Darkness surrounds you. From the depths of the black void, there is movement.
As your eyes adjust, you see many writhing tentacles protruding from a wall of
flesh and massive arms at rest. There is only slight movement, perhaps some
form of breathing, and this vast being appears to be asleep. Suddenly, your
minute presence is registered and a massive, red eye opens, fixed upon you. A
searing pain fills your head and incomprehensible thoughts of abhorrent and
unparalleled evil fill your mind until it melts into oblivion, leaving you
screaming with madness.

You are strolling casually down the street when a passerby catches your
attention. He begins to wave his arms and dance about like a lunatic, although
no other pedestrians take notice, as though you are the only one who sees him.
Quite suddenly, he vanishes in a puff of overdramatic smoke, leaving you
perplexed and confused.

You are in a dead run across a grassy moorland through low, grey mist, almost
flying on the dank breeze. Ahead of you is a dark, black cloud of squirming and
writhing whisps, looming ominously above. From behind, huge beings with single,
burning eyes charge towards you, their enormous weapons held high. As you are
chased into the cloud, you disconcertingly find your skin and flesh dissolving
and merging with the ground below.

You are encased within a bubble whose surface shifts and shimmers with patterns
like oil on water. Far beneath you, Lusternia drops away to a smoking volcanic
mountain range, offering beautiful views of white geysers and lava lakes. As
you pass over one such lake, the bubble pops without warning, sending you
plunging towards the fires below.

Darkness surrounds you. Suddenly, a resounding clashing noise startles you, and
you look up to see two truly massive balls of silver floating through the
black. Each sphere seems to be a mile or more across and the two spheres which
created the noise have joined where they touched. Looking beyond, many similar
balls float through the void, coming together and breaking apart in some
indecipherable pattern.

Opening your eyes, you look down upon yourself and see that you are dressed in
a set of flowing and official black robes which dance and billow in a dramatic
wind. Before you stands a ravenwood podium, facing a huge crowd of people that
listen intently and wait for you to speak. Your mind blanks out for a bare
moment, but then you remember, and begin to recite a spirited speech exalting
the Engine of Transformation. Soon, the crowd begins to roar, their fists
raised in pride and triumph. You join them, pumping your arm in the air, as the
rows of roaring citizens roll towards you like a giant wave.

A beautiful feast has been laid before you, elegant platters of gold and silver
gleaming with blurred highlights. You reach out to open the closest, and as you
reveal its contents, you are confronted with the slitted eyes of aslarans
arranged neatly upon greens. Another dish reveals the legs of mugwumps over
taurian steaks, while yet another shows delicately filleted flesh marked with
merian scales...

You sit yourself down at the head of a large banquet table and begin to speak
amiable smalltalk with your guests. Soon after, guards come in with several
miserable merian and elfen in tow. You motion the guards on and they push the
prisoners past the guests and out of the banquet hall. As you take a drink of
fine wine and continue your conversation, screams of unbearable torment echo
around from the direction the guards left.

You stand at the summit of Avechna's peak with a sharp wind blowing in your
face and the world spread before you. Sections of Lusternian land can be seen
distantly through a cloudscape that reaches to eternity, while the sky above is
a beautifully painted dome interspersed with stars. History stands at your
back, and with the future ahead of you, you spring into a bolting run and leap
from the mountainside into the open air...