Players Introduction

The world you knew has been shattered, blasted, shaken, and lashed into your version of hell. The skys have darkened and the temperature plummeted, snow falling where snow has been unknown. It is not snow as you would know it, white and refreshing, but grey and depressing. Whatever vision of Ragnarok or Armageddon your society believed in appears to have arrived.
Several days ⁽¹⁾ ago serenity was replaced with hell, volcanoes erupted devastating huge areas and darkening the skies with their ash and smoke, faultlines sliped and tectonic plates heaved causing earthquakes and Tsunami.
A gash, black and straight, which warped anything it touched appeared. The gash or " Black Road " appears to have no start and no end. Anyone who attempts to cross or enter never returns. But that is not the problem for creatures of nightmare erupt from the road.
This is not the first time the Black Road has appeared, but it is far worse this time than last. Each day is a constant struggle for survival and you retire each night tired and exhausted.
Last night as you dozed you thought you heard a clock ⁽²⁾ chime thirteen times but consciously you know that's not possible. Somewhere deep in your subconscious you knew something was amis, something that called to your very soul. Tonight sleep would not come and you watched the minutes tick by towards midnight. On the first stroke the world shimmers and stands still but not you. Everything is now shades of grey, whatever light you used to see by no longer casts shadows but is a palid point frozen in the greyness. Around you hangs silence like a heavy cloak, oppressive and thick like a dense fog. From out of the greyness a tendril appears, thick and vibrant in its blue-black colouration, with red streaks that dance across its surface. Its appears its searching for something, sensing the air like a snake. It stops, and rises up thickening as it does so. You realise its found its quarry. The quarry is you!

⁽¹⁾ The exact number of days depends upon the relative speed of time of the players Shadow to Amber. On Corwin's Shadow Earth, and Benedict's Avalon 15 days have elapsed.

⁽²⁾ What the players hears depends upon the method of time keeping used by the society they hail from. For those which have evolved mechanical clocks the sound heard will be that of the equivalent of a Grand Father clock chiming the hour. For societies without mechanical clocks the sound will appear to be that of a bell or gong being struck or rung.

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