, if we disagree with ourselv es, the are actiosn we can take to repair any harm we have wrought.

If this decision you've made has caused an ireperable damage - learn from it and move on. If there is something you can fix that you want to fix - what are you doign wastign time posting here for?

[Michael T]

Thank you Ron for pointing out I am not alone in make such decisions, I know that I am not. Unfortunatly as a mere human, to quote some of the things we have all faced, I guess I needed to hear it in some way to make me feel a little better. As for fixing what I did I can't, and I am not sure I would change what happened even if I could. I think our world deserves a chance, they had one and wasted it to try and take ours.

Maybe I can catch a bit of sleep that is not due to Jan sucker punching me with a powerful sleep drought I have not thrown out because it belonged to my mentor. Seems she used it on him when he refused to sleep or slow down long enough to recover from a draining ritual or fight.

Micheal T.

[Ron Caliburn]

Your welcome Micheal.


I've had my share of sleepless nights and second thoughts too.

It's a shame you had to stick it to some folks, but if they were coming after us though, then they deserve what they got.

[DarKnyht]

There are things I think we all have done that makes us walk the moral tightrope. I think sometimes it is all the more difficult because most people have no idea the anguish and sacrifice you make on their behalf.

[Ron Caliburn]

I'd say it's more a cliff we need to climb than a tightrope.


I know I have a long way to go to the top.

[Kolya]

There's nothing I can say to fix this. All I can say is that if you did the best you could do, what else could be expected from you?

If you want to talk about it, there're those here that won't judge you. You know who they are.

[Eilonwy Solstice]

I'd say it's more a cliff we need to climb than a tightrope.


I know I have a long way to go to the top.

That’s what friends are for, Ron. We help each other up. Eventually, we will make it to the top. But not without a bit of sliding, uncertainty, and handholds that crumble beneath fingertips.

Keep on trying, Michael . . . Ron.

[Kolya]

I don't know what the top is. I just keep climbing.

[Ron Caliburn]

The top is the place where we don't have to hang on by our fingernails to avoid sliding back down.


Some of us have had a longer climb than others.

[Kolya]

Ok then I don't see me reaching the top....ever.

[Ron Caliburn]

You only find out how far you got when you're dead.

[Natasha]

You only find out how far you got when you're dead.

Is that how you would measure your life, too?

[DarKnyht]

No it is quite the tightrope. It is the balance between being good while fighting evil. Because by nature, when you fight evil most of us end up doing or using methods that are less than pure.

For example, you deceive those around you to further you goals. You also kill those that are working for against you, and at times you sacrifice the lesser for the greater good. All of those things wear on you and pull you in one of two directions. Either you become as cold as that which you hunt or you get yourself killed because you are trying too hard to not be that which you hunt.

It's all a balance.

[Kolya]

I know I say this a lot.

For me it's doing the best that I can with what I have. If I focued more on good versus evil, I know that I would have boatloads more dark marks than the few I actually do have.

It's puts some people off.
I'm not the most sociable guy in the world.
But this isn't a popularity contest.

[Ron Caliburn]

You only find out how far you got when you're dead.

Is that how you would measure your life, too?

Until your life's over, there's no real way to sum it up.

[Michael T]

You have mile markers so to speak that you can look back at. None gives a full picture of what you have done till you can do no more.

Michael T.

[Peng Tai]

I fully agree with you Michael and Ron. This shadow war is full of difficult choices. Some on a large scale, others on a more discrete level, both have affects that are far reaching. I myself have had to make choices that I regret the decisions I made, but thats life, its the hell that we make it.

[Michael T]

I have had time to relize I made the right choice, and don't regret it. I don't belive we are responsible for the hell we endure, I think it's a method of trying to make us quit.

Michael T.

[Peng Tai]

I guess your right that we aren't responsible for the hell that we endure.

But whether or not you made the right decision is in your mind, if you say that its the right choice then its the right choice.

[Eilonwy Solstice]

Good. I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better about it, Michael. The Enemy does indeed try to make us quit by multiplying our guilt, real or imagined; but we must press on.

[Edge Shadows]

The Sleepless Nights, reaching for your blade with every sound creakin among the sleeping relatives, the fear of sunset inching past the peaks. Our sanity is in check by know there one less monster out there planning to attack everything you hold dear to your heart, I wished it to be different but I will have it no other way, I live and monsters die.

