Once upon a time in the World of Darkness, a medical student took a rare break from study and a rare opportunity to head out with friends into the wilds of the desert. The party was full and fierce, pulsing with all the music and sex Scott Morgan had missed, and perhaps he could have paid closer attention to what he was drinking. But whatever it was, he felt stronger and deeper than ever before, and he headed out into the sand unheeding and unheeded. And somewhere in his stupor the world shifted, and things were in the rocks, waiting. When they found him, Scott thought he was tripping on the best shit you ever hoped for. The cactuses were moving, man, they were chasing after him. By the time they cut and curled their way around his limbs, he knew something was wrong. And for several years, he found out just how wrong things can be on the other side of the divide between the real world and Arcadia.

Scott remembers a horrible mistress shaped like a woman but with flesh like cut diamonds. He had a room with bare walls and a heap of equipment in a corner. In the center, a bloodstained table with all manner of restraints. To his table, the guards brought others - people who were part human, and part other things. "Heal his wound," the mistress said. Using leftovers scrounged from God knew where, he did what he could. And then she said, "Her eyes must be purple." Scott stopped saying that he didn't know how to do something for fear of what would follow after. And after timeless ages blood and begging, he knew he would go mad forever if he didn't escape. So, come what may, escape he did.

Back in the real world, Scott met others who had been kept like him, but by other creatures just as mad and capricious. The fugitives called themselves changelings and though they came back afraid and broken, they came together to make sure no one could ever take them back. They could see the mark of the Fae on the world, and on their own bodies. Though normal eyes couldn't see it, Scott was covered in fine scars that crawled across his body, and his eyes were the gems of his mistress. He was reminded every day of the amazing and terrible things he had seen, and determined to learn everything he could about the world he thought he knew. Because there was so much to know, so much to see, and so much to do in a world full of visions and monsters.

Once home, Scott explored the strange powers he had come to possess, powers over machines and dreams. He found a woman and a friend, which were more people in his life than he'd had before, and they investigated things they wouldn't have believed before they lost their lives. But strange doppelgangers had taken over the public lives of his friends; Scott was the only one who could plug into his old life and take back his old name. It was hard to miss the mundane routines when the three of them were walking between worlds and making magical things