The flickering candlelight danced across the rough-hewn table, casting long, skeletal shadows that writhed with the night winds whistling through the cracks in the tavern walls. Old Man Tiberius, his face a roadmap etched with the trails of time and worry, leaned closer, his voice a raspy whisper like dry leaves skittering across stone.

“The signs are ill, I tell ye,” he croaked, his rheumy eyes glinting in the dim light. “The harvest moon bled crimson these past nights, and the ravens have abandoned the Whispering Woods, flown south in a black cloud that choked the very sun.”

He tapped a gnarled finger upon the worn map spread before us. “They say the Gloomwood is stirring, waking from its long slumber. Its shadows stretch further each dusk, swallowing the outlying villages whole. And worse…” He paused, swallowing hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a cork in a storm-tossed sea.

“Worse, they speak of whispers carried on the wind, whispers that promise power beyond mortal ken, but demand a price paid in blood and soul. They call it… the Awakening of the Elder Thing. And when it stirs, they say, the land itself will weep tears of fire, and the very stars will fall from the sky.”

He looked at us, a motley crew gathered under this leaky roof – the stoic warrior with the haunted eyes, the nimble thief with fingers quicker than thought, the bookish mage with ink-stained hands, and I, the humble bard, tasked with chronicling the darkness that threatened to engulf our world.

“We are all that stands between the Gloomwood and the sun,” Tiberius rasped. “May the gods have mercy on our souls, for we are venturing into a darkness where mercy has long been forgotten.” He pushed the map towards us, his finger tracing a jagged line towards the heart of the Gloomwood, where the Elder Thing slumbered, waiting to be awakened. “Our journey begins here.”