STORY

PROMPT:  A grizzled paranormal investigator accepts a job connected to his old flame and her elusive cult, and begins a search that will take him into deeper into the bowels of a city that consumes all who dare comb for its darkest secrets.


SETTING: BIRINGAN CITY/ THE BLACK CITY

-Biringan city is now a haven for enkanto and other cryptids, as well magic-attuned humans and the offspring of enkanto-human unions
-Biringan became a cross-cultural haven after the tribes of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao banded together to drive back the aswang population and has since become a sprawling metropolis that has existed in secret in a parallel dimension that only cryptids, the magically attuned, and the tagabantays can see.
-It exists in its own little bubble seperate from filipino society, with a secret sect of monster hunting mage-warriors known as the tagabantays (name temporary) in-charge of maintaing the balance.
-Tensions between cryptids and the enkantos have risen.
-Has become very violent, unwelcoming
-The use of magic in public has been outlawed following a magi rebellion in the 1800s that left many dead. Human mages practice magic in secret or in curated schools for the magically gifted, with magic becoming a form or art rather than a tool. Biringan has become the last haven for magic as Spanish teachings have all but eliminated it from filipino culture.
-Shorter days, longer nights, with the a majority of the city's aswang district becoming defacto "night-life" district.


THEMES?: Belonging? Etc.? What the fuck?

GENERAL NOTES

-PROTAGONIST’S WIFE IS DEAD, WORKS AS A PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR IN BIRINGAN ON ACCOUNT OF HIS STRONG 3RD EYE, AND HAS BEEN “EXILED” TO BIRINGAN AFTER KILLING AN ASWANG POSING AS A HUMAN WITH NO PROOF BY THE TAGABANTAYS TO SAVE HIM FROM LIFE IMPRISONMENT. HAS BEEN WORKING AS A PRIVATE EYE EVER SINCE, MID 40s, ALMOST 50, motivated by: MONEY AND LOVE. Protagonist is versed in traditional filipino magic, mostly through the use of tattoos he draws on his skin for protection, and small elemental magic

-Protagonist has a partner in the form of a young enkanto-half-aswang police investigator, who acts as his foil. Will eventually betray the protagonist, but is also revealed to have been forced to do so by the antagonist

-Protagonist has a friend who is a policeman in the “real world”, but is also part of the tagabantays