Seaside Vale was a sleepy town on Florida's east coast.
That's why Darren Kade had decided to set up shop there. Darren was a tattoo artist, a profession that seemed to lend itself to suspicion to begin with, and his parlor was a bit shadier than most.
It wasn't so much that Darren was into illegal activities, such as drug dealing or drug abusing, rather it was his artwork that would attract far too much attention in a larger city.
It wasn't that his artwork was truly obscene, or even offensive. Darren never did any of the racist-types of tattoos that skinheads prominently displayed. Darren only tattooed people by appointment, and the only artwork he did was of animals.
Darren wasn't even particularly skilled, though he was above average in talent. No, it was his inks that were special. They were, in fact, quite magickal. He'd coined a term for them: "moonlight reactive". Whenever the tattoos were exposed to moonlight, the person transformed into whatever animal had been tattooed on them.
Darren's particular talent was actually magick, it seemed, for he enchanted the inks himself, worked the spells out himself. They didn't even need to be in a full moon to work their power, he'd found. Even the barest sliver of moonlight was all that it took, and
his customer would change, transforming back in daylight, or when they were out of the moon's light.
Darren had practiced his art on several people before making his plan to open his own shop, perfecting the spells and their effect. As far as he could tell, there was no flaw in his plans so far.
Step one had been to open his parlor. He'd find suitable men and women to gift with his magickal art in Seaside Vale. It was a decent mix of young and older, and had a decent income level. But it wasn't enough for Darren. Darren's plan was to eventually take over the world, one city at a time. He'd cast runes, and they'd led him here. He could feel a strong magickal female presence here, and once she united with him, his destiny would come true, and nothing could stop him. He simply had to find her. She held the final key to his success.
Full of visions of success, he flipped the sign from "closed" to "open" on the door of his shop, and waited for his first prospective customers.