Earthhaven... shrouded in fog and mist. It is a fog that settles thick as sleep on the souls and minds of those captive here. For some, battle warn and seeped in blood and death, this very fog is the true enemy. Here we are all trapped in an unending cycle of life, battle, and death. Every life is short, turbulent, full of passion and furry. Every death is like a drunken rebirth into another life, another battle. Past lives pile up in the mind like the billows of fog that surround our world, until there is no past, no future, only the present, only battle. Some fight this fog with the rage of a thousand angels, longing only for escape, clinging with utter desperation to the lives they lived outside. But not I. The fog has become my salvation.

What of me? From what past do I so desperately seek escape?

I was the youngest child of an unimportant family in a small, forgotten tribe. We are an unremarkable people, long been enslaved to a brutal Empire. But there has always been a darkness hanging over my soul, always a great longing for something unknown. The life I was rooted in held no answers and no
future. As I grew slowly into manhood the weight of this longing increased until it became unbearable. I had to escape, and so I ran to seek refuge in the wilderness, forsaking a life of servitude and labor to forge a path through the unknown. I had little hope, for there are bands of warriors that hunt those who
try and escape, and rarely are they eluded, but I had to try.

For three long weeks I ran and hid, with hunters always close on my tracks. My youthful vigor was warn away by the wind and rain that falls most heavily on the downtrodden, the outcast, and the desolate. Three weeks and I felt I had aged a thousand years. Towards the end of the twenty-second day of my flight I again heard hoofbeats echoing through the hills. I had traveled deep into the heart of the Kolderean mountains but all hope that I had finally escaped quickly disappeared. I veered from my course and, summoning all haste I started off down slope With the sun falling slowly towards the earth, and desperation overshadowing terror, I dared to take the path that led down to the temple ruins
in the valley of Galdahar. It is an ancient place, mystified by age and darkened by countless tales of sorcery and death. I knew it was a place even the bravest of those hunting me would fear to enter. As night fell I stepped across the weather worn rocks that marked the once proud walls of the fallen temple.
In the failing light I could just make out piles of chalk white bones scattered around a large, smooth rock that rose higher than all others in what had to be the center of the ruins. Weak with fear I crawled to the edge of that rock and stared out into the darkness as campfires where lit by those hunting me. They had surrounded the temple ruins. I was completely trapped and all hope of survival drained from my soul. I sat there, shaking in cold terror as the world was muted in unnatural silence and weariness and despair slowly pulled me into a fitful, dreamless sleep.

I awoke into that same unnatural silence to see the pale rising sun slowly burning away small wisps of morning mist that still clung to the ground around the ruins. Despair had settled deep into my soul, but sleep had brought on a strange clarity of mind. I arose and began walking slowly around the large
center stone. As I circled the stone I found on the far side a set of twelve roughly hewn steps that led to the top which was warn flat and smooth. As I walked closer to them I chanced to trip on something and stumbled into one of the many piles of human bones. They snapped and crumbled from great age as I fell into them, revealing to my eyes the gleam of metal buried beneath. I quickly pushed them aside and uncovered two brightly polished swords, amazingly untarnished with age. Both where plain and UN-ornate, save a few words in a strange script engraved into the round pommel of each one. As I lifted them and swung them slowly around it seemed that a weight fell from my shoulders and I was filled with a strange mirth. The swords felt like feathers in my hands and I bounded up the stairs to look out upon the enemy I knew was waiting to kill me.

When I reached the top I spun slowly around looking out upon the green valley and into the eyes of those encamped around the ruins. As bows where swiftly drawn I raised my eyes and the two swords towards heaven. Pain bloomed in my back and in my chest as arrows struck my flesh. Letting out a great cry of defiance I slowly sunk to my knees, and as blackness began to fold over my eyes the world devolved. Everything shifted, spun. When I finally awoke I was here, birthed anew into this ethereal realm.

Caught now in a world of constant battle, constant death, constant rebirth, my swords have become a part of me, and my skill has been honed by the memory that builds in flesh and bone. I have truly found myself, and I am at peace, for it is only in battle that one is truly alive, and only in death that life
can be renewed. And so I have joined with a small band of other warriors, for together we deal out death and together we gladly embrace it. Here I now dwell, and here I belong. I am hidden in this fog of forgetfulness, this fog of peace... this fog of war.