The night was moonless and silent. Creeping mist shrouded the surrounding fields and woods in thick swirling gray. Usually affording you an impeccable view, tonight the spot atop your balcony permitted you to see only as far as the edge of your land, where that tall iron fence separated you and yours from the rest of the world. You stood there, empty eyes, surveying the surrounding fogwall. You had been that watcher so many times. And as so often, while your gaze wandered the scenery, disaffected and solemn, your mind was ablaze with familiar thought.
All homely ties, all bounds to your bloodline had been cut long ago, but on nights like this you were often reminded of your noble, yet intensely upsetting ancestry. Years had been spent in your efforts to recover from that decisive untethering, to reinstate yourself as the image of powerful, valiant nobility you had come to grow so fond of. Yet with the head start you had been given in life and with the harsh, though applicable teachings of your lineage, it was truly no wonder that it was merely a question of time until you had restored yourself to your vision. An affluent aristocrat, feasting on their amassed riches in never ending spirals of self-indulgent hedonism. A vicious parasite, taking what was not theirs through the power of capital and fear. A despondent worm, willfully ignorant to the suffering and plights left in their wake. Swept up in efforts to better your own status the fate of others had never truly bothered you too much. All that remained now was that gnawing uncertainty that rumbled within your mind on nights like this. The nagging fear that each action would, invariably, provoke it's rightful consequence. Karma had reached your doorstep at last.
The dull clanging of the old bell below your feet tore you from your ruminations. Disengaging from your stagnant gaze into the swirling fog, you peered downwards at the unexpected intruder. You made out the silhouette of a hunched creature, standing before your grand entrance portal, seemingly unperturbed by the spiked gate they had had to pass to reach it. Concerned, you left your balcony and wandered down the marble steps weaving through that glorious, portrait-crested foyer. Who was disturbing this places solemn tranquility at such an hour? Why did your servants permit them to enter?
As you opened the grand entrance portal, you examined the man standing before you more closely. He appeared utterly pitiful - hunched over and sunken. The rags stretching over his brittle, deformed body made for a shameful attire. He beheld you outright, and there was no hope, no light to be found in the gaping chasm of his eyes. Soon unsettled and unwilling to engage this individual any longer you began shouting at the man, asking of what purpose his disturbance was.
Without opening his mouth, perhaps not to reveal the brittle stumps that remained of his teeth, he reached into the pocket of his torn coat and produced a letter. He held out his hand eagerly, shaking with anticipation. You eyed the courier with uncertainty as you reached for it and the second the wrinkled paper slipped from his scarred, shaky fingers, the man turned on his heels and fled into the blackness of the night. There you stood, clutching my letter in your hands, a look of despair slowly spreading over your face as you watched the intruder deserting your property. You knew what you would find in that envelope.
Your hands grew shaky as you dragged the message from its thick paper shell and unfolded it. It was the letter I had sent for you - in my final moments. Silently your lips muttered the words along as you read. Perhaps to help you comprehend them, perhaps to keep you from losing your already tenuous grip on reality in its entirety.
Ruin has come to our family.
You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor.
I lived all my years in that ancient rumor shadowed manor, fattened by decadence and luxury, and yet I began to tire of conventional extravagance. Singular unsettling tales suggested the mansion itself was a gateway to some fabulous and unnamable power. 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. At last, in the salt soaked crags beneath the lowest foundations, we unearthed that damnable portal of antediluvian evil. Our every step unsettled the ancient earth, but we were in a realm of death and madness! In the end, I alone fled, laughing and wailing through those blackened arcades of antiquity. Until consciousness failed me.
You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial - it is a festering abomination! I beg you, return home, claim your birthright and deliver our family from the ravenous clutching shadows of the Darkest Dungeon.
Minutes you stood there, fazed and reeling. Fighting against the urge to scream, to wail in anger and desperation. But there was no use. You knew what it meant. What it all meant. A duty had been bestowed upon you, a duty you could not reject. You would make your fateful return at last.
