Beware the Vog, in half-human shape, something like the wolf.
The Vog?, you ask with lighter tone and careless smirking doubt. What are they? you press in jest.
You haven't heard the stories yet, stretched back a thousand years and more? So, in denial and still unafraid, reckless fool you are. Then hear something now about the Vog, a little that I know. But what to tell that won’t scare youth, or keep even you awake in fright, eyes wide saucers, bedcovers to the chin?
So first take note and be aware of high on granite hill elusive sounds and shifting shapes, long trailing shadows in spiny gorse that fall within the blackened mire. Beware the weathered mounds and broken tors, dusky vales and flooded leats. Beware stealth in breathless air and whispering grass. Then dropping low on hidden paths, slight shrouding fog in sunken hollow, crisp rustled leaves beneath your feet, trailed by the owl's shriek. All to win in raising doubt hard goosebumps on the shivered neck.
Oh, I fear now any more to tell about the Vog itself! So wait a while, with only this til then. Beware you the coming mist and dark, both cloud or moonless nights, and if about keep close a friend to shield you from your fright.
And this is the beginning to your novel?
No.
So what's it got to do with anything?
The Vog were the first idea we had. Everything else has followed.
Allow us to explain. Dartmoor, the uplands in Devon which we two call home, is a wide expanse of moorland, rocky hills, valleys, oak, ash and sycamore woods, solitary windblown pigmy trees, cawing crows, roaming ponies, pools, streams, rivers, and leats. It is a land of old stone: stone tors, stone circles, stone borders and boulders, stone walls, stone-marked pathways, and standing stones. And to add to its allure, Dartmoor is also mystery, from the mist in the mornings to the stars at night, from mossy nooks and fern-covered crannies, to old legends and recent drama.
You've lost me, what has this got to do with your novel?
The Vog are evil creatures. We know they're there. They've always been there. But there was a time when they could have been much, much worse.
Okay...Still no idea what they are to be honest...
No problem, it won't be where our story begins.
No Vog? No Dartmoor?
Not yet. But we'll come back to them.
Where do you want to start then?
Rome. Empire-time. With a gruesome murder...
Oh!
In a theatre.
Go on...