How blessed, how very blessed we are to call a place like Neandran home. It’s a cold, dangerous world that shows no mercy to the gentle, the careful, or the wise, let alone the young, the weak, or the brash. But safely enclosed by the arms of Neandran, deep within the hidden crags and lush forests of the Glimmering Valley, we are cared for, protected, and nurtured as well as any could hope in this world. You look around and know that the world is very old. Even the valley itself was shaped by people who lived long ago. You can see their handiwork here and there in the valley’s walls, in some of the nearby empty ruins, or in the temple at the very heart of Neandran. There are those in the village that believe the ancient creators of such things were not people, but rather demons of ancient days.

The dream swims with images, shapes, and even colors you won’t see anywhere else. Over the years, folk have come upwith names for some of them. There’s the color vell, a creature they call the toothed eye, a structure named the growing forest of steel, and a sound called the wailing of the wood. But these names don’t really help to explain or understand. The important thing to know is that we have always had the dream. And less than two weeks ago, it began to change. The images shifted. There were new sights and sounds, but all just as inexplicable as before. Everyone’s talking about it but no one has any explanations.