"... and when you
gaze into an ABYSS,
the ABYSS also gazes into you."
-Friedrich Nietzche

Joliet, 2006

At the end of the Great War, Joliet was the destination of many immigrants looking to find their fortune in the land of opportunity of the Roaring 20's. It was also the destination of a great and ancient evil, embodied in the person of one Nickolai Deahvilich ("Little Nicky, son of the Devil").

Deahvilich was a small, unassuming man. To see him, one would have never guessed that this was the apprentice to the frighteningly powerful Grigori Yefmovich Rasputin, destroyer of the Russian Empire and High Master of Dark Arts. Deahvilich had mastered all there was to know of evil power and soon exceeded even his master. The enemies of Rasputin could only destoy him with the use of the occult, and lost their souls in the bargain, but Deahvilich was far too powerful to be stopped. Hunted by both the Bolsheviks, and those loyal to the czar, Deahvilich escapes to the new world to continue his horrific experiments.

In the Joliet of the Roaring 20's, there were many opportunities for one of Deahvilich's black talents. The beautiful Rialto Theatre was being built, and Deahvilich found an opportunity to hide in the catacomblike bowels of the adjoining building and continue his dark work. There, he abducted immigrant workers that no one would ever miss. Slowly, he tortured them, consuming not only their bodies, but their very souls, and then walling them up in his lair.
It was years before the authorities stumbled on the horror in the depths of the building, but the evil that was Deahvilich was too powerful and clever to be caught. He had used the very building itself to focus his evil with the tortured souls of his victims. The deep recesses of the building were walled up in an attempt to contain the evil.

Years passed.

Decades passed.

The ABYSS of evil was forgotten, until now...
a portal, accidentilly revealed, unleashs a horror so unspeakable, it is known only as... ABYSS.