Why choose human?
In a world of vampires, werewolves, witches, and creatures of legend, it can be easy to overlook humanity. Yet it is often ordinary people who experience the most compelling stories.
Humans are investigators, doctors, journalists, police officers, bartenders, clergy, academics, business owners, artists, and everyday people attempting to make sense of an increasingly strange world. They form relationships, uncover secrets, ask difficult questions, and frequently find themselves standing at the crossroads of the supernatural.
Unlike other beings, humans possess no extraordinary powers to shield them from danger. Their strengths lie in their determination, intelligence, courage, resourcefulness, and capacity to adapt.
A human may become a trusted confidant, an unwilling witness, an expert in obscure lore, a protector of their community, or someone drawn into mysteries they were never meant to see. Some may remain blissfully unaware of the darkness around them. Others may gradually discover truths that forever change their understanding of the world.
Humanity and the Veil
The Veil exists to protect both humanity and the supernatural from one another. Most humans remain entirely unaware of the strange and often dangerous world that exists beside their own. For the majority of people, the supernatural remains the subject of folklore, superstition, and imagination.
This, however, is not universally true.
Some humans possess limited knowledge of the supernatural world and may become trusted allies to its inhabitants. Such individuals may include Vessels, employees, confidants, investigators, or those who knowingly choose to assist in preserving the Veil.
Though uncommon, these individuals can become invaluable friends and protectors of supernatural communities.
Other humans become aware of the supernatural through accident, investigation, or direct experience. These individuals are often referred to as the Illuminated.
The Illuminated are not inherently hostile. Some seek understanding, while others react with fear, curiosity, disbelief, or obsession. However, an Illuminated individual may inadvertently become a serious threat to the Veil. Questions become investigations. Investigations attract attention. Attention invites scrutiny.
A single person's discovery may ultimately draw journalists, law enforcement, organized hunter groups, and even governmental interest toward supernatural activity.
For this reason, the Veil remains the responsibility of all who dwell within the supernatural world. Knowledge itself is not always dangerous. Recklessness and exposure are.
In Opaline, even an ordinary human armed with curiosity and determination can change the fate of monsters.
Humans also possess a unique advantage within the World of Opaline: possibility.
A human's story is not necessarily defined by what they are today. Through circumstance, choice, or fate, some humans may one day become the progeny of a Kindred through the Embrace, while others may discover within themselves the mysterious gift of becoming a spell-casting Bloodroot.
Garou stand apart in this regard, for they are born into their nature and cannot be created or transformed through outside means.
Humans alone stand at the crossroads of countless possibilities. They may remain entirely mortal, become trusted allies of the supernatural, uncover secrets that change their lives forever, or one day awaken to an existence they never imagined.
For this reason, humanity is not the absence of the supernatural. It is often the beginning of it.