Age of Darkness
The sun rises on a new world- a world not like that you may know. Shattered by a catastrophic impact not long after the extinction of the dinosaurs, Earth is not as it should be. This impact, a star falling to earth, changed not only the shape of the world, but also her content; this star bore strange light and eldritch crystals, warping and altering the planet where humanity slowly arose. Continents were broken, minds shattered, even animals and plants twisted and changed. It is a different world, one in many ways hostile to humanity- but in the end, it is your world.
You stand forward as one of the leaders of a kingdom of survivors, a lord of a people amongst many. It has been over a thousand years now since the first tribes emerged in the impact of the Cataclysm, family groups formed from scattered wanderers and survivors, and now from those first few tribes and city-states immense nations and countries have emerged, shaping the world about them. Men built great wonders, forged empires, and in that grandeur brought ruin upon themselves. Walking demons of the unquiet dead and cultists of mad gods descended upon civilization, exploiting the hubris of settled peoples, and untold thousands perished in the slaughter of that Time of Blood.
It is now nearly a century since the last adherents of the cults and dark practitioners were hunted down. The shattered remnants of society have begun to rebuild, remember forgotten secrets, and look beyond mere safety for meaning once more.
To be a leader in such times is to be given a solemn charge, that of your people's perseverance. Civilization is fragile, and your civilization the most vulnerable - your enemies many, potential or otherwise. Dark thing lurk in the wild places of the world, and the graves of the dead outnumber the homes of the living. Will you rise to cradle the light of civilization alongside your kinsmen, or will you falter and become another forgotten people, tombs to litter quiet hillsides? Come, and tell the tale of the Age of Darkness.
The line of a dozen men were coated in dust, their masks of dun-colored fabric pulled up to cover their faces. Cloaks in diffident mottled shades of gray, biege, and pale green swathed their forms, only the tiny glints of silver and shimmering steel betraying their military origin. Those cloaks might have once been a uniform color, but the clouds of choking ash and soot which rose sudden out here had steadily turned the plumage of the men on patrol into uniform patterns of grime and wear.
Behind the visor of crystal glass the force-captain scanned the horizon. This was still the edge of the devastation that had been wrought by the War of Wrath, but you had to be careful nonetheless. Fades, lurks, rogue animuculi, all were known to stray out of the deep desert upon occasion. Sometimes patrols went out and didn't come back. A dangerous assignment, to ward the beleaguer of the blasted wastes, but someone had to do it. And advancement came quickly, if you survived. Experienced wardens were in high demand as trainers, swordmasters, and mercenaries in the Twilight Cities, not to mention the Guard was always looking for more men to staff her fleets and boarding elements.
"Captain, we're at the apex of the route. Shall we turn north and west, for the ruins of Varra?"
The voice was muffled, but clear enough after the practice of listening to words filtered through dust-masks which the patrolling soldiers wore constantly. A shrug obscured by his garments was enough agreement from the captain for his second to turn his horse back toward the rising sun, and the others slowly followed suit, scanning for danger even as they did so. No greatwolf or horned lord would have survived on the hardscrabble waterless expanses which the team had traversed recently; only the sturdy steppe ponies were equal to the task.
It was as they were turning from east to west that a figure loomed up out of the shadow of the ancient road they had been following, an inky darkness which had been tracking them since the dawn of the day, ever concealed in the lee of the derelict track. It towered over them, a vague gloom which even the light of near-noon could not dispel, vast and terrible and only slightly resembling the garb of a man. They did not perceive it with their eyes, only with the jangling of wrongness at the edge of their senses which suddenly leapt into sickening horror.
Two of the men disappeared almost instantly, their screams cut off in death as it plucked them from their saddles and the horses ran wild in madness. Their cloaked forms disappeared into the diaphanous gloam in a span of breaths, the fade devouring them bodily in its voracious hunger for the beating blood of the creations of the Father. It loomed upward, more solid for having been sated in its eternal quest for destruction. Men shouted, and two of them shaped complex runes in burning light which hung in the air. The beast shrieked, blue-white arrows ensorceled for the hunt cutting into its insubstantial flesh before gouts of cleansing white flame sputtered forth like an inferno.
In a span of moments it was gone, the ache in their teeth and sense of foul magick ebbing away with it. With a sigh the captain dismounted, and other men clambered down off of their horses with swords drawn and spears at the ready to cover him. He stooped low, reading the signs, while other men went to grab the horses.
"No residue, worse luck. It got away."
Damnation. There were too many shadow fiends out here, and too few bodies to hunt them all. Shaking his head the force-captain swung back into the shadow, and the squad set off at a trot, eager to leave the accursed site behind them.
