Journey to the Darkest Dungeon

A First Embarkment

A lethargic sun slowly rose beyond the distant horizon; it's warm yellow light struggling and ultimately, failing against the Hamlets everlasting, murky grey. The gentle rays of light could not pierce the colorless veil yet cast over its broken, fractured houses and its people. And so it was not the light of day that tore you from your tense, deep slumber, but a few rapid knocks on your door. Stupefied from awkward dreams and half-processed poison in your veins, you stumbled to the door and tore it open. It was the caretaker. In his hands he held a small stack of pages, loose and unorganized, and that damnable leather-bound book. Wordlessly he shoved the bundle towards you. The haste in his moves betrayed the panic in his body. So brittle and shaking, you expected his bones to rattle. You felt a slight sense of unease wash over you, then anger, as you beheld the slim fruits of his labor. It was not enough. Especially given his ruinous state after the fact, you had expected he had produced vastly more. Otherwise, how did he justify a stance so uneasy, a mind so rattled. Disappointed, you accepted the body of his work, meager as it was. Of course you thanked the man and dismissed him officially, as it was now your duty and status. Without a further word or look the man shuffled off, to his rightful respite until you required his services once more.

As the sun began its half turn through the skies, you began your own study. The first few pages were scribbled notes, fragments and figments of momentary thought, taken as the writer had begun delving into the source material. Over time, the scribbles grew more lenient and small illustrations began to appear. Some you recognized. Some you were troubled by. Even knowing the journal itself was firmly closed beside you and the content you were ingesting was filtered and broken down through another human being, the lingering terror from the pages it was drawn from managed to fill you with stunning measures of anxiety. You cursed the old fool, for not relegating more of the ancestors influence to his own broken mind, instead burdening you. Another voice cursed yourself for being so weak that a mere word, a suggestion, could fan the flames of dread within you. What had happened to you that you were so feeble? How did you justify your unearned disquietude? You pushed the thoughts aside quickly as you reached one of the later pages. It was just filled with the same sentence over and over. "You shall suffer as I have. You shall suffer as I have." The meaning escaped you.

Deeper within the loose collection of idea and data you discovered, over time, a usable description of your first humble foe. He called it "the Necromancer" Birthed from some abominable ritual, the beast had re-awoken brimming with foul intent. Its connections and powers were explored in little detail, though a few passages mentioned "re-animation". You still found it challenging to reconcile with you the idea of such monstrous conceptions crossing that irrefragable border between horror tale and reality. The circle of life and death, perverted and derailed into a mockery of the natural order. If the word of your ancestor was to trust, it was true. You cared not for his word, not the slightest, even so all it took was a look around. This decrepit place, its lingering, horrid energy, it managed to confirm any suspicions, to deem them true, irrevocably and beyond the shadow of any justified, but ultimately powerless doubt. You found it creeping in the streets, saw it within every hollow-eyed gaze, every shambling motion. You saw it deeply and starkly within that damned ruin at the top of the hill. And you saw it within yourself. It had to end. Now.

The last page was a map. Depicting the crumbled ruins of the lower castle hold and the place where crazed villagefolk had last seen the gruesome results of the beasts "work". Awoken cadavers, seeking the light of life and eager to snuff it out. Bent on a rage against the living that none of us could ever fathom. A marking had been made on a larger room within the deeper, yet intact levels of the castle. There, so say the villagefolk, it must be. Laboring away, day after day, night after night, plying its cruel trade anew with every rotation of the sun around the sky. This map gave you all you needed to launch your first assault on the things that had claimed this land in their name. You would claw it back, in your own. And your warriors would be the ones to impose your measures, your will, onto this land as they were supposed to. Notes in hand you left your quarter for the main hall.