The Legend of Frostmoth

All right, all right, settle down. A story, eh? And it being the dark and spooky season, I suppose you want something horrible. I know you lot! Hmm, well. . . let me think.

Beasts of many forms wander the lands. As we develop our Circles and the land around them these creatures are being forced back into the wilderness. Reports from the hinterlands speak of wolves as large as bears and bears as large as roundhouses but even these beasts are said to fear the Horrors that haunt the darkest and most unknown corners of this place. It is said that in the most corrupt areas even the dead do not stay that way and that, if disturbed, they swarm and feed upon the living.

It is also said that these are mere stories to frighten children, that such things could not exist and who has ever seen them anyway. Sure, every circle fire has an oldtimer who knows somebody who knows somebody and what storyteller doesn't have a tale or two about long vanished circles in the north - fabled names like Frostmoth.

But who could take such stories seriously? It doesn't make sense. To hear the tales, all of these things happened in one season:

- An army of skeletons and old bones overran the circle of Edgemore, noted for its warriors.

- A swarm of flesh monsters emerged one night and ate all the people of Chillwater in their sleep.

- The sky opened up and rained down fire on Kinheim, reducing it and the surrounding fields and forests to cinder and ash.

- Shadows ripped through Malwind, stealing the souls of the people and then animating their bodies into mindless battles.

- It all came to a head at Frostmoth where rumblings had been heard of a ravening horde so all the local circles mustered to defend from it. The horde was so large, it seemed the entire mountain crawled down to attack. Just as the people were about to despair, signal fires went up on the mountain peaks around and the fabled firstborn peoples emerged from the shadows to engage the horde in an epic clash! Giants, attenya, varou, elves, and even the odd troll came to take on shambling, crawling, mewling, clacking horrors of all descriptions.

To hear the tales, the entire north was covered in bodies - all from different causes and all in a single season! Utterly preposterous. Oldtimer tales. But what if someone survived to tell the tale. . . ?