Keep to the side paths, the hamlet is just ahead.ĭispatch this thug in brutal fashion, that all may hear of your arrival! The Old Road will take you to Hell, but in that gaping abyss, we will find our redemption.īrigands have run of these lands. So, steel yourself, and remember, there can be no bravery without madness. There is a sickness in the ancient, pitted cobbles of the Old Road, and on its writhing path, you will face viciousness, violence, and, perhaps, other damnably transcendent terrors. It winds with a troubling, serpent-like, suggestion through the corrupted countryside, leading only, I fear, to evermore tenebrous places. You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial? It is a festering abomination! I beg you, return home, claim your birthright, and deliver our family from the ravenous, clutching shadows. We drew what strength we could from our companionship, but we were in the realm of death and madness! In the end, I alone, fled, laughing and wailing, through those blackened arcades of antiquity, until consciousness failed me. Hideous, rotten aggressors assailed us from the shadows.

Our every step unsettled the ancient earth. At last, in the salt-soaked cracks beneath the lowest foundation, we unearthed that damnable portal of antediluvian evil. With relic and ritual I meant every effort towards the excavation and recovery of those long buried secrets, exhausting what remained of our family fortune on swarthy workmen and sturdy shovels. Singular, unsettling tales suggested the mansion itself was a gateway to some fabulous, unnamable power. I lived all my years in that ancient, rumor-shadowed manor, fattened by decadence and luxury, and yet I began to tire of conventional extravagance. You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor?

Narrator darkest dungeon