After years in carefully crafted, insulated harmony that place had found a way to clutch you from the world you had created for yourself, to tear you from this reality as if it had never been more more than a figment of your imagination. A false, illusory hope you had clung to with all your might. And with a horrified gasp you realized that perhaps, despite your highest hopes of the contrary, it had never been anything but that. In spite of all the mechanisms you had put in place to prevent it, your mind still had retraced its steps to that familiar place over and over again. It was only natural that now so would your feet and body. The ravenous reach of a life you had hoped bygone had finally caught up with you.
With jittery hands you stuffed the letter into the pocket of your fine-threaded coat and began the return to your quiet quarters. You let your gaze wander through the imposing halls of your sanctuary. For years it had kept you, sheltered you, distracted you and now... it felt so different. Weak and exposed. As you closed the bedroom door behind you, the dread set in completely. You felt the covetous glare of the world penetrate these stony walls, pierce through their form as if they were made from paper. They could keep you safe no longer.
You rushed to the windows, tore them open to breathe cool night air, but it did little to calm your quaking nerves. You beheld the wondrous garden at your feet. How many moons had you spent in its silent safety, gorging yourself on fruit of distant origin? How many days had you spent in serene solitude underneath its tropical growth? And then there was your quiet study, where you had let entire winters pass you by, engaged in literature and philosophy. The bustling backroom kitchen with its many alluring opportunities and delicious meals prepared at your order. The grand gala, where so many festivities had been held over the years. All those familiar places. All so utterly powerless over that letter in your coat pocket. Empty and grey now that the new, the true reality had been put before you once more.
One last time your gaze fell back out the window, towards that oppressive, stalwart gate. It too had done its job as your silent protector. And now it was time to leave it behind as well. Instead of the frenzied masses smashing through it, ravenous and full of fury as you had feared so many times, it would be you who would cross that threshold instead. Free, unshielded and of your own volition. Slowly a single bitter tear formed beneath your lashes. Your home was lost.
A few weeks had passed and you had assembled all that you required, exhausting what remained of your amassed fortunes on reconnaissance, supplies and a highly lucrative contract with a band of mercenaries you had come to discover. The task, as it had been cryptically outlined by your Ancestor, called for the oldest trade of beast and human alike. Combat. It brooded just over the distant horizon and you knew well that you would not be the one to resolve it. Battle and bloodshed would remain the obligation of your underlings and so the "Network of Heroes" provided exactly what you were seeking so direly. A seemingly endless stream of human meat to throw with full force at any uprising, blockade or opposition in your path. What motivated these vigilantes you did not know and truthfully you had never asked. Be it redemption, absolution or the sparkle of coin in their pockets, it mattered little to you now. Their nameless superiors would take it upon themselves to supply the required operatives to your cause, while it was your duty to brief and equip them, to send them down into the depths of hell that awaited them and ultimately watch them suffer their fate at your hand. A burden I was sure you would be able to shoulder. After all, we shared the same blood.
In the time gone by you had felt the incessant gnawing of dread at your mind and body. Your initial shock had faded, but in its place had left this cradle of uncertainties you simply could not quell. It bothered you. This house, this place, all of the crooked and vast recesses of your mind, you had firmly steeled them to withstand an affliction of this exact kind. And yet it would not stop. The raving tides of the world spewed from a freshly torn hole within your very soul and you felt powerless to close it. It was horrendous. Unacceptable. This task needed to be completed, rapidly. You would not stand for another day consumed in vain by this maelstrom of dread.
The stage coach had arrived just beyond the iron gate and as you closed it behind you, you felt the stark sharpness of the world, its danger and terror stare you down. Quickly you stepped inside the wagon and were faced with the first two mercenaries assigned to your task. Ordered supplies had been strapped on all sides to the sturdy coach. With a whips crack the horses were set into squealing motion and the wagon wheels began to spin once more. Set on their way, they were to carry you and the two strangers in your cart all the way to that long forgotten town.
The Hamlet.
