Background Story

It is a rare thing indeed for an adventurer such as yourself to be summoned to the Wizards Keep - especially with so little warning. Word arrived only days ago from a trusted friend within those ancient walls. They did not speak plainly, only that something was stirring - something wrong. Whispers of unease. Odd behaviour. Strange movements in the lower levels. They asked for help. For witnesses. For protectors.

And so, you came.

It is mid-summer, yet a fierce snowstorm claws at the land. Snow and ice churn in sweeping sheets beyond your window, descending in violent flurries from the Deathdrop Mountains far to the north, coiling around the Keep's buttresses like the fingers of some spectral hand. The Desert of Skulls lies less than ten miles away - this should not be happening. A blizzard here is an impossibility. You blame the wizards. Who else? Letting your overactive imagination rest, you climb into bed, wearied by the journey.

A single chime from the bell tower breaks the night. It is midnight.

The storm has not abated. Shards of snow lash the Keep's stonework like flecks of shattered glass. Far in the distance, a solitary figure trudges toward the gates - hunched over an oaken walking stick, his lantern little more than a dim flicker in the gale. His pace is slow, deliberate. Minutes pass before he reaches the gate.

A voice rises from the light of the gatehouse - barely audible above the howling wind.

"Stop! In the name of the Magical Protectorate, who goes there?"

The old man peers toward the source, voice cracking with age and frost.

"I beg you... shelter. Just for the night. A bed, no more."

The gatekeeper's reply is little more than a muffled complaint. Locks clunk open with the dull weight of obligation. The gate creaks ajar. The stranger steps inside.

Moments later, only a swirl of powdered bone and blood remains where the gatekeeper once stood - scattered like ash across the stone.

Something silent slithers down the corridor leading inward. Room by room, it searches - methodical, unseen. It passes through your chamber while you sleep, slipping through you like a cold mist. Your dreams darken. Nightmares coil around your mind. You toss and turn, unaware of the terror that shares your breath.

Far below, in the lowest levels of the Keep, the Thing descends. It follows a corridor etched with ancient runes, drawn toward a grand door of oak and gold. Two guards stand sentinel before it... Seasoned mages trained to repel magical threats, alert and tense.

The Thing passes the first, still invisible, leaving only a void of dread in its wake.

"Deran? That you?" the first guard mutters, hearing something, a whisper, a breathless murmur in the gloom. But it's already too late. A phantom pull tears his soul from his body, dragging it into the arcane void. The guard crumples without sound.

"Hey, eyes up! We're supposed to be watch-" the second sentinel turns too late.

Where his comrade once stood now looms a Thing of shadows and despair. Vaguely humanoid, its form ripples like smoke in black water. Thousands of jagged white teeth grin from an abyssal maw, beneath two crimson eyes - vortices of hatred and hunger. The creature opens its mouth wider, and with a wet, slithering sound, a mass of iridescent tendrils lashes out.

The guard has time for a fraction of a scream before the Thing pulls him into the abyss of its mouth, devouring flesh, soul, and sanity in a torment no mortal should ever endure.

Seconds pass.

The Thing glides through the heavy door the guards once protected, a package cradled beneath what might pass for an arm. Seven scrolls - tattered vellum etched with runes pulsing faintly with eldritch energy. The relics exude power, and corruption.

The Thing pauses. Then, with impossible ease, it turns sharply and vanishes, passing upward, directly through the stone ceiling, scrolls and all.

Moments later, a scream tears through the void. A sound of agony, fury, and denial. The Thing is being pulled back - banished by a force it did not expect. It howls as it is ripped away, flung through the fabric of reality to a place far from here. The scrolls, once gripped tightly, slip loose and vanish into the darkness.

One by one, the seven ancient scrolls fall out of the aether, scattered across Utopia - each landing hundreds of miles apart, unseen, untouched, unknowable.

The psychic shockwave left in the creature's wake slams through the Keep like a thunderclap. It jolts you awake. Your heart races. You don't know what has happened, but you know you cannot stay.

By dawn, the snow begins to melt, leaving only silence and bloodstains where once the guards had stood.

A knock rattles the grand wizard's door.

"What is it now? I told you I am not to be disturbed at this hour."

The door creaks open. A young apprentice enters, pale and anxious.

"I'm sorry, Grandmaster... but we have a serious problem."

The wizard narrows his eyes. "Then speak plainly. You're a wizard, not a courtier."

The apprentice gulps and begins recounting the night's events, his voice shaking. The tale is unbelievable. But the evidence is not.

"Sir... it was Lord Garneth. He sent a demonic assassin. It breached the Deep Vault. It tried to steal the Seven Spells of Destruction. But something stopped it - some unknown force repelled it. The scrolls were scattered during the banishment..."

The Grandmaster goes deathly still. His face drains of colour. The Seven Spells of Destruction, once sacred, intended to forge peace, had long since been tainted. They were to be hidden forever, sealed beneath stone and guarded by wards and warriors alike.

They have been kept here for centuries, as no other stronghold wished to bear the burden of guarding them.

Garneth must have known.

He must have planned this for years.

The scrolls were no ordinary artefacts. Each held untold power. Power at a terrible cost. To read even one was to offer a sliver of your soul in exchange for might. To read all seven... was unthinkable. No humanity would remain.

But Garneth had no soul to lose.

He wanted Utopia. He wanted dominion.

And now the scrolls were scatteredm unguarded, vulnerable.

"They must be found!" the Grandmaster roars. "If Garneth retrieves even one... Utopia will burn. Issue a call across the realm. Ten thousand gold pieces to any soul who finds and returns a scroll. And double to the one who ends Garneth!"

The apprentice sprints from the room, heart pounding. He races to alert every adventurer he can find.

But when he throws open the door to your chambers... you are already gone.

Perhaps you sensed the storm rising. Perhaps you followed a trail in your dreams. Or perhaps you simply knew your path was about to change.

From this moment, your story begins. The future of Utopia lies in your hands.