Introduction to a Gaming Campaign

Returning, brutally fatigued and wasted, from far distant lands and endless wars, you and your companions ride through the gritted mountainous teeth of the edge of the world into the familiar deep green of your mist-haunted valley homeland. The ancient trees which begin to surround you and your path seem to ceaselessly exhale a grim whisper. As you ride down you are slowly overtaken by the roar of frigid falls, pouring a marriage of spring flow and ice melt into the land below.

Absorbing the refreshing scent of the vaporous spray and the green of the damp wood, you round a massive oak and are suddenly greeted by a disheveled and bent crone. She leans against a crooked, moss-garbed menhir-like projection which looms out over the rapidly descending river behind her. Her eyes are obscured by crude wrappings. 

She overpowers the raging water to chide you for your long absence and projects through a thick, wet cough about a horrible sickness that has swept across this land. Her booming voice is disturbingly weak, and yet it is venomously mocking.

The cracking interruption of a falling tree distracts the lot of you, but gazing about frantically, you see nothing of the sort. You eyes return to the crone to find that she has vanished.

You ride on and begin to feel haunted by the liquid hacking of that woman, which you think you hear occasionally in the near and far distance. 

A bend in the path, further down, coincides with a break in the trees. Through it you see the looming mountains which encircle this vale, a sea of mist-drowned trees, and what roughly looks like the skeleton of a village. A shudder overtakes you, for that village was a place you once called home. It was the home toward which you are now riding. 

The cry of a servant seizes your attention, and the entire company turns to behold a tragedy of horrors. Chained to the trees which line the continued descent of the path are skeletons, garbed in the tattered remnants of clothing. Child skeletons, shackled and wrapped tightly to the splintery bosoms of the rain-soaked trees.

A wet cackling can be heard through the trees, and a familiar creaking voice declares, "Welcome. Welcome. For you are home!"