Through your adventures together, you have all become fairly well known heroes in the kingdom. Your last, great exploit was the downfall of a slave baron. The Baron Vardis Tildington had been luring people into capture with tales of riches and an easy life in a far off land that only he could transport you to. Of course, he accepted your payment for the voyage and then locked you up in his ship's hold and sold you into slavery.
Freeing the slaves from their overlords and bringing the Baron to justice won you all great favour in the kingdom. But that was several years ago now, and since then your group had disbanded and gone their separate ways, only recently coming together at the behest of a lord in desperate need of your aid.
Although you have all changed significantly since your last adventure together, the bonds of friendship (and antagonism) are still strong, and so you all readily agreed to work together to help this struggling lord with his problem.
The lord's name is one Count Dardren Verrington. Although not financially or militarily powerful, his family is one of the oldest noble houses in the kingdom, and he therefore has a lot of pull with a lot of important people. He has politely requested that all of you journey to see him at his family estate to the far north of kingdom, off the Serpent Coast.
You all met up at a location several days journey from the lord's castle and have been travelling ever since. Not much was told to you in the letters, other than to say that it seems his land is cursed. Ever since he could remember, the land in his demesne has failed its people. Crops grow poorly, the weather is never right for the season, and fishing off the coast is close to worthless.
In his lifetime, it has become steadily worse. People have gradually left the land and his incomes have dried up. He has tried everything in his power to divine the cause and find a cure, but it wasn't until recently that he hit upon a break-through. He had hired a druid to look into the cause of the strange happenings. Instead of getting the answer he wanted, however, the druid was found wandering the land, babbling in some ancient, foreign tongue that no-one could understand.
It was only luck, or perhaps fate, that brought the druid back to the Count, otherwise he would've just been some mad old beggar wandering the land that the Count would never have come across again. Seeking the council of a local wise man, the Count had him cast a ritual so that they could understand what the druid was blabbering.
The wise man almost didn't translate for the Count as it was plain in his eyes that he feared to do so. But with some persuading, he told the Count that the druid was reciting a prayer to an ancient, and exceptionally evil deity. He refused to speak the prayer, and instead wrote it down for him:
"Oh Great One, from the Depths shall ye rise and Conquer them with your Divine Voice. Call to them, Oh Lord of the Depths, and they shall come to you, and Embrace you in their Deaths. We, the Devoted to Your Divine Will, offer them to you, Oh Great Devourer, and beg of you to Bless us with your Divine Gifts."
"Dagon! Dagon! Dagon!"
This, the druid repeated over and over and over. So much had the druid repeated this prayer that his voice was hoarse and he could only barely whisper it. The druid was then put away in a comfortable cell so that he could harm no-one, including himself. But he refused all food and would only drink salted water. He died of malnutrition several days later.
All of this was strange, to be true, but it gave the Count no answers to his woes. His research into Dagon came up with very little, other than to say it was an ancient god of true evil that dwelled in the depths of the darkest oceans. So foul was it, that nobody had worshipped it for hundreds of years. Perhaps, until now.
A almost a year went by with still no answers. It had seemed, however, that the wise man could not let go of the mystery and had conducted his own investigation. A few weeks ago, the wise man had sought urgent counsel with the Count and told him that he had all the answers to his questions regarding the curse on his lands. However, as he was about to tell the Count everything, he began to choke and spit water.
The wise man drowned in the Count's arms, choking on his words despite no water being within a hundred feet of him.
The Count knew he had to do something, and so has called you all together to find the cause of this curse and free his land of it once and for all. The only clue the Count could give you, was that through the information he has managed to gather on the wise man's travels, he focused on coastal towns.
Just a day and a half out from the Count's estate, however, a violent storm has erupted. With the next inn on the road being over half a day away, and with the rains being so heavy along with lightning striking all around you, you all felt it was best to take a short detour to a small town off the main road.
The storm was exceptional. There was a certain magnificence to it. It was raining so hard that it felt as if you were walking through solid water. The ground was a muddy mush that usually takes a week of good rains to create. Already there were rivers and pools of water forming everywhere you could see as the land simply couldn't cope with such a deluge. Lighting cracked everywhere around you, splitting trees and lighting small, albeit short-lived, fires several times within your sight.
It wasn't until you were almost upon it that you began to see it. The town of Ashenport loomed through the thick sheets of rain as a blurry ghost, wavering at the edge of your vision. A few dim lights creeped into sight now and then when the rain wasn't so persistent. It looked thoroughly unwelcoming, but then any place remotely dry would be better than trudging through the thick mud and drenching rain. And those lightning strikes were getting uncomfortably close...
