The world is so much greater, and more magickal, and more terrible than you know.
Magick exists nowadays, but it has been driven underground. Instead of frolicking in beautiful grottos, fairies can be found in your vegetable garden, or rooting through your garbage. Vampires work night shifts at blood banks. Golems lie mossed-over and forgotten along the side of the highway.
So why does most of the world not know about them?
The vast majority of magickal creatures have a natural glamour to them. It bends their forms to the human eye; wings may become back deformations, hellhounds may become wolves, and goblins may become profoundly stinky short men. In this way, many magickal creatures make their living in the modernized world.
But often, it isn't a good living.
Satyrs long to gambol free. Dragons can't prey on farmers' flocks forever. And centaurs yearn to hold a land under their dominion once more. Beyond that, any threat of discovery could be a death sentence. After all, it was the Phoenix Templars' systemic destruction of the magickal population that led us to today.
And so... the vast majority of magickal creatures live in a sanctuary.
From the outside, Pinefallow Park is a stretch of monstrous electric fences carving out a meager 5,000 acres of protected land from the Pennsylvanian countryside. The aerial Google images show miles and miles of dusty pine trees, and little else.
It's all an illusion.
In reality, it contains 2.5 million acres of fantasy wilderness. From forests to tundras, deserts to swampland to crumbling ruins -- even the Keeper of Pinefallow Park herself does not know everything that these grounds contain. It's a land of mystery... and danger.
Near the entrance to Pinefallow Park is the House, situated in the middle of the Yard. This is where the Keeper of the sanctuary resides. Sustainably operated with fields of crops and wells of water, the House requires nothing from the outside world.
The Yard is also one of the only truly safe places in Pinefallow Park.
All of Pinefallow is governed by treaties. The park as a whole is governed by a treaty that permits none of the magical creatures to leave. It's the sacrifice they make: by voluntarily entering into Pinefallow for its safety from the outside world, they must agree to protect the secrecy of magickal creatures from humans. This means never leaving -- except with special permission from the Keeper.
There is also the Yard treaty. Pinefallow is home to many deadly, malicious creatures as well -- it is the philosophy of the Sanctuary Society that even evil creatures deserve to be preserved from extinction. Very, very few magickal creatures are permitted to enter the Yard. This way, the Keeper, her employees, and the parolees remain safe. When you attempt to violate a treaty to which you are bound, nothing bad happens to you -- you're simply unable to proceed. It is like bumping into an invisible wall.
However, there is a flip side to the Yard treaty: outside the boundaries of the Yard, you are at the creatures' disposal. You exit your domain and enter theirs. Legally, anything they choose to do to you is permissible.
Pinefallow houses many wonders, but it also houses many horrors.
Not all magickal creatures are at Pinefallow Park of their own volition.
Many, many fantasy creatures voluntarily moved into the sanctuary. Some of them fled here. The Dark Ages bathed the world in magickal blood; Pinefallow saved their life. Many of these creatures even consider themselves refugees. Despite the treaties and rules, they can live more freely here inside these walls than out in the modern world, where they can never let down their guard. Where they can't live as themselves. Yet with the exception of the Yard, Pinefallow Park consists of millions of acres to claim for their own.
Other fantasy creatures are technically here voluntarily, but they don't like it. Take, for example, Pinefallow's native centaur clan. They're an extremely proud people. They have no choice but to reside here, and they know it; they cannot live outside, or they will be hunted. So although no one forced them here, they view residing at Pinefallow as an involuntary act. In fact, the restrictions of the treaties defining where they can and cannot go are a slap in the face to such a proud and free clan. They show little respect to the Keeper and little gratitude for the safety of the sanctuary.
But some fantasy creatures... some fantasy creatures have been imprisoned at Pinefallow for centuries. There are some places in the sanctuary where you simply... do not go. There are demons bound by auld magicks; there are ruined ancient temples. Some of these places are so old that the Keepers have lost the knowledge of what exactly dwells there... all that remains are legends of great evil. It's wise not to forget that the preserve does not merely protect fantasy creatures from the human world -- it protects the human world from them.
And so it continues, on, and on, and on.
The preservation of magickal creatures. Immense and crucial measures to protect their secrecy from the outside world. Parolees brought in -- people the world will not miss should something go wrong -- to help staff the most dangerous national park in the world, their memories wiped at the end of their tenure -- unless the Keeper should like them so much that she offers them a permanent position.
Treaties within treaties. Laws within laws. Invisible chains within invisible walls.
And the constant spectre of fear that someone -- sometime -- someday -- may try to knock it all down.
This is Pinefallow Park.