An old man enters the Guild leaning heavily upon a Staff, and carrying an overly large Tome in his other hand, clutching it tightly. He pauses looking around through the loud, smoky hall until his sights set upon a cluster of likely souls. He collects the selected Guildmembers together, and begins to express the warnings he came here to deliver. He notifies the assembled group that the Guild is about to come under attack. No sooner than he says this some zombies and skeletons crawl out from the ground outside and are instantly shattered by the various sentinels and defenses of the Guild. The old man ominously says, "It has begun, but it will only get worse!" The group escorts the old man outside of the Guild to view what is going on, and as they step outside of the hall and into the surrounding township they see a Pit Fiend materialize before their very eyes. The old man stumbles, and the party rushes into action to defend the Guild. They haul down the Pit Fiend, and a cloud of mist appears where it dropped, and coalesces into a Hydra the fight is on once again. They slay the Hydra, and a Dracolich appears where it stood. They defeat the Dracolich, and a Tarrasque appears, all hope is lost as it tramples them, but then disappears. The old man collapses, though his mouth continues to move, he speaks in Celestial, though none of the Guildmembers present speak such a rare tongue. His staff discarded, he clutches the Tome with both hands, and suddenly seems to recover, though he holds a different aspect than he did before. He walks a few paces to the south, near where the mist had been, and a magical force swirls into being around him creating a barrier between him and the rest of the world. Two gargoyles appear and once again the adventurers know they are under the gun. They engage the gargoyles, and as they do a massive beam of divine energy flies out and strikes one of the guildmembers nearly laying him low with a single blast. The divine energy continues to lash out at the party until they finally defeat the gargoyles and manage to pierce the barrier through their combined efforts. The party dispossesses the old man of the Tome, entitled The Chronicle, and begin to leaf through its pages. On each page it reveals different information to each reader, giving them a glimpse of the future to come. A violent future. A bloody future. It offers what little it can to prepare them for such a future, much as the old man has done. A dark future is on the horizon for the Guild, and it will take all of you reading this to defend us from it.
