During the great Realmgate cataclysm brought about by Be’lakor, Black Onyx a city of inky beauty that lay within a web of leylines in the south of Penultima, Shyish, suddenly disappeared. A binding, the Cheez Hunks, has since found the city floating above the Ember Isles in that mysterious pocket realm known as the Interstice. The city blocks out the stars in the night sky but aside from that it doesn’t seem to be moving, nor does anyone know what Vladan Lehr, ruler of the city, intends to do. 

An increase in attacks made by the dead has coincided with the arrival of Black Onyx, and yet no one truly knows whether or not they are made by Black Onyx forces. The attacks happen in the dead of night, and few, if any survive. Those that do speak of the risen dead, vampires, necromancers, and dead-walker rats, but the tales seem conflated, confused, and the delirious survivors soon find a way to escape the mental anguish they find themselves in.