Ruin has come to our family.
A white-haired man jumped from tree to tree, his metal forehead plate covering an eye of blood red, and his mask covering the lower half of his face. Trailing him were a boy with eyes the same shade of red, garbed in blue, with hair that immediately reminded one of a raven; a girl with hair an unnatural shade of pink; and a blonde-haired boy, dressed in orange, with immediately identifiable birthmarks on his face.
You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor.
An orange-haired spirit, shrouded in black, appeared out of nowhere, a rush of wind announcing his arrival. His face was the very image of displeasure; at what he saw in the town around him, the feel of darkness and dread in the air, or something else, nobody knew. Moments later, two people, an archer and a woman, appeared behind him. The archer's face immediately fell to a scowl almost matching the spirit's; while the woman's face went deathly pale, accentuating her orange hair even more.
I lived all my years in that ancient rumour-shadowed manor, fattened by decadence and luxury, and yet I began to tire of… conventional extravagance.
A man and a woman walked along the shattered path to the town. Their blades were strange, as were their armour; as if they had been forged by gods to kill gods. They walked with the sureness of foot only found in warriors, but amplified, as if they'd been warriors for millennia. A man stepped out of the shadows near them, and demanded their money, only to be impaled by the blades of the woman. As the light faded from his eyes, the blades seemed to drink in his essence, starting to glow a bright blue.
Singular unsettling tales suggested the mansion itself was a gateway to some fabulous and unnameable power.
A white-haired man, garbed in blue and red, stepped out of the carriage, his deformed arm glowing unnaturally, seeming to drink in the unholy energies of this place. His blade was massive compared to him, its single edged blade stretching from his shoulder all the way down to his thigh, yet he carried it around like he could swing it easily. The gun at his side was similarly impressive, a revolver with two massive barrels; the bullets fired from that gun would likely take a man's head clean off, if they didn't destroy it entirely.
With relic and ritual, I bent every effort towards the excavation and recovery of those long buried secrets, exhausting what remained of our family fortune on swarthy workmen and sturdy shovels.
A burly man walked out from the forest near the tavern. One of his arms below the elbow was metal, and his other eye was missing. The blade on his back was massive, thick, heavy, and far too rough; it could barely even be called a sword – more akin to a slab of raw iron. Flittering around him was a fairy, chatting incessantly with a girl in a classical witch outfit, who was riding on the man's back; while the man listened on in long-suffering silence.
At last, in the salt soaked crags beneath the lowest foundations, we unearthed that damnable portal of antediluvian evil.
A silver-eyed woman walked around the town, guided by her supernatural sixth sense. She walked into an alley near the church, and laid eyes upon a man digging into and consuming the internal organs of a woman, clearly having just killed her. In the blink of an eye, the man fell to pieces, slashed by hundreds upon hundreds of slashes, while nothing around him was cut at all. The woman flicked her massive sword to clean the tainted purple blood off, revealing the trident rune cut into the base of the blade.
Our every step unsettled the ancient earth, but we were in a realm of death and madness.
A white-haired man kneeled down by the harbor, brushing foliage away from the vaguely lizard-like footprint; yellow, cat-like eyes seeing all. His two swords, one silver, one steel, glimmered in the torchlight. Satisfied, he stood and whistled sharply. A trio of horses sauntered in, two bearing women. One of the women had white hair to match the man's, carrying only a sword of steel; while the other had hair as black as midnight, her eyes shimmering with repressed power. The man mounted the remaining horse, and the trio galloped into the night.
In the end, I alone fled, laughing and wailing through those blackened arcades of antiquity, until consciousness failed me.
The group of newcomers all gathered around the staging area, grouping together with those familiar to them. They eyed the other groups, sizing each other up and taking stock of their weapons and supplies. The stagecoach driver cackled madly as a man approached the group, appearing to the entire world as if he owned the place.
You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial; it is a festering abomination.
He stopped in front of the mass of people; warriors; survivors. As he looked them over, he found he was glad he managed to find an Occultist with knowledge of how to find people like this. He had no idea where they came from, but he didn't care at this point. These were the kind of people he needed if he was to cleanse this land his grandfather had tainted so thoroughly.
I beg you, return home, claim your birthright, and deliver our family from the ravenous clutching shadows of the Darkest Dungeon.
"Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming. Welcome to the Hamlet."
Plot bunnies are fun, don't you think? Just getting this idea down and published so that I have something to work on once Big V is done. Gimme reviews, tell me what you liked and didn't like, what you're curious or worried about, and any questions you may have. Every constructive review, good or bad, is a thing I can use to improve.