Peals of thunder resound through the night as lightening splits the darkened sky, illuminating for a moment a decrepit castle high on a lonely crag. Rain crashes down in sheets on crumbling stonework, washing away bits of ancient masonry, rivulets snaking in and around figures chiseled deep into the weather worn granite of the outer wall, angular letters pronouncing the master of this keep: M O R G A R A W T H.

Deep within this manse, a man sits rigidly erect behind a massive obsidian desk, calculating blue eyes absorbing the ages old text of the parchment before him. A slight grimace momentarily cracking his stony countenance, Illoch Morgarawth strove to understand the ramblings of a lunatic. A brilliant lunatic, understanding and mastering the black arts like none before him, but a lunatic all the same, his texts filled with riddles and obscure references Illoch could make nothing of. Running his eyes down the parchment to a passage halfway through, he read it once again. "When the wheel of time is spun by the shadowy hand of the lord of rings, then will the path to the dark tower become clear and life's final fantasy unfold." It made no sense. The wheel of time-- was it some dark artifact hidden away somewhere, or a reference to time itself? And the lord of rings? What lord? What rings? He almost trembled with frustration.

Then the image of a dark tower emerged from the shadow of memory, and he stilled his mind, settled his emotions; he could not let that long buried image fade away. Closing his eyes, he held the image of the tower in his mind, allowing the long forgotten memory to resurface on it's own. As the memories trickled back, he visualized the pages of a book, a book he had flipped through as a boy, too young to understand what it meant, but fascinated by the illustrations inside. The image of a massive black tower formed on one of the pages, and his mind reeled. At the base of the tower, surrounded by a golden ring, was a wooden wheel. At the center of the wheel, the letters FFXI were scribed, the artists signature perhaps. It did not matter; that book was the key to the riddle. That book had to be found!