The world has gone to hell.

Noone was expecting it, when the Awakening happened. When eldritch monsters appeared around the world, there was no signal. No warning. Strange amalgamations of animals simply appeared, with their own seeming motives and rules and laws that simply did not apply to the world that they had appeared in- or when they did, never on the size the beings were. Creatures that could see without eyes, animals with traits of mammals and insects, beings that produced hallucinagens and intoxicating gasses, and some odd, vague sense of an ecosystem so far beyond our own to be incomprehensible.

The worst part was what happened to the people who encountered them. Whatever those things were seemed to corrupt anyone they pleased - forming something resembling cults with the followers they chose; each with their own goal, their own criteria, their own laws. Some of them seemed indulgent in power, in knowledge, in lust, destruction, in something other that noone else knows; and like tales of old about demons, the followers followed their being’s command unquestioningly. The only reason they must not be is because some seemed benevolent, for some reason, and others simply seemed ambivalent to humans. The logic these beings seemed to hold rarely made sense.

Modern society collapsed soon after. Even those who did not eventually find themselves ensnared by an eldritch being found themselves huddling together in tiny oommunities, desperate to hold onto the small amounts of territory they claimed for themselves with weapons that required as few supplies as possible to make and maintain. Medical supplies became scarce, with towns and manufacturing centers raided regularly for whatever they have left.

The air is thick with smoke, the distant howling and hollers of one of the eldritch being’s cults in celebration of a successful… something, or other, in the distance. It doesn’t really matter. Not when you’re caged like this, in the remains of an old prison cell. Outside your cell, a follower squats, looking in at you, their eyes wide and sharp as they glance between you and a bowl of… disconcertingly red goop, laid out inside the cell for you. You haven’t eaten or drank anything in 2 days, the only sign of food or water from your kidnappers being that same bowl of goop. The world wavers slightly in your vision. Their intention is clear, even though you don’t know what the goop is; join them, or die of thirst.

The follower continues to stare, shaking and twitching for several long minutes longer, before slowly standing, leaving the bowl behind as usual to join the hollerers.

It’s quiet, for a moment. The followers seemed to have left the prison behind for now, as the sun sets distantly, tinted red from the smoke of the eldritch being.

Then you hear a small ruff; like an old dog taking a soft sigh as darkness coats the prison like a blanket.

A mild, lemon-lime green glow encroaches down the hall, the soft brush of fur against concrete filling the halls as a new being creeps down the hall; an odd appearance after so long doused in red.

Then the new creature reaches you. A tall, wolf-like body appears in front of the cell, their eyes not on their face, but rather scattered across their long sides, bulging out like cysts from fur and peering into the cell. Instead, on their face where their eyes look like they should be is a band of glowing fur, much like the stripes that coat the rest of the furred creature; and on the underside, instead of fur, long tendrils and tentacles drape down, exploring the environment curiously with gentle taps and soft squirming. Five tails scrape the floor behind them as they tilt their head, seemingly evaluating your predicament quietly.

Then, in a blink of an eye, their teeth snap onto the lock of the prison door, a sharp growl echoing through the metal as they yank, breaking the door open and padding in with a small bow of their head, that dog-like head tilting in something resembling a greeting as they knock the bowl of goo over.