Penumbra

3/17/07
THE NEW SITE IS UP!!

**Go to http://www.aisylum.com/sonnyais/index.html and change your bookmarks. This freewebs site will no longer be updated.

**Chapter 23 is up. You can find it at AFFN and  the new site.

*cough* Now that I've sufficiently annoyed you... Another reason to check out the new site is because there's a lot of new stuff. More background info, a new guestbook, even a new backstory based on Vivienne and Boyd and a chatroom. All the chapters are up there, and I think I caught all the main parts I'd changed on this site when I uploaded them over there.

The world in In The Company of Shadows is entirely different from the world which we live in. In that universe, the cold war never ended and unlike in the real world (where we managed to escape the various brushes with WWIII), the characters in our world were not so lucky. The US continued to fear the spread of communism and fight for “freedom” but their continued invasions on other countries in order to spread democracy and take out tyrannical leaders began to turn their allies against them. Many leaders in Western Europe began to think that the US was going to far, that they had other reasons for what they did and that they were starting wars and invading countries for no reason. This tension between the countries led to the eventual collapse of the United States and many of their longest allies (the main two being England, France and Germany).

Peace talks ensued in an effort to end this global cold war but unfortunately the President of the United States was eventually assassinated during a conference and due to what the US saw as lack of cooperation from the European countries, the first signs of war began to appear.

We are leaving this vague deliberately as not to spoil any of the events in future books (yes there will be more than one arc in this ongoing story) but the main points that should be made are that the United States had an increasingly unpopular administration and there was global tension in what was quickly becoming a three sided cold war. Assassinations began to occur as well as acts of terror. Each side claimed that independent groups were performing these crimes but in a tense and distrusting world, it was very hard to believe this . The end result was World War III.

Sides:
1) United States, Japan, Italy, Israel
2) Western Europe, headed by England, Germany and France
3) Russia, Eastern Europe and China, North Korea.

 Neutral countries:
 Canada, Oceanic Republic, India, some African nations, various countries in Europe and Asia, most of South and Central America.

Many countries involved in the war were countries with nuclear weapons and as things grew from bad to worse, waves of mass bombings spread across the globe. Major cities were targeted first (i.e. Los Angeles, New York City, London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow etc) and those cities and their surrounding suburbs wound up being completely obliterated. Millions died from the bombs and the radiation that followed, economies crashed and productivity came to a grinding halt. The United States was in shambles and for a long time it seemed that it would not be able to recover. Eventually after the destruction continued and it was clear that there would never be a winner in the bloody war, the three sides formed an uneasy truce. But distrust, ill feelings and tension remain high.

The war may officially be over but it seems that the world once again went back into a cold war; only this time the youth of every nation, the college aged kids who saw the carnage and the destruction caused by world leaders, are deciding to fight back. What started as independent groups have become huge political factions who want to take over governments and change what they see are the wrongs of the world.

Although the United States was nearly destroyed, years after the war the administration recovered and one American group in particular, known as Janus, is in direct opposition to them ever growing strong again. The general consensus among these groups, especially Janus, is to stop the administration (an administration that, in their eyes, is no better than the one who started the war) and take over the country in a radical upheaval. The results of these are hundreds of political factions and terrorist groups springing up all over the world who oppose not only the US, but each other (like Dǐ Zhì in particular, who are not with or against the US although they also fight Janus). These groups fight on large and small scales, although they still manage to remain under the media radar. The reasoning behind that is shady at best and though there are a number of conspiracy theories and opinions, no one can agree.

As these groups grow in power, the United States began to fight back in order to stay in control. They do that through Johnson’s Pharmaceuticals, an underground government agency which is not even supposed to exist. One of the main goals of the Agency is to take out all opposition (currently those rebel factions) in order to allow the government, and thus the United States, to return to the power it once was.

In the Company of Shadows started as something to roleplay just for the hell of it when we were bored on IM one night. The first incarnation of the story included a lot of skipping around because we basically chose something we felt like writing about and went with it for a scene or until we lost interest. The problem was, that resulted in about six completely separate short stories that were all over the place.

Boyd was especially difficult to work with. We were trying to show the progression of their relationship, but it was impossible to properly show how Boyd slowly regained emotions when each new story we wrote may be before or after something we'd already done. Eventually, the chaotic way with which we were dealing with the story became frustrating enough for us to decide to try it again, this time forcing ourselves to start at the beginning and not skip around.

It's amazing how well that worked.

We borrowed some of the original short stories and integrated them into the earlier chapters, which is why the beginning of the story is probably a little more disjointed and certainly filled with shorter chapters. A lot of information has been added, rescinded, and changed over the pages, so we still find inconsistencies in the beginning compared to things we're writing right now. If you ever see anything that is contradictory, it is probably due to that. Please feel free to contact us and point it out! We probably missed it and would love to fix it.

The title is not really the official title... When Sonny went to upload the story on AFF, Ais just threw out some titles and lines from old bad poetry she had written. In the Company of Shadows is the one we ended up choosing, though who knows if it will stay indefinitely. Ais is a total nerd who likes titles to have multiple levels of importance, so she's still a little uncertain what she thinks about this.

We officially started writing In the Company of Shadows on November 4, 2006 and decided to try to meet NaNo by writing a story that was long enough for each of us to meet the word count. We each happened to have a long weekend around Thanksgiving and wrote hardcore during that time; the count came to 100,000 words that we wrote just in those four days. It was an addiction that stayed with us, really, and the more we wrote, the more fun we had. And the longer we wanted the story to go...

At the moment (2/3/2007) we are nearing 600 pages in Word and are nowhere near the end of the arcs we have planned. So, if you like long stories, you're definitely in the right place. ;P

We very much hope you enjoy the story if you read it! It's become something we both love writing, but there are still times when we still wonder if readers will like a certain part, or if a certain chapter or response makes sense. So the more feedback we get, the better. Just think, since we're still writing the story, the feedback could possibly even affect future chapters.

Thank you for your time! This is probably far more information than anyone wanted to know about the origin of this story, hahaha...