"You saw what you thought you saw. No more, no less. That's how it always is, and that's how it will always be." - Roselyn Stoneworth, April 14th, 2015
Believing is Seeing
The Veil is the name given to a combination of psychological effects,
Dresden Law, willful ignorance, the law of attraction and deliberate secrecy. All those phenomena together converge to make it difficult for those unaware of the Shadow World to see things beyond their experience. When a mortal that doesn't believe in magic see a glimpse of something he can't comprehend, his mind is quick to find an explanation for that which falls closer to his life experience. When it can't explain it, sometimes if the detail is small enough, it will simply try and ignore or forget it, or describe it as a hallucination or delusion. This is then reinforced for the rest of that person's life as they go along with it without seeing anything that defies that original explanation. Powerful secret societies and organization work to keep anything relating to the Shadow World of the public eye, for their own profit or to protect people from the truth. One way or another, most people will not encounter anything beyond the normal more than once in their lifetime, and as they gather together and laugh at what they taught they saw, the Veil grows thicker and stronger around them. But for a select few, even with all those forces, they will eventually see something they cannot explain but cannot forget or ignore. They will chase that shadow into the dark depths it will lead them, and they will eventually face something that can't conciliate with how they thought the world worked so far. For those people, there's no way back.
A Peek Beyond the Veil
Once someone has seen beyond the Veil and their mind cannot suppress it anymore, their friends can't convince them they are crazy and no amount of media pressure can sell them on their old truth, they begin to see things they wouldn't normally see. This is sometimes referred to as the Law of Attraction as if supernatural phenomena are more likely to happen around people who are aware of the supernatural. This, however, is contested by many scholars, who claim people who have not to seem past the Veil simply end up not noticing what happens around them. Regardless of the academic debate, anyone who has had the experience of having their world view shattered will tell you that life was never the same afterward. You can't survive a vampire attack and then not have a templar show up at your door asking questions or stumble upon a Changeling drunk in reverie who forgot to hide their black eyes.
Life on the other Side
As strange as it is, living on the other side is possible, and many people without any supernatural gifts end up doing so. There's a community on the other side, after all, creatures of all types who band together for survival or are at least aware of each other for the same reason. Soon people give up trying to convince their friends and family, and some don't even try, and they embrace the secrecy, the thrill and the stress of the double life, of being part of mortal society while being aware that the world is larger, deeper and scarier than any of your coworkers at Starbucks dream of.
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