Raspberry Magic_Preface/Prologue

The Raspberry is a sweet, strange fruit found in Asia Minor around 4th century civilization. Unknown to many is a secret wrapped around the raspberry's use and purpose.

         Around the time of christ, gathered from the wild by the people of Troy in the foothills of Mnt. Ida, these robust berries were used for medicinal and utilitarian reasons only. Soon ,though, this berry's juice was used as the special paint for the most magnificent paintings of the 4th century. The secret? None but a few select elite statesmen, versed naturally in herbal, medicinal, and visual arts by the influence of their culture, were burdened by the knowledge of this secret until the day they passed it on to their children. Their children were brought up as apprentices, but nothing about them was childish in the least. Throughout the centuries this burdensome knowledge was kept secret by the succesors of the initial protectors.

         Nearly only a century in the past today, an outbreak of continuous murders occured around the world. There was nothing to link them together save for the way in which they were slaughtered and when. All casualties had in common: the severing of the heads of all members of entire families; the ravaging of estates that were seemingly the most secluded of all of a families' properties, and the status each family held -they were all rich-; and the days were always that of the new moon. 

         The authorities of each country were mystified, for they weren't even remotely in the loop for it had been buried by years of forgetting. There were no clues; everything was veiled in secrets that went back too many centuries to trace any possible rivalries or foes within the families. There was only an ice cold trail with a lot of loose ends.

         With that, the authorities began to give up as the murders happened less and less often and there were pressing matters to attend to. For a century prior to present day an underground group of elite statesmen who were denied the knowledge of their rivals have hunted down and killed the succesors of that very secret. The question is, though, how did they find these precious successors?

         That question rings silent in the ears of the world. The war of these secret societies still wages underneath the nose of a deaf world, but maybe there is hope yet within the prophesy of Berry Incarnate to protect that which is precious.