"History books talk about kings and wars and revolutions. They don’t tell you how many of ’em started ‘cause some fool poked the wrong side of the Veil and brought back something we wasn’t ready for."
The Veil has been with us longer than memory — tangled in our myths, our fears, and our mistakes. From whispered warnings around ancient fires to blood-soaked rituals hidden beneath marble cathedrals, humanity has always brushed up against it, poked at it, and paid the price. This is not just a story of magic or monsters; it’s the story of how every generation thought they could tame the unknown, and how the unknown reminded them who was really in charge.
Pre-20th Century Myths and Sightings
Long before anyone named it, the Veil shaped human fears and beliefs. Ancient texts and oral traditions are littered with accounts of strange phenomena: phantom armies in the sky, rivers that ran backward, forests that whispered in dead languages. Most cultures developed rituals — not to harness the Veil, but to
survive it. Sacred groves, salt lines, burial customs — all early attempts to hold the unseen at bay.
The creatures of legend, too, had their roots in the Veil. Count Dracula — Vlad III of Wallachia — was not merely a brutal warlord, but one of the earliest documented cases of a Veil-corrupted human. Lycanthropy outbreaks appeared in France and Germany in the 16th century, when certain bloodlines began twisting under unknown influences. The first verified fae sightings, dangerous semi-corporeal entities born of wild resonance, were recorded by Celtic monks and later suppressed by Church authorities.
One of the earliest major Veil disasters occurred in 1348 in the French village of Saint-Pazanne. Local monks, attempting to "bless" a plague-stricken town using newly discovered sigils, instead triggered a bleed that twisted the sick into monstrous forms. The town was burned to the ground within a week, and the Church quietly buried the incident under layers of sanctified lies. The lesson spread fast through Europe: some doors, once opened, cannot be shut.
Veil Recognition and Early Regulation
By the 17th and 18th centuries, the existence of the Veil was no longer just folklore — it had become a quiet but growing area of study. Occult orders like the Hermeticists and Rosicrucians developed early systems for cataloging Veil phenomena under the guise of "mystical philosophy." In France, the royal court began actively outlawing certain "peasant magics," fearful of Veil manipulations outside aristocratic control.
Cambridge University in England established the first formal department dedicated to Veil phenomena in 1665, hidden under the broader banner of "Natural Philosophy." There, they laid the groundwork for the modern disciplines of Names & Symbols, Bloodwork, and Resonance Studies.
Following the French Revolution, revolutionary France sought to standardize Veil-related knowledge. The first
College of Names and Symbols was founded in 1799 in Lyon — a secular institution tasked with studying the power of sigils, glyphs, and true names. By the early 19th century, several European nations had begun classifying different types of Veil interaction under civil and criminal law — officially banning blood rites, pact rituals, and unlicensed symbol work.
Veil knowledge became part of modern culture’s skeleton: hidden in university departments, buried in military experiments, and whispered about in spiritualist circles. Humanity never truly conquered the Veil — it simply learned to quarantine it, to pretend it could be safely boxed away.
But accidents and abuses still happened, and every generation produced new cautionary tales.
New Eras and a New World
By the end of the 18th century, the Veil was becoming a more standardized, accepted part of humanity’s world — at least on paper.
In the Americas, however, the Veil was anything but academic. Indigenous peoples had long-standing traditions of Veil knowledge — sacred sites, spirit pacts, and natural resonances were integral to survival. When European settlers arrived, they fought not only tribes for land but also unleashed Veil disturbances that native traditions had carefully kept contained for centuries. Stories spread of phantom armies marching through the forests, rivers swallowing entire convoys, and "sickened" lands where nothing living would grow. The conquest of the West was not just a battle against men — it was a battle against the wild, unpredictable forces of the Veil itself.
By the late 19th century, as cities like Chicago boomed, informal Veil practitioners operated in back alleys and hidden storefronts. Immigrant communities brought old-world blood rites and symbol magics with them, adapting their traditions to the strange new energies brewing beneath the growing industrial cities. A handful of universities quietly began studying these phenomena, but public knowledge remained fractured — tinged with fear, superstition, and half-remembered warnings.
The Veil in the Great War
World War I marked the first time the Veil was openly weaponized on a global scale. Nations scrambled to find ways to harness its power — and its horrors — for the battlefield. French and German forces employed ritual bombardments, designed not just to kill but to destabilize enemy morale by stirring up localized resonance fields. "Veil Rot" — a sickness caused by prolonged exposure to corrupted trenches — became an unspoken plague among front-line troops.
The death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, often cited as the spark of the war, had hidden roots in the Veil. Gavrilo Princip, his assassin, was later found with crude Veil sigils burned into the lining of his coat — marks associated with disruption and collapse. Whether Princip was a pawn or a willing agent remains a topic of classified study, but the chaos that followed bore all the signs of a Veil-accelerated catastrophe.
By the war’s end, entire regions of Europe were so saturated with Veil distortion that resettlement was deemed impossible. Governments swore tighter control over "Veil-use," but desperate people found ways to bend the rules. In America during the Great Depression, use of minor blood magic, resonance rituals, and low-tier pacts surged as families fought to survive. Quiet districts of cities like Chicago became riddled with charm-sellers, curse-breakers, and amateur pact-brokers — dangerous work, but often seen as the only option.
Major Veil-Related Events in WWII
World War II turned what had been desperate improvisation into cold, industrialized power. The Axis and Allied powers raced to weaponize the Veil more efficiently — mass-produced sigil weapons, ritual shock troops, controlled pacts with lesser Veil entities. American GIs on Iwo Jima faced not just enemy soldiers but Oni spirits bound into the very stone. In Britain, "witch squadrons" allegedly helped divert German bombers using airborne resonance arrays hidden in cloud formations.
But the Veil is never tame. The infamous "Black Scar of Ardennes" remains one of the war’s most suppressed disasters: an Allied attempt to collapse German defenses using a resonance disruption ritual backfired catastrophically, opening a rift that devoured an entire battalion. Survivors — if they still existed — were never found. The site remains quarantined to this day.
Post-War Commercialization and the Cold War Veil Race
After the war, the world was too entangled with the Veil to simply walk away. Research projects transitioned into private hands, and a new industry quietly emerged: "Veil-infused" products promising health, luck, or power. Minor Veil manipulation found its way into luxury goods, medical treatments, even certain illicit substances. Governments established regulatory agencies to monitor the spread, but black markets flourished faster than bureaucracy could react.
The worst commercial Veil disaster came in 1952, when the Helios Corporation introduced "Lucent Tonic" — a Veil-enhanced vitality drink. Within three months, hundreds of users exhibited symptoms of accelerated cellular mutation, with at least 47 deaths officially recorded and dozens more quietly covered up. The Helios Scandal shattered public trust and led to the first major Veil Regulation Acts. Since then, Veil-infused products remain legal but heavily restricted — a dangerous temptation for those desperate enough to roll the dice.
Meanwhile, the Cold War escalated into a hidden Veil arms race. Rumors spread of CIA "Black Projects" in the Nevada desert, where captured Nazi occultists worked on Veil weaponization. Across the Iron Curtain, whispers spoke of KGB sorcerers creating rift bombs — devices not meant to destroy cities, but to tear open reality itself in the heart of enemy territory.
The threat of atomic annihilation loomed large over the 1950s. But for those who knew the deeper dangers, the greater terror was not fire from the skies — it was the possibility that some foreign agent might open a Veil rift in New York, Chicago, or Washington, unleashing something far worse than any bomb. In quiet halls of power, there was a grim understanding: the next great war might not just end humanity — it might end the world altogether.
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