The story of Persona 3 takes place in a 2009 CE Japanese city called Iwatodai, built and funded by the Kirijo Corporation. Experiments carried out ten years ago created the Dark Hour, a period of time that exists between one day and the next. During this time, most people are transmogrified into coffins and are not aware of the Dark Hour; however, there is a select group of people who are.The Dark Hour bends reality; Gekkoukan High School, where most of the characters attend school during the day, becomes a huge labyrinthine tower called Tartarus, and beasts known as Shadows roam the area, preying on the minds of those still conscious. The Shadows leave their victims in near-catatonic states outside of the Dark Hour. To investigate and learn about the Dark Hour, Shadows, and Tartarus, the "Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad", or SEES, was created. SEES is a group of high-schoolers capable of summoning beings known as Personas to combat Shadows. The Persona 3 instruction manual describes Personas as being "a second soul that dwells deep within a person's heart. It is an entirely different personality that emerges when a person is confronted with something from outside his world." Persona-users usually summon their Persona by firing a gun-like object called an Evoker at their head.