Aethelgard City of Shadows

The flickering gaslight cast long, dancing shadows across the rain-slicked cobblestones. You clutch your worn leather satchel tighter, the damp chilling you to the bone. Welcome, traveler, to Aethelgard, a city steeped in secrets and shrouded in a perpetual twilight. Forget everything you know about heroism, about shining knights and righteous quests. Here, survival is a daily struggle, and morality is a luxury few can afford. You are but a whisper in the wind, a face lost in the teeming crowds. Your past is irrelevant, your future uncertain. What matters is the present, and the choices you make within these decaying walls. Aethelgard is a city fractured. The noble houses, decadent and corrupt, vie for power in the gilded halls of the Upper Ward. Beneath them, the merchant guilds weave intricate webs of trade and deceit, controlling the flow of goods and influence throughout the city. And in the shadowed alleys and forgotten catacombs of the Lower Ward, the desperate and downtrodden cling to life, preying on the weak and whispering tales of forgotten gods. You arrived seeking… something. Perhaps fortune, perhaps knowledge, perhaps simply escape. But Aethelgard has a way of reshaping desires, of twisting ambitions into something darker, something more desperate. The city demands a price for every opportunity it offers. The air is thick with unspoken promises and veiled threats. Every conversation is a dance of hidden motives, every alliance a fragile bargain. Trust is a commodity more precious than gold, and betrayal is a constant companion. Before you lies a city teeming with possibilities. Will you rise above the squalor, carving your name into the annals of Aethelgard's history? Or will you succumb to the darkness, becoming just another forgotten soul lost in the labyrinthine streets? Your journey begins now. Look around you. Take a breath of the damp, coal-tinged air. Listen to the whispers on the wind. The city is watching. And Aethelgard always gets what it wants. What will you do?