<div align="center"><span class="bbc_u"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: impact;"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 32pt;">Emaeril: The Crossroad of Worlds</span></span></span></div><br/><br/><div class="floatright">(http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/134/2/8/storm_in_a_desert_concept_art_by_milafa-d3gb44p.jpg)</div><strong><em>Where are you?  What is this place?  A thousand questions seem to buzz through your minds.  Pulling yourself from the rough sand that crunches with cutting salt crystals as you try to stand up.  Try.  The feeling of weakness courses through you.  Dizziness.  Nausea.  Is your stomach still intact?  It might be safe to make sure it has burst and hanging from without like a grotesque garment.  But of course it's not - it is as absent as the clothes you all lack.<br/><br/>There are others here, but who are they?  What are they?  No, if you had to make a wager, they're just like you, through some strange happenstance - strange, but true.  So what now?  The sands feel slightly warm under your feet, but within such desolate conditions as this?  The air is cold, chilly... goosebumps run over your body.  The clouds boil far over you as if in hurricane winds, or perhaps some enormous creature stirring just above them, yet there isn't even a breeze... at least not down here - you all can hear the winds as if in great distance that renders it muted.  The occasional flicker of lightning in the distance, but no accompanying thunder.  It's as if sound were strangely muted here.  Sound and colour, as if there is a grey light, a silver pall pervading everything.  The crunch of sand is amazingly loud beneath your feet though, as is your laboured breathing.<br/><br/>Hunger and terrible thirst assail you, clawing at you, almost like thing alive.<br/><br/>Now.  This mess isn't one of your own doing, but it is no less important that you should get out of here.  In the distance, the sand shifts off a dune, sliding down the slope in shallow cloud of fine grey silt.  And then it is still.  The scenery is so still, that even something as small as this seems shocking... or is it sign that something is alive out here?<br/><br/>You all need answers, and there are only those around you who can speak... but will it be of any use?  But regardless... now it begins.<br/><br/>Now, everything begins...</em></strong>