An Entry to Anglia

Traveling west from The Dark Country to Wessex, your caravan boss this time is an enigmatic man with long black hair and long black mustachios. He claims to be Italian, and goes only by the name Migellito. You believe you are somewhere in the Black Forest when you notice it has become much darker. The vaporous air hangs in an aphotic curtain. Passing through this preternatural twilight, you journey through trees grown rugose and monstrous, glowering down over your caravan. Lurid hints of golden light creep and lurk behind the wood’s black boles. The gloom-heavy forest splits, and you look out onto grey undulant hills hunched beneath a leaden sky. A damp and forbidding chill crawls along the turf and embraces you.

The caravan was bound west, but you have emerged going east. In the distance to the north you see the smoke of a small village. In the distance to the south you see a group of hills crowned with the sprawling scattered bones of a ruined castle.

Migellito speaks, telling you “this has happened before.” He points to the smoke. “There lies Bridgewater. It holds a smithy and an inn. What else, I do not know, nor do I wish to.” He points to the ruins. “There lies Nicodemus Castle. Some who chance there don’t return. Those who do bear heavier pockets, on the balance of it. We make camp here, and with the dawn we turn back into the forest and on to the lands we know. Do as you wish, but the caravan leaves at dawn.”