The Part of the Past That's Hollow and Dark

E.'s efforts may have been overlooked by the folks at Black Dog Gaming Factory - except for a few private laughs at SU's expense - but it fit the needs of one of their ex-employees perfectly: the first developer of Spectre: the Annihilation, now a Spectre, herself,

In life, Jessica Shornheart was an amazing writer, but she was also naive, and overly-sensitive to others' criticisms. She got a few well-received writing gigs with Revenant and Warlock, and was then thrust into being the Developer of Spectre: the Annihilation. The MAN told her it was because she was so good at bringing out others' abilities and talents, but in reality the people who really ran the company {not the founder} decided the game was poison, and decided to dump it all on her when it failed.

She put up a good fight, though: Spectre may have been a weird, mismatched sort of game, but there was a core idea to it, and she did all she could to make sure that dark core "shone" through. If she'd gotten more help from up above, if she hadn't been saddled with some of the worst writers Black Dog had to offer {along with some of the best, but most temperamental} and if she'd been able to carry the line the way she wanted, it might have done reasonably well.

But it didn't, and the blame came down on her. The final straw was at Darque-Con, one year, when Black Dog's founder called her a stupid, useless bitch - right at the booth, in front of countless, laughing fans. Why? Because he'd liked having Spectre be a mixed-up grab-bag of ideas, and her attempts to make it more coherent were a complete betrayal of his artistic vision.

Jessica went back to the hotel room in tears, deciding she'd had more than enough of this shit. She'd brought along an electric razor with an extra-long cord for her legs, and the hotel room had a bathtub. One thing led to another, and her fried body was found the next morning by the maid.

Her demise was ruled as an "accident," since she didn't leave a note. {She knew that if she'd taken the time to write one, she'd have chickened out before she got halfway through.} Meanwhile, Black Dog didn't even bother to mourn her passing - much less put anything up on its page - and handed the development of S:tA over to one of the more prolific writers for the game. This was Rich "Deadboy" Glumsky, who had his own ideas on how to make the game "kewler than evaR."

Jessica came out of the caul with a very powerful Shadow, and between that and the shock of having become a ghost, she didn't last long as a wraith. After a few, nasty surprises she tumbled down into Oblivion, only to emerge as a Spectre in thrall to a mostly-forgotten Onceborn. Thereafter, she spent a number of years as a Doppleganger, doing her Malfean's bidding and trying to rebuild His power base.

Eventually, she rose in the ranks to become an Apparition, and her forays for troops took her back to the Shadowlands. There, she oversaw the attempts to claim more power for her dread, broken lord, mostly by fucking with Black Dog Gaming Factory - the purpose for her very existence.

But it was hard, slow going on that one. She was able to mess with the fans with no problems, and could pick off writers and other folks when they stepped outside The Shack - as their office in Georgia was known - she had a hard time getting inside, where she could have done the most damage. It was as though it were protected, somehow - protected by something she couldn't even see.

All the same, she kept trying. And it was on one of her more successful tries that she made contact with an individual who had something unique to offer.