The Setting

Each of you remembers it like it was yesterday. Two years ago the sun was out classed by trails of burning boulders from the sky. Slowly, a city once marvelled at for its advanced architecture and deep historical significance crumbled and fell apart. The immediate impact left many dead or injured and the continuing barrage took what remained. The smell, oh god the smell was a strong mixture of sulphur (which we now know came from the meteors), recently inhumed people and animals, and the long since passed. Days and months passed and turned into two years of rubble and hopelessness. Any sense of kingdom is gone, any hope of government lost. Who would rule this place? Who would dare?

Somehow you survived. You did things you thought you would never have to do, or at least never thought you were capable of doing. Then again, it seemed everyone was. Burdens here come all too easy, and it seems anytime you walk these streets your shoulders get heavier, your mind foggier, and your heart harder. Beings and creatures roam the empty hallways and corridors between buildings. Some used to be people. Some still are but have forgotten anything other than their primal convictions. Other creatures moan and wail and howl filling the days and nights with an uneasy ambience that scratches any and every nerve. The walls move, or it feels like they do.

The center of the city got hit the worst. This used to be the main marketplace and trade fair. Small streets, densely populated houses and estates wind their way in an ever-turning knot. The further from the core you travel the more intact the buildings become (which is to say they may actually look like real buildings), and the more dangerous the creatures appear to be; all kept in by the city wall (which you can only assume has remained intact)

The group spoke to a priest, or holy man, or cleric a while back. He sneered and jeered at the dead, mocking their lack of present existence claiming his god’s judgment was cleansing the planet. You would have believed him if the planet were actually cleaner. Not so. If this were a war of angels and demons, it would appear the angels had a strong limp and a bloodied nose. He didn’t make it.

The group of you have somehow found each other over the past two years. You have all, at some point, pulled a raging monster off of another’s back. Whether rummaging through garbage bins for semi rotten food, guarding each other and taking watches so you could attempt sleep, or simply skulking about alleyways trying to give some poor creature a final rest, you’ve managed to take it one day at a time, carefully balancing your hatred for the now local creatures and vagrants and a quiet peace to prevent you from doing something to get yourself killed. Without each other you would have all died; a group rising from the ashes, finding, killing, saving, renewing.

A city reborn, a city renewed, birthed from destruction, rescued from malice and hatred. This will be your city, your home, your palace, your legacy, and, if not careful, it will be your grave.