The day was a drizzling, pathetic thing that all too soon trailed into a night deeper then pitch. The scent of ozone and the thick miasma of dead foliage and water logged mud permeated the air, but nothing could quite outdo the tension looming like a great shadow over the long abandoned town on the edge of an even greater forest.
It was in this very tension that Magnus Othello Grimshaw II, duke of his township and heir to a fortune forged in blood and fear, thrived ...