Hello, everyone.
       Wow, I don't check my e-mail for a week, and look what happens.  If I 
may I'd like to give my opinion on the origin of Dark Creatures.
       For one, I agree with what some of you are saying in that the origins 
of DC's should be obscure, maybe a little more for the players, a little less 
for the GM.
       I got to thinking:  One, DC's represent sin.  Two, sin spread 
throughout creation when mankind fell. So here's my idea:  Although I think 
their whole existence should not be defined as "poof, they exist,"  their 
initial coming into existence at the start of the fall would be somewhat of a 
"poof."  To keep it obscure, we could tell gamers that when sin entered the 
world, dark creatures started appearing.  Now, I'm not saying that they just 
appeared before the early Talanians' very eyes, but that people started 
noticing them more and more.  Also, beyond their original appearing, they 
would not simply disappear if they died; they came into existence as a 
<physical> manifestation, so they would rot like any other when they died.  Do 
we need to give gamers any further explanation then, "When mankind rebelled 
against the Overlord, darkness spread across the land as foul creatures became 
more numerous"???  This fits the allegory well, I think.
       If one wanted a further explanation (GM's for instance)  I would 
propose that they could have been magically cloned, hatched, or whatever, by 
the dragons, but only as the result of sin permeating creation.  It is almost 
as if the negative energy (does that sound too New Age?) of sin allowed the 
dragons to produce the dark spawn.  Once the DC's were first 'created', a 
dragon would not need to make any more, because they would produce naturally.
       This got me thinking of a question:  Do DC's sense sin?  Can they tell 
if a person is falling under their enchantment, or is their enchantment just a 
'natural' part of life for them, like breathing, i.e. they wouldn't even know 
what they were doing?
       I hope to hear from all of you on what you think of my ideas.

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							steve brown
							S.D.G.