[Ulysses]

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These people were city dwellers in the 1800s. They did not react well to advances in technology and general societal progress and thus left the city and retreated to establish a dwelling in the forest. However, the forest was some sort of "wrinkle in time" and time inside of their forest was progressing at a far slower rate than the rest of the world. At the edges of this time vortex, everything was all f'd up and resulted in the creation of monsters and all sorts of weird random occurrences like morphing. Beyond the edge of the vortex forest, time progressed normally and society advanced, so outside the forest was pretty much modern day time. The interaction between when someone exited the vortex and went into the normal time continuum is likely going to be the basis of the sequel and will be a very interesting concept to explore.