These aren't junk scraps as some might think of then.

Over the course of almost a decade my friend and I have built a stable of characters that are floating around without a world and the only thing connecting them are small scraps of notes and conversations between the characters. We have several hundreds of pages of just dialogue between these people, each from a different walk of life, and we'd like to retain these people in some way. The Shadows Compendium is an effort on my part to compile all of these people and their stories into one coherent whole. This is a daunting task, really, mostly because we never planned for these people to have one whole story. We just liked their personalities and liked watching them interact, so in the end we had them speak to one another. Some were attention hogs and others faded quietly into the background, working their magic from the shadows.

That's why I decided to call this collection of the bits and pieces of these people's lives The Shadows Compendium. Out of thirty-two characters, not a one is untouched by the others, even if it is something as faint as their shadows crossing in a dusty street in a human trade city. These people, even without their cities or their collective world, create a rich tapestry of cultures and ideological differences that I think deserves to be told.

Now, still, remember, that these are still fantasy characters built in a classic fantasy world. Most of these were thought up when my friend and I were 10-11 years old and have been built up in complexity and character since then. There are a lot of things that don't make sense, such as changes in height, age, even hair and eye color or their background stories as lumps and gaps have been smoothed and filled. Actually, I would like any reader's help in pointing out these flaws and inconsistencies if they're spotted.

So, in the end, The Shadows Compendium is a collection of lives recorded on scraps of paper, notebooks, napkins, video games, long car rides, and secret fantasies. Each one on its own may not make much sense, but it will come together in time. When it does, I think it will be beautiful.