[Deacon Ash-Shaytan]

Taking the law into our own hands is a very dangerous thing. There's a reason vigilantism is against the law.

[Lord Shakar]

Deacon, Unless you have faced what many of us here have faced. I don't feel you have much room to speak on these sorts of matters.

There are creatures and beings out there they don't give a damn about law, society other than to use it to their own means for their own twisted goals.
Those that fight them do so from the Shadows. Because of Society's lack of Belief in the Supernatural.

This lack of belief by society at large forces those that fight the Unnatural must do so from the shadows and keep it secret for the most part.

[Shang Li]

Mr Ash-Shaytan actually has a very valid point, one that we should all ponder at least on occasion. More than one hero has become a villan, falling from grace by making use of the methods of the enemy. On the other side of the same coin, even a demon can be redeemed and brought back to the light. One must be cautious in passing judgement on others, for all things have a part to play, some lesser, some greater. It was not given to man to know the future in it's entirety, or the roles that one plays in the creation of the future.

Be cautious in your actions that you do not become that which you hunt.

[Lord Shakar]

Its a good thing I have never, ever claimed to be a hero then. All that does is make you a target.

[Deacon Ash-Shaytan]

Deacon, Unless you have faced what many of us here have faced. I don't feel you have much room to speak on these sorts of matters. There are creatures and beings out there they don't give a damn about law, society other than to use it to their own means for their own twisted goals.

I admit I have had my share of unexplained experiences, but the way some of you all chat it up, you'd think every 1 out of 2 Americans are werewolves and they have bright neon signs declaring their intentions to the world over their head. And yes, I know perfectly well that there are creatures out there that don't care about law and society. They're called scumbags. And they're never as bold as the brass that many of you guys churn out. That's the reason I probe and question: because you Lazlo folks are so friggin sure that what you meet is what you say they are. Life has never been that easy.

Its a good thing I have never, ever claimed to be a hero then. All that does is make you a target.

It's a good thing I've never called you one. So until you want me to call you one, I'll stick to "Mr. Shakar," if you don't mind.

[Lord Shakar]

One thing you need to realize is this: while these creatures aren't commonly sighted. We who fight them know the signs of them and some of us have sharper senses then normal and can find them out easier than others.

Another thing is that the focus of these boards is the Supernatural, unnatural and that which can't be explained.

[Deacon Ash-Shaytan]

I realize it right enough, Shakar. And I've learned their "signs" aren't nearly as broad as the barns some of you have been painting. This may be a site of the "unexplained," but I have rarely come across the "unexplained" on it. It's always vampires, it's always werewolves, it's always astral entities, it's always explained, and there's nothing left to speculate. You guys have an answer for everything, and you give no hint to the Ordinary Joeys out there that you've done any investigating. You just leave it at "We have special powers that you don't, so there." And we just have to trust that you're telling the truth?

That doesn't happen in real life. The police struggle and sweat and bleed for their answers, and sometimes they get nothing, for nothing. If it's always as easy as all that, then why are they wrong so often? Why do they retract and revise statements?

You guys don't even leave room for possible discussions on what actually happened and what the consequences of it are.

I hope you'll forgive me my skepticism. But I seriously doubt the "ordinary" world is so blurred while the "supernatural" world is so clear cut.

[Ron Caliburn]

Well Deacon,

I don't post about the dozens of encounters I have with mundane things because that's not what this place is for. Discussing the gang-banger's head I bounced off a wall or the homeless guy I got to a shelter is not what matters here.

I typically patrol an area I've referred to as the Blight. Its a place that police ignore because, quite frankly, almost all it's inhabitants are addicts, whores and homeless. I patrol it in part because the police don't and in part because things that feed upon humans have decided it's an area where they can operate with impunity and so they don't ake as great an effort to hide.

I don't post about ghost stories or mysterious sites because that isn't really my thing. I know I'm just as flummoxed as any other average Joe there.

But I can fight and I build weapons, so I step into a part of this world where I can find nasty things I can use those weapons on. Sometimes I can identify what I'm fighting, other times I have to chock it up to a "thing" and hope someone on here can tell me what it is based on my descriptions.