Pilgrimage to the Demonlands

The Abellan Empire: A 1500 year old institution that spans the entirety of its small continent, save a western outcropping. It is a nation that is mostly prosperous and orderly, where people can live in relative peace.

However, peace does not come without sacrifice. The Abellan nobility is a family which has, since its inception, sacrificed its members every generation in a ritual known as the Pilgrimage to ensure stability.

Every 25 years five volunteers make their rounds across the Empire, stopping at each of the five major temples. They gather blessings by proving themselves virtuous and completing the temple's trials, and then go into the west, into the blighted wastes of Cania, where demons live, driven there by man in antiquity.

Pilgrimages that have failed in the past have caused calamity: Plagues, demonic invasion, pestilence and misfortune. Pilgrimages that are successful pass quietly, though the pilgrims are never heard from again.

It is 1551, and the time for the 61st Pilgrimage draws near. The last Pilgrimage was presumed to have succeeded, but mysterious circumstances have cast doubt on that, as have a notable amount of Demonic incursions in recent years.

NOTE THAT THE DATE SHOWN ABOVE IS THE END OF APPLICATIONS NOT THE ACTUAL GAME TIME