Somewhere far beyond the mortal realm is a place as wondrous as it is mysterious. It is a place of Faeries and Ents, a place of eternal beauty and boundless mischief. Across the Lands of Ferune, this place is known as the Feywilds and is the source of countless legends and myths.
This wondrous place is home to many things equally as mythical and legendary, and it is the stage for this tale. A grand drama where even the gods become entangled, but while the lands of fey are the stage for this play, they are not its subject. To understand how this has come to pass, we must return to the beginning. A beginning that starts in simpler times, far away from such fantastical settings and characters.
Our story begins in a quiet backwater among the great plains of the northern reaches of the Sword Coast, where a small group of adventurers would kick off what would become one of the most arduous and grueling journeys of their lives. Many companions and creatures would find their way into this tale, but it starts on a solitary road on the outskirts of the town of Triboar.
On the battered north road to the city, three weary figures crested over the top of a hill, barely in view of the town. The high elf wizard, Carric of Ogmah, the half-elf ranger, Morrah Moonshadow, and the human Captain Halwinter of the Neverwinter guard.
There were more in the company the previous day, but their had been a gruesome encounter with a local band of goblins, and the human fighter, Stan Rustwell, the dwarf cleric, Kilgerak Battlehammer, and Morrah’s Lizardman-servant, Zataro, fell in battle as the party retreated.
There had been something strange about the encounter, though. They had happened upon the goblins by sheer dumb luck, having not sought them out or even been aware of their presence until the band was practically on them. Moreover, the goblins seemed to be fleeing from something far more threatening than themselves and had only fought so ferociously because they had seen the group as the lesser of the two threats. The party had never caught sight of what had driven the creatures so mad, but there was something of a sea change at that pivotal moment. The first winds of winter blew in unexpectedly early as the battle raged, the first omen among many that something wasn't right.
Regardless of how it happened, the small remaining group limped into town in the early morning of the next day, arriving in Triboar as the chill winter wind blew at their backs.
They would call the town home for several weeks as they recovered from the harrowing battle, with Hallwinter splitting off from the other two and settling into his winter post as the town's guard captain after the first week. In time, the remaining two party members would get roped into local politics and a case involving the disappearances of young children that circled back to a local band of cultists. They would uncover the cultists' hideout in an abandoned manor on the edge of town and reveal the true culprit to be a wretched one-eyed creature known as a nothic. The nothic had been controlling the cultists, who were, in fact, the kids who had gone missing in the first place. It was discovered that they were under an enchantment, and only after the creature had been defeated were the children freed from its otherworldly influence.
This event, while seemingly isolated, would prove to be the thread that would guide these two onto a path that they could never have guessed. While they were clearing out the bed chamber of the leader of the cultists, they uncovered that he was apparently a wizard much like Carric, with similar interests even. His name was Iarno, and the reason they could not find the man was that he and the Nothic were, in fact, one and the same. They deduced that a mysterious journal in Iarno’s quarters was the catalyst for some horrible transformation that turned him into the monster he was when they had slain him.
Carric could tell that it was a dangerous artifact, but couldn’t justify leaving the mysterious tome in the possession of the townsfolk. With no other choices available, the Wizard offered to keep the tome until they could destroy it, or, more likely with such artifacts, deposit it somewhere for indefinite safekeeping.
