The campfire burned hesitantly in the Nameless forest, nameless simply because no one had lived this long to even give it a name. But the five companions of The Company knew only too well that the journey was worth it, that the prize, the quest lay just beyond the ridges to the north. There they had scouted the entrance, a bold opening in the earth, carved and surrounded with stone and block, a massive door hiding what was beyond.

That patron at The Tavern spoke highly of the possibilities within, be it treasure, fame, or simply bragging rights. The door beckoned but the impressions, the incantations carved on that ancient wood appeared more as warnings than invitations. Yet greed and want would always prevail, and that pushed The Company forward, a nearly accidental group of adventurers, some would say mercenaries, bent on what was behind that sacred door.

There was no pay, only the possibility of treasure of more within that imposing porticos. Only one of the companions could fathom the scrawl on the door, and even then it was sketchy. So they all had retreated and formed a camp, hoping that things would look better in the light of day.

   All of them hoped, but one.  And that one was Me.
     I am a fool, seven times a fool, all I thought was to get out of town with companions.  I thought to make a little money, then move on to a safer place with fewer questions.

   My companions seem fine, They are little more than they seem. The one to my right around the fire, a scruffy human raider-skirmisher from an adventuring guild in the barony down river. The one to my otherside A pretty young, for a grey elf, woman. She is a Fey mage with a focus wand that multiplies her apprentice cantrips.

   Across the fire three more, a gnome-maid who disappears into the brush at will, and seems bent on balancing some issue the gnomes have. Next a foreign knight with a curved blade and brown and red lacquered scale armor. And even more oddly a older man who just lately took up the mantle of the druids when his wife died, he had lived a long life before the signs of the heroes bothered his sleep.

   Then sitting here, troubled, is me.

   I don't feel the slight chill in the air, So I sit back from the fire a little. But I dare not show my fear of the fire, for fear they will suspect.  Of this band the Elf and myself are the only ones with a magic item. Her’s is the wand of casting cantrips, and mine a magic cap of leather armor that makes me look a simple living human.  I lived longer than the elf's mother, in undead thrall to a vampire.  But then just as it touched the druid, it touched me ‘the call of the Hero’ broke me free of my mundane thrall.

   Here I am a Shadow-warrior/ranger, a vampyr minor who feeds only from blood and not souls.  Sitting outside what my companions believe to be an ancient mages ruined stronghold.

   But I, Not I. I do not want to think my companions names, of those who may soon die..

     What do I do, how do I tell them we sit outside a necropolis, a settlement of the undead.  Slaves, thralls and serfs, to a great vampire, enemies to all life.

     What do I do if they ask me how I know?... how can I..

             Face my greatest enemies, my own kind.