The Darkness Rises

As you try to take in the magnitude of what you see, you realize that you are in the Nentir Vale...to the south west of the region, you think.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/77719/SFV%20Game/Nentir_Vale.jpg

Everything is burning, smoldering....it's is difficult to breathe with so much smoke in the air.  You do your best to fashion makeshift face masks to help filter out the ash, but even still, the progress in any direction is slow.  You see no life...no sounds of nature, the only sound is the crackle of the occasional small fire still burning.  How long were you trapped inside the pyramid?  How can so much destruction have happened?

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/77719/SFV%20Game/Trollhaunt/Charred.jpg

You look around yourself and smoke rises from all directions....all directions save one...to the south...towards the marshlands.  Maybe the wet landscape has saved them from the burning?

Your group is wounded, tired, slowed by injury and spirits are low, at the best times.  There is little talk...only the slow stumbling plod of weary footsteps to mark the passage of time.  You are covered in grime, ash, blood and sweat...there's not even a place to clean yourselves...even the rivers run black with ashen waters.  In the slow days that follow, you do your best to create a makeshift leg (Hardly more than a burnt stump of wood at this point) for Gareth and, thanks to Gil's expertise, it's somewhat functional allowing for almost normal travel speeds.  This is a somewhat amazing feat considering Gil has only 1 hand.  For himself, Gil fashions a wooden loop with which to hold simple items attached to the stump of his left hand. 

Your travel is slow and tedious, however you finally begin to pass beyond the burning and into the marshlands.  Although the water is murky and stagnant, it is still cleaner than any you have seen since you freed yourselves from the pyramid and finally you have a place to bathe the stench and much of days from you.

Another days travel along the road to the south brings sight of the first living things, outside of your group, that you have seen so far, and it is a horrid sight...a group of trolls are stooped over something and they are eating it...you can clearly see that it is the carcass of a horse and, to your horror, its human rider that are the main course for these monsters.  During their feeding frenzy, the trolls have yet to see you coming...