Editing Silent Hill (section)

==General Themes/Lore==
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Though each game deals with fairly different characters and reasons for them being there, the series overall has a general thesis that plays out no matter the actual story and events of each game. There's also a general explanation for the story found in the documents in each game taken against each other which provides more detail than just surreal psychological things happening because it enables the story to happen. 

Most games deal with victimization and victimhood, with most characters being either a victim or victimizer (sometimes both, and not always obvious) who is dealing with that trauma. Characters with power or privilege hearing those who were silenced or buried/forgotten by society also factors in quite often. Characters are usually suffering in silence in the outside world and lash out once they are in the town, their resentment and proclivity to violence factoring into what Silent Hill shapes for them. 

The mythology for the town itself starts with the Native American tribes who knew the place as a spiritual one where visions appeared in the mist that came off Toluca lake. Along with the broader plot of one game, secondary plots in several others, and implications of some documents its implied the lake is the source of the town magic. With European colonization came the unnamed Cult, which began in the old world and is generally shown bearing symbols of Catholicism but entirely divorced from Abrahamic beliefs. 

According to the Cult history begins with humans already existing in a timeless place with violence but no death. A man and woman created a female God, portrayed with red hair and clothing, by offering a reed and serpent to the sun. This god created time as well as a day/night cycle and death. She then created other gods and angels to help her create a "paradise" but exhausted herself and died before she could begin. According to the Cult they follow her directions which will help humanity resurrect her to bring about the apocalypse and bring about the paradise. Along with the myth are various and largely unknown sects, a system of judgement and salvation which seems at odds with what the origin myth states and is fittingly largely only paid lip service to by its leaders. 

Various events from vanishing ships to Civil War prisons with high mortality rate begin stacking mass human death and suffering into the town history. 

Whether or not there is actual truth to the religion is irrelevant. According to documents in the games the Cult purchased artifacts from around the world, with one in particular being the Flauros. The Flauros is a 4-sided object connected to demons, communing with the supernatural, and psychic powers, though in real life Flauros is the name of a demon from multiple books around the subject of demonology including 'Ars Goetia' who can allegedly be summoned to provide any knowledge (including subjects like the plans of the divine and anything that has or will happen) though additional steps and spellwork is needed to force him to tell the truth, and even harm other demons plus is associated with things such as fire and mirrors. In general most of the Cult activities and rituals follow these themes.

At some point the Cult began manufacturing a drug called PTV made from a flower called White Claudia that grows only along the banks of Toluca Lake which they used to control others and generally fund themselves. Notably substances made from White Claudia are shown to be holy and combat the effects of the "magic" of the town purging possession, contamination, and monstrous creatures from the bodies of others. They also founded an orphanage while taking over an abandoned water treatment facility, the former to churn out new Order members and the latter as a means of imprisoning and disposing of any difficult children (it should be noted the water prison was only seen as a warped memory of a child abused there and the real version of it is unknown). 

By the time of the first game the Cult has become proficient summoning real demons, have a large population of people controlled either by belief or addiction, have substantial enough funds for embezzlement to occur, have inspired a second cult that has to conduct human sacrifice to protect themselves from them, and have at least two plans in place to bring their god (or at least demons brainwashed into thinking it is their god) into the world. The town itself has spiritual occurrences, but does not yet have its noteworthy other dimensional sides which originate from the events of Origins and Silent Hill 1.