A long time ago, in a more rustic world, there existed many tribes in a vast forest. Ten or eleven of them grew to dominate the region, until the coming of two great empires beyond the blasted mountains of the north.
For many years these empires then pitted their miserable subjects into arranged wars against each other, in order to steal anything the slain owned, and put their surviving relatives into menial labour. Such were the horrid conditions that earned these wicked rulers a terrible plague, allowing any remnants of these broken nations to regroup, drive out their decimated tyrants, and form into newer, stronger kingdoms.
Fifty-eight years after the Plague fully subsided, strange creatures and peoples were sighted all over the realm. Some appeared like rigid red giants, men with stony bodies and faces of fired clay. Some were animals of tangled parts, crawling, flying, or oozing about in the woods, many of which were too poisonous to be eaten or whose very presence infected any denizens nearby. Some were shades of nothing but smoke, barbs, and bloodied teeth, masking themselves as akin to the natives around them for prey to devour. And others were great beasts, fiery shapes, or swarms of particles, many of which sought to consume as much life as it existed on the land.
Driven by these monsters' frequent assaults and raids, the quarrelsome kingdoms were united under a single ruler. He sought aid from the new kingdom that marched in from the northeastern mountains, but he, three of his sons, and a large amount of his army were consumed by a sudden gust of grey smoke before they could cross a river towards its frontiers.
In his absence, his queen took charge of her tribe's leadership. With horrifying fiends prevailing over her armies and slaughtering away month after month, and going ever nearer towards the palisade-ringed capital, what hope could be left for her and her despairing folk?
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