It’s the year X-50. Nowadays folk don’t know the right year no more. It’s 50 years passed the day the Hellmouth belched chaos onto the land. They go abouts their lives like nothing has happened. But if they looked a little harder around them they’d realize everything has happened! Of course, lookin too hard these days makes a perfectly sane man go baccus over night–or gets him mudded in no time.

Here, within the tall glowing walls of Sanctuary though, most wool tails pretend the outside don’t exist. They are perfectly happy going abouts life, all safe-like, under the protection of Celine and her tin soldiers.

I, for one, was born to travel since the year I was birthed. I was meant to see new things, and meet new peoples. I prepared myself for this day since X-45. It was safe enough in these lands, all the mephs pretty much stayed west. There are towns out there, days of travel away, poor drifters they are.

I was meant to change things, and I will today prove to the wool tails that there is no purpose in living blindly behind these holy walls. The land is safe again for man to roam and rule it. I will prove this to them, for sureness I will.

The last entry in Jonasi the Ranter’s journal,
found by his scorched corpse 8 miles outside Sanctuary

I walk across a landscape, barren and silent. The shadows creep across blasted rocks and flesh colored clouds entangle the sky above me. The sound of wild animals is something only remembered as a child or imitated by my forefathers. Before me, in the stillness of eternal night, stretches Odland, the Wasteland of the Hellmouth.

All I have now on my valiant quest are my remaining companions: a dwarf weapon smith with glowing weapons and armor powered by the magic of the Lost Gods; a halfling in the clanking body of a Clockwork Knight Battlesuit with the power of a giant; an elven Wilder Scout, as swift as the wind with a marksmanship legends will tell stories of; and, a celestial with the power of the stars in its eyes and the energy of life pulsating at his finger tips. I are a Knight of the Chalice and my life’s training led me to this day.

In the distance, across the desolate terrain, rises a constantly flowing beam of light out of a wound in the earth. Pieces of stones float like globules of blood into the swirling clouds above. It is the mark of the Hellmouth itself, seen from hundreds of miles away–-a sign of warning to all who see it.

I may not be able to see them from this distance, but the sounds of screaming souls shifting around the column like moths attracted to a gaslight lantern invade my mind. The tormenting cackles of the demons that continue to kill them for pleasure chills the marrow in my bones. Dragons no longer return here since the Hellfire Wars, but here I stand–me and my allies–ready to walk forth into history, with no one to tell my story.

We look one last time at each other, and without speaking a word, we march towards the beacon of death. We all know there will be no rewards for our actions, and yet we do them–not because we can defeat all evil entirely, or even some of it temporarily. We do it because, hopefully, for a couple more minutes, we will give the rest of the world a few less things to worry about.

We do it because we’re heroes.