The year is 630 of the Second Mundane Age, the date is the 4th of the month Akleth, in the great kingdom of Rodoria. It is a country founded on the first day of the current age, a country built upon the ruins of the nation once known as Gazzeralesh, and one of the most influential countries in the central northern part of the continent of Kirirak.
The country is divided into ten duchies, each one the domain of a separate duke: Wenal, Nemhim, Seclyr, Zerul, Relimon, Anaxim, Pelgaid, Etlon, Fokon and Gilmah, nestled around the colossal Center Lake. Each duchy has some autonomy and are governed by their duke, but all the dukes answer to the monarch, who reigns as the ruler of all the kingdom.
It is a country stricken with plague; for 11 years the terrible disease known as the Withering has ravaged Rodoria, during which it has killed 2.5 million people, or about one fourth the population. Among the dead was every immediate member of the royal family, leaving the Rodorian throne empty for the first time in over six centuries, and sending the Rodorian duchies into civil war as they each vie to assume the throne. As the armies turn on one another and the enforcers of the law, the Fadewatchers, find themselves divided by the fracturing of the kingdom, lawless ruffians, wicked schemers and terrible monsters thrive as the opposition against them weakens.
It is a dark time in Rodoria, and looks only to get darker, as both the Withering and the civil war continues to sunder its people.

Our story, however, begins much smaller than that. In the eastern part of Rodoria, within the duchy of Nemhim, sits the small barony of Borstown. An unremarkable hamlet to look at with a population of less than a thousand souls, Borstown sits at a crossroad about 80 km southeast of Nemhim City.
Many small homes are lined up neatly along the dirt roads that act as the main thoroughfare of the town, humble and unremarkable places for commoners to live. It is about an hour before noon, and though the year is transitioning into autumn, the day is bright and warm under a mostly cloudless sky. Children are playing in the street, and adults are out working either in the fields and pastures closer to the actual crossroad at the center of town, in the farmlands that dominate the landscape to the south and west of the town, or out working in the forest to the east, either collecting firewood and timber or hunting game. The air is full of shouting, swearing and laughter, carried by a gentle, chill breeze.
Here, since about two months ago, the lady of the hamlet has sent out a call:

[I]My name is Baroness Vela Bor. I’m the last surviving member of my party of adventurers, the Melody of Freedom. I had a lot of adventures, collected a lot of treasures, but now I’m getting old and I have no heirs. I’m too weak to do much myself, but I invite any active and prospective adventurers to pay me a visit at my manor in Borstown, Nemhim, so I can get to know you. At worst, if I don’t think you’re cut out for making Reniam a better place, I offer free food, drinks, a place to stay in my home and advice. At best, if I think you can carry on the adventurous spirit of me and my friends, I have a lot to give you out of all the riches, equipment and spellbooks my party collected over the years.[/I]

Since then there has been a continuous trickle of from all over Rodoria to this insignificant little town of people seeking to visit the baroness. Some wish to take advantage on the aging noblewoman, hoping to deceive her and take as much as they can get of her wealth. Others come with a genuine hope to begin adventures of their own, or to obtain aid that will let adventures already in progress continue and succeed. Others yet may be here out of sheer curiosity; to see what this strange baroness is like to make such a strange offer, or to see what kind of people will respond to her call. Even people who came just in the hopes of filling their bellies or being able to brag about having rubbed elbows with a baroness were welcomed in. So far every visitor to her home of Bor Manor, many dozens of them, has been fed and given a warm bed to sleep in for their stay, but have left empty-handed, rejected by the former adventurer.
The trickle has just started to slow, as more and more people start to suspect that Vela Bor may never deem anyone worthy heirs of her and her party.

It is on this day, at this time, we find some of the latest applicants come to meet the baroness.

Along the main road, a short ways southeast from the crossroad, the ascended deigan Lhirinthyl reading in the back of a stagecoach while the true deigan Deo'irah has just arrived by the front door of the local healer's house: a small unassuming cottage with a herbal garden in the back and two apple trees in the front on either side of the short gravel-strewn path leading to the door. A signpost at the corner of this path and the main road declares it as the “Borstown Healer and Pharmacy”.
Even at a glance, however, it is clear that something is awry. What appears to be the broken handle of some long tool or weapon lies discarded in the grass by the path, and both the grass and gravel have spots that are red rather than green or gray. The front door is not only open but broken, the wood splintered near the handle and hangs askew from its upper hinge, seemingly torn off its lower one. The place lays in silence.

Just a short ways up the road from there, at one corner of the crossroad, the human knight Sir Yanin Glade and his equally human squire, Jordan Forthey, are in the process of checking in with the local Fadewatcher station and barracks. It is a elongated, plain wooden building with a small gravel-strewn yard beside it, decorated with several racks of wooden practice weapons, some basic dummies and a line of archery targets. On the end of the building, above the entrance, the wall was decorated with the eye of the Fadewatchers.
The wide double-doors stand closed before the two travelers with no Fadewatchers in sight. However, here too they might notice small splotches of red on the ground and on the handles of the doors. Sounds of panicked voices can faintly be heard from inside, along with the telltale groans and wails that told of wounded.

Just past the crossroad and down the road to northwest, the half-palanter Madara was just leaving the shop of the local carpenter, declared by an ornate, well-carved wooden sign out front as “Prooga Carpentry”. The building itself was probably no bigger than the surrounding residential buildings despite serving not only as the carpenters workshop, but also a store for selling furniture, wooden toys and various little knickknacks, so it had been no surprise when the interior had proven rather cramped.
The inventory of the store had been of middling quality, no worse than one would expect but also unremarkable. The furniture was mostly plain and utilitarian, if sturdy, and the toys had been simple and unimaginative. The most interesting and unique things for sale in there had been various carved wooden goods in the theme of the most significant event in memory of Borstown: memorabilia of the fight between the Melody of Freedom and the Nemhimian Prooga. The shelves had been stocked with carvings of prooga in varying sizes, stances and quality. Some of the best ones had been surprisingly detailed, even getting some of the texture of the fur to express through the wood.
As she left to head for Bor Manor, Madara would soon reach the crossroad and have a direct line of sight to the Fadewatcher station.

Going back to the crossroad and down the southwestern road instead, just a little ways away from the Baroness' home of Bor Manor, the Dark One Nabisisstra Rhe'anyl Qelarn – a rare sight that earned curious stares and surprised whispers everywhere she went – was visiting what the storefront sign declared as the “Borstown Winery”.
It was a fairly large and relatively well-maintained and decorated building, with the front door having scrolling in the style of grape vines, and a large window on either side of the door that gave a good view of a store with shelves full of bottles of red wine. Most of the building was not visible from there, but it was probably a fair guess that those would be the facilities were the wine was actually made. Behind the winery was a large field with rows of grape vines, and crowds of people in the midst of harvesting and tending the vines or carrying baskets of dark-red grapes.

Finally, going back to the crossroad and in the opposite direction, to the northeast along the road through the small forest that cast the land there in sun-speckled shade, the nightwalkers Sir Freagon and his page, Jaelnec, were just getting to where the trees started thinning and the first residences marked where nature gave way to the artificial. Slightly uphill compared to the rest of Borstown, the two of them had a mostly unobstructed view of the entire hamlet.

None of these groups are aware of each other yet, but they will be soon. They are all here to meet Baroness Vela Bor for one reason or another, merely the last in a long line of hopeful visitors. Yet something is different on this day; something strange is afoot in Borstown. Whether these people know it or not, their adventure is about to begin.