<strong>Fort Goladris, Vikalan Frontier... the westernmost point of civilization, an hour past dawn.<br/></strong>The sky is thick with crows and rooks, the air with lingering corpse pyres and the redolence of cedar wood. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i5D4ZW8O9o)  Snow still clings to the ground in patches as wide as a dead horse where the shade falls by afternoon, glimmering ruddy with mud and gore by dawn's early light.  A half-mile from the pallisade wall's chipped and arrow-bristling surface, a small herd of deer passes, puffing cold breath into the crisp morning air, carefully avoiding the unfamiliar smell of a scorched patch still littered with charred armor and bone.<br/><br/>This was the final bastion of the Moads-- their noble, lost cause to own this new world giving way, step by grinding step, to the conquest of Montagne.  Two nights ago, the Moadi flag fell after a night's siege some five long, grueling months after their capitol city slowly bowing of its head in surrender.  This was the fall-back point was for those martial-myth consumed youths, burning still with the fantasy that glory and death were better than surrender.  This was where the old men whose shame at a loss would be a sorry excuse for their final days, and the vault for those slaves whose choice to flee was never granted.<br/><br/>Those who dreamed of dying for their flag had their wishes granted in droves, as the Montagnese's superior resources overwhelmed them again and again, and only the Moadi stubbornness and ferocity lasted as they starved, bled, sickened, retreated, counterattacked... the Montagnese adapted, resupplied, and built, and regathered, and aimed again and again until the Moad stronghold of KulTal in the mainlands fell... and then there was nothing left to fight for but this new country, and no one left to support them, and the Montagnese Empire would not relinquish this frontier-- this was why they had come to blows, this was the source of their war.   The resources, the trade, the prestige... this new land, called Vikala, was the essence to occupying the world.  It was the key to everything.<br/><br/>Now the Montagne Empire held it in its palm, this green jewel.  And they would waste no time in claiming it.<br/><br/>The watch is relieved as soldiers with bristling crossbows ascend the repaired ladders and hastily assembled watchtowers, and cooking fires that have been restored to life are starting to emit a new concoction of scents into the air.  Boiled oats and cornmeal, bland as they are, will be shoveled alongside a mashed bean paste resurrected from the prior evening's remains.  But in the middle of the courtyard there is an empty table laid out with a steaming tin pot that smells of coffee, and a fire-warmed plate of fresh corn cakes under warmed hand-cloths, and a seared iron plate still sizzling with slabs of salted ham and cabbage.  This is excessive for the army this far West, even for the officers-- three of them-- waiting tableside.  They await the leaders of the Westward Expedition.  They are waiting for you-- the three of them, their bodies still weary, their ears still ringing with the sound of battle... you are here to explore what they fought for.<br/><br/>Your mission is to be the first to map this world.  ... at least, that's what they know.  You know there is more to it than that, for here there are monsters.  But these monsters have yet to meet you.