This begins a multi-part series of posts giving a preview of two chapters: Harry’s World covers the basics of the world and the setting (a primer of sorts), while Old World Order digs into the politics of the paranormal.  Every other Tuesday, you’ll see another post with more from one of those chapters, running for the next few months.  Enjoy!

Harry’s World

For most people, Chicago is Chicago, America is America, and Earth is Earth—but there’s more to the world than that.

Beneath the “normal” surface of the world are things and people which most humans don’t know about, don’t want to know about, and will do their best to forget about if they ever come anywhere near them. That dead body with the odd toothmarks? Attacked by stray dogs. The traces of thirty different infectious diseases on this corpse in the mortuary? Statistical anomaly. The Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton from the museum scattered in a thousand pieces on the college lawn after the several day long city-wide blackout? Student prank during unusually severe weather.

People won’t see things they don’t want to see. It’s almost always possible for everyone, from heroes to bystanders, to turn away and not get involved in what’s going on. It’s often the easiest thing in the world to do. You don’t have to get involved. You can choose between good and evil, between light and darkness, between necessity and possibility, and between taking action and going home to curl up with a good book.

HARRY: It’s not as though the Archangel Michael came down in person and gave you a Sword made from one of the nails that pinned Christ to the Cross and charged you with a sacred mission, after all.

By the way, if anyone out there has had the Archangel Michael come down to charge them with a holy mission, give me a call. I’m in the book.

The world is weirder, more wonderful, and more deadly than it seems. Some people know this. Most of the citizens of Chicago would laugh at the idea of magic, even though Harry Dresden has his number and occupation right in the phone book. But there are people who know that magic exists and know who to call when they run into it. There are humans who have been divinely blessed or diabolically cursed. There are fairies—small, big, hugely ancient and terrifying. There are even dragons, although these days it’s said they consider bearer bonds as well as pure gold for their hoards.

The Nevernever—the world of fae and ghosts—is just on the other side of a boundary Veil from normal life; courts of vampires divide the night between them; the White Council of wizards tries to protect the innocent and stop the misuse of magic.

All of this is going on, right under our noses.

However, this is also a world where a single person, in the right place, at the right time, can do the right thing and save the people he cares about.

Here in what we like to call “the Dresdenverse,” we can choose to be people who see, who are aware, who make our own paths, and who do the right thing and take the responsibility for doing it. Seen clearly, this world is full of light and darkness, with all the shades of grey between.

HARRY: You have got to be kidding me.

Billy, nobody but you and Kirby call the world “the Dresdenverse.” NERDS!

Join us, if only in play. Because it’s only a book, a game, a roleplaying entertainment of magic and monsters.

Isn’t it?

You be the judge.

Join us in two weeks as we delve into the Maxims of the Dresdenverse!