Somewhere far beyond the mortal realm, there is a place as wondrous as it is mysterious. 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 an epic tale of hardship and woe. A grand drama where even the gods themselves would become entangled, but while the lands of Fey are the stage for this grand play, they are not its subject. To understand how the tale has come to pass, we must go back to the beginning. A beginning that starts in simpler times far away from such fantastical settings and characters.
In the Town of Phandalin, a backwater place among the great plains of the northern reaches of Ferune, a group of unsuspecting adventurers would kick off what would become one of the most arduous and grueling journeys of any of their lives. There would be many companions and creatures that would find their way into this tale but it starts on a solitary road on the outskirts of Phandalin.
On the battered north road to the city, four weary figures crested over the top of a hill at the far end of town. The human fighter, Stan Rustwell, The high elf wizard, Carric of Ogmah, Captain Halwinter of the Neverwinter guard, and the high-born ranger, Morrah Moonshadow.
There were more in the company the previous day, but it had been a gruesome encounter, and both the great dwarf fighter, Kilgerak Battlehammer, and Morrah’s Lizardman-servant, Zataro, fell in battle to cover the party's retreat from a sizable band of goblins. This unlikely band of travelers limped into town in the early morning, arriving at Phandalin’s lone tavern as a chill winter wind blew at their backs.
They would call the town home for several weeks as they recovered from the rescue of Halwinter, even as he himself settled into his winter post as the town's guard captain and local protector for the winter months. In time the band 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 cultist's 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, and it was discovered that they were under a kind of mystical enchantment by the creature.
This event, while seemingly isolated, would prove to be the thread that would guide the group onto a path that they could never have guessed. While they were clearing out the bed chamber of the leader of the cultists they uncover that he was a wizard named Iarno and that the reason they could not find the man in the hideout is that he and the Nothic were in fact one and the same. The party deduced that a mysterious journal in Iarno’s quarters was the catalyst for some horrible transformation that turned him into a monster.
The party 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 of the group offered to keep the tome until they were able to deposit it somewhere for safekeeping.
I am that very wizard, Carric of Ogmah, and I tell the following story as best I can for what can only be described as an unfathomably tangled web woven by forces far beyond my comprehension. And now that I sit here in my study, safe and sound from all the evils that seek our undoing, I can’t help but think that I had a role to play in bringing it all about.
It all started with that book. The same one that seemingly transformed Iarno into a monster. I will admit that I underestimated its power. I had heard of Nothics before. They are a prime example of what can go wrong when a wizard lusts after knowledge too greedily, a sort of textbook example of the hubris of the overly learned. I told myself that I was different, even that I was ideally suited to be its keeper given my past experience with the Order of Ogmah, but in retrospect, I may have fallen for its trap in my own unique way. I wonder what happened to that old tome… I’d bet whoever was behind all of this would laugh to know that I still lose sleep over it.
