Romas.

This once-great city has now been hollowed out by fear. Fear of the Sith who steal away human children to keep for their own. Fear of the advancing Dark Forest which gobbles up more of the field lands each year. And fear of the internal strife gnawing away at the city’s shrunken populace.

Old and yet ever-growing, these threats alone may swallow the last great human nation whole in just a few generations. But now, something even worse has taken hold. A force that threatens to rip the very foundations of the world asunder.

Out in the borderlands Gruagach and their wild Urkharim have discovered that the Arhda — angels of Earth, Air, Water, and Fire — are disappearing. They are victims, they believe, to strange hunters ranging the wilds. Upon the north border of the city a great crack has opened where earth meets ocean. The Defile, as it has come to be called, is at the heart of an ongoing cataclysm. There, earthquakes rumble, poisons fill the waters and airs, and fires burn the ground, sea and within the rain itself. The forests about this place have fallen victim to an ever-expanding conflagration. A blood-like ooze bubbles up from its deepest pits. This Ichor, as the locals now call it, is a versatile and volatile substance — now the center of an illicit trade due to both its magical and drug-like properties.

(Lands all about The Defile are burned, dessicated, and withered wastes. Featured art by Ludmila — Check her out and support her work on DeviantArt.)

Within the city itself, four sects of a strange cult have gathered, spreading the worship of a mysterious God known only as He Who Sleeps and seeking followers for their princes — The Howl, The Black, The Maelstrom, The Glutton, and The Firestorm. City constables suspect the cult of conducting ritual blood sacrifices to their God. But the cults’ wealth means its influence runs all too deep — corrupting the governance of the very city they now prey upon.

It is this world that our heroes enter — one rent by cataclysm, loss, corruption, and a growing fear. Yet for each of you the trouble runs deeper. For you all share a connection to the world that is your home. When looking at the crimson Ichor passing from hand to hand in the dark, smoke-filled alleys, when seeing it ooze from the expanding Defile, you sense that this is the blood of the world itself. That your great home is suffering grievous harm that risks its dying. A great injustice that rankles the heart of you, bringing forth the angry question —

‘Why?’

‘Why is this terrible thing happening?’