<div align="center"><strong><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 18pt;">Chapter 1: The Meeting of the Keepers<br/>Update<br/><br/><br/>Nature/Road Group</span></strong></div><br/><strong>Everyone present:</strong>As the two strangers start to become known to the group an odder feeling started to course throughout the air. A slight tingling sensation that ripples its way though your skin. Leaving a feeling of heightened awareness upon each of you. Fabric feels far more course, armor heavier, and jolts of movement send your bodies on edge as the feeling rises. Then all of the sudden, the world tears apart in front of you about 20 ft away. A dark swirling vortex spewing dark clouds forms and you faintly see the hole within it. Some of you make out more details as to the nature of the hole but that is passed over as another female falls out of the maw. Darkness still clinging to her it swirls around her as she rises from the ground with such grace that you wonder is she standing all along. Her elven eyes alert you see heavy bruises dotting her flushed muscled skin. She looks up at the maw as if in question and a hint of fear before moving away from it. You ears faintly hear the sounds of a panicked scream from within but it quickly passes as this new person enters onto the road. Strange things seems to be unfolding here within Rosewood. Now who is this?<br/><br/><div align="center"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Religious Group</strong></span></div><br/><strong>Lisa and Ayi'yan:</strong>Second by second you feel the vortex within the ground stand to pull you towards its edge. You feel yourself walking but every sense you can still feel screams at you to flee. Your skin lines with sweat as the fear of destruction and the unknown pass before your minds eye. Logic and reason become clouded as you look into the maw. Then from its depths you see it. A faint wiggling within the darkness. Looking like some kind of elongated tentacle wraps itself around you leg and pulls you. The force behind it nearly makes you feel like your leg was ripped off as you fall into the maw. Darkness consumes your sight as you feel the power around you and yet feel nothing at all. Your mind spins about looking, feeling, hoping to get something that you could latch yourself onto. Something that is real, that exists. All your senses seem to be a blank as you try to search for the existence of something.<br/><br/><strong>Ayi'yan:</strong>Then you feel it. Pain, cruel, blinding, blissful pain. Coursing through your body as light explodes around you. Within seconds air, dirt, flowers, trees, and blood, fill your senses again. Five bewildered people, some on horseback, others not, stand before you not twenty feet away.  One an armored knight, holding himself in a renewed battle stance, a roguish looking character that continues to fiddle with a dagger, his face clearly a concealed mask of emotions. A lightly dressed female wild elf, another woodsman that looks like he has a renewed sense of dread cross his face, but covers it quickly, and a gnome winning a fight with his mount. Rising from the ground with ease you look into the maw once more, wondering and fear linger lightly upon your bones but you mask it as best you can. You have made it, but where is the priestess? Had she not made it through the vortex like you? Or has the beast that pulled you in have other plans for her? Moving away from the vortex you look towards the group. Clearly they must know something, or else why would they be here?<br/><br/><strong>Lisa</strong>: As grope for something to leash yourself to feel an odd sensation clearly worm its way around your body through the darkness. As you struggle you feel its breath through the darkness and the beating of its heart. Long appendages bind your arms and start to work upon your legs. Fear grips you as you wonder just what it is that is attempting to bind you and then you see the eyes. Dark orbs of purple gleam towards you as your senses still do not return. Fear grips you as sound of your voice starts to fill your ears. Your screaming now, you hear it and this beast seems to pulse with joy at the feelings coursing through you. Why has your deity done this to you? What is this beast and what does it want?<br/>