The Riddle of Shadow and Blood
Spectral shadows shift and turn
A gaze so deep from eyes that burn
Sweeping out from dark of night
With blades of darkness slice and bite
Through flesh and limb they rend
No hesitation do they spend
O’er lives so trivial that meet their ends
The Land bleeds from wounds encroaching
Shadows shifting yet approaching
Numerous and yet numberless
Darkness, evil and soulless
Upon what do these twisted things feed
Killing the people for nefarious need
Perhaps all this for some other deed
The night grips with fear and burgeoning dread
Everywhere lay bodies of the innocent dead
Blood ties remain the only clues
Elder lines should sing the blues
Their bodies from the carnage missed
Secrets forgotten now again hissed
From evil mouths with evil minds
Our heroes all are distinctly pissed
Reaching out to defeat these crimes
To resolve the riddle of those Elder bloodlines.
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This poem falls in place of a chronicle for a new D&D campaign that I have just begun in a land known as K'Darl.
It follows on from one a group of friends and I completed a year ago. Now 500 years later we find that a long period of peace in the land, (essentially accomplished by the deeds of our heroes in that previous campaign) had come to an end. This is the Legend of K'Darl.
Our heroes are members of the Royal Guard, investigating a number attacks by "shadows" that are sweeping through the Western lands, massacring whole villages and closing on the major cities. The motivations of these spectres remain unknown.
All that our heroes have been able to establish so far is that they can be destroyed/banished (after a brief encounter) and that the only people whose bodies are missing from the carnage are those of the elder bloodlines; families that can be traced back to those that laid the foundations of this age of peace.
The Dungeon Master has chosen to write his own chronicle of the campaign, so I shall share with you my poems as we progress instead.
Published by Pete Fenner