Welcome to Exile. How long do you plan on staying?
So do what you can. But remember. Every day, the Empire invaders carve up a little bit more of your home. One by one, your people are being put to the sword. The question - what are you going to do about it? What can you do?
You have just arrived at Fort Ganrick. You are there to help the garrison there fight a tribe of Nephilim, fierce, feline humanoids. You are in your quarters. Cecile, the captain here, has told you to go see her after settling in.
Your band was part of one of the last groups sent into Exile. After Hawthorne was killed, you were hired into the Exile army as adventurers - a small band designed to take care of jobs calling for small, stealthy groups.
Soldiers, priests, mages, and assassins were teleported into the underworld, slowly at first, then faster. The exiles have waged a vicious guerrilla war against them, but little by little the denizens of the caves are being wiped out.
The Empire invaded.
The second reaction came five years later, after it became clear that Exile was surviving just fine without fresh people from the surface.
The Empire realized, overnight, what a brood of vipers they had given birth to. There were two reactions. The first was sudden. Nobody else was teleported below. The misfits of the surface were kept in prisons, rather than caves.
The others used their skills to help the Exile army defeat the sinister Slithzerikai, a race of vicious lizard men. Exile was now safe from threats in the underworld.
Then, they had their chance. The strongest of them all, Erika, managed to teleport a group of adventurers to the surface, where they assassinated Hawthorne, the powerful and brilliant King of the Empire.
The Empire made the mistake of sending into Exile several powerful mages who had become too inconvenient to keep around safely. They were a great help in building the nation under the world, and waited for the chance for vengeance.
And they struck back.
They desired to return to the surface. They desired revenge.
They waited, and bided their time.
Men and women, skilled and unskilled, elderly and young children alike, were sent through a one-way teleporter into the caverns below. There, they survived, endured, and formed a society.
Exile is also a place. It is an enormous network of tunnels and caverns far below the surface world. For years, the Empire, undisputed master of the surface world, has used these caverns as the dumping ground for the unwanted.
Exile is a state of being. An Exile is a person who has been expelled from his or her country. To exile someone is to declare that person an undesirable, a person who must leave and can never return.
