Prologue

It is said by the Chippewa people of the land now known as Michigan, that the Great Lakes of north-east America and south-east Canada are unique blessings of the earth. They provide an ample source of untainted water and plentiful aquatic beasts, sustaining the forests surrounding them with great ease.

It is also said that these lakes are harbingers of great disaster, if desecrated or unappeased. Orally-passed legends of rampant sickness, winters that extended into the summertime, and the demon-like, previously docile animals which attacked the folk of the land, have brought the Chippewa a harsh lesson; nature can only give so much, and like the men it sustained, it will ask for something in exchange.

As such, it is tradition that, once a year, a group of five brave souls would sacrifice themselves into the frigid deep of Lake Huron. Of the many groups of people who had descended into the pitch-black ice, a fraction of the martyrs floated back up, emerging from their frozen tombs with unusual, supernatural abilities and newly-found health. It was almost as if the lake rewarded the bravest of souls, and those with the strongest of wills.

With the colonization of Canada and North America, however, these rituals and tales have mostly been driven into obscurity, and the remnants of the Chippewa and their kin have been scattered across the lands. Some say that those blessed by the lake, and their descendants who inherit these strange abilities, thrive in the wilderness whilst the foreigners unknowingly build their empire in the new world.

As they build and populate themselves in these sacred lands, the Lakes thirst for souls. At the break of the 20th century, the Lakes must take offerings for themselves…