Geography
---------
As far as our purposes are concerned, the world consists almost entirely of a
smallish continent in a northern latitude. Think scandanavia without any
neighbors.

There are two main nations on the island. On the eastern shore is the human
kingdom's capital. It is a large (17th-century london) walled city built in
rings around the central keep. Large dock districts, etc...

On the southwestern end of the continent are the trolls. They are only recently
unified (20 years or so), and have shared an uneasy peace with the humans ever
since their king put a stop to the border warfare.

In between the two territories are assorted farms and small villages that are
nominally part of the human kingdom but could generally care less one way or
the other.

One of these sets of villages near the southern end of the continent is an
unusually warm region along an unremarkable river. Four small towns situated
along the length of the river are inhabited by a race of little people (how
little is still up in the air). They are completely isolated from the outside
world and while they know that the trolls and humans exist, they haven't seen
any of them in generations.

Outline
-------
Human kingdom is decaying
- king is obsessed with something
  - he is ill and slowly going mad
  - he can feel himself going
  - he does not want anyone to know about the illness
- he hires alchemists and sorcerors to find a cure
  - most of government moneys go to the support of this effort
  - everything funded by govt falls into disrepair
  - taxes are increased, causing general problems for the populace
- royal advisors quit/go on holiday when the king ignores their attampts to
  solve the problem
  - 'doctors' and their puppets begin to fill vacancies
- king has only one child
  - 5-year-old girl
  - wife died in childbirth after a particularly grueling pregnancy
  - chancellor or some like position, girl's uncle, etc... takes princess
    on extended holiday to the mountains when the funk starts to go down

Nobody in the world really believes in magic
- not even the alchemists and self-proclaimed sorcerors
  - they know they're fakes, but they also realize that they do occasionally
    stumble onto something - they figure it's scientific or something
- the people do believe in spirits and premonitions
  - dreams are big
  - some people believe the dead go to live in dreams
- religion is pretty non-specific about most things
  - the gods are passive in the peoples' lives, they aren't asked to do
    anything much, and they don't do it

Troll kingdom is restless
- the petty chieftains are getting royally bored with peace
  - they start raiding each other
  - king attempts to hold games to keep the peoples' interest
  - the games seem to stop the tribal warfare for the most part

The human sorcerors begin to make headways into actual magic
- given essentially infinite moneys and being expected to produce regular
  results of some sort or another, some of the doctors actually start to make
  discoveries
  - this excites those who are actually interested in magic and not just riding
    the gravy train to retirement
  - this also causes a dangerous schism between the two parties of doctors
- the doctors who are actually producing some sort of results turn to grave
  robbing and other sorts of necromantic type hobbies in order to further their
  research
  - much evil is done in the name of finding a cure
- the beurocrats begin a subtle war to slow down the doctors' progress and to
  shore up their positions in the unfortunate event that a cure is actually
  found
  - much evil is committed in the name of stopping the cure
- all of this ambient evil (both passive and active) begins to taint the land
  - a blight centered on the capital begins to spread out across the entire
    continent
  - crops begin to fail, trees lose their leaves out of season and begin to
    wither, wild game becomes scarce, chickens lay square eggs, the cubs win
    the wold series, etc...

A few of the royal advisors have dreams
- they realize that the mess they escaped is getting more than just political
- a few of them return to the city and try to talk some sense into the king
  - he has them thrown into prison for treason
  - the necromancers harvest them for parts

The blight spawns a sickness
- the people begin to come down with mysterious ailments
  - among the humans of the city, the disease mostly just drains one's energy
    and motivation, it slows healing
  - as the disease spreads through the outlying areas, it picks up momentum
    (for undecided reasons) and people actually begin to break out in visible
    symptoms and exhibit coughs and such
    - wounds of any sort are practically fatal as a result, as blood refuses
      to clot and flesh refuses to close
  - by the time the disease hits the trolls, those afflicted suffer from rage
    and dementia
    - they begin to suspect their neighbors of poisoning them, etc... and the
      games lose their interest
- only those of particularly strong will are able to resist the effects of the
  disease
  - this includes many of the royals who have fled, as well as the troll king
    and his closest advisors
- the littles are unaffected by the disease
  - the blight skips around their river valley

The troll king has a dream
- he is told that the cause of the sickness is in the human capital
  - he gathers those few of his advisors who are still sane and leaves to pay
    a visit to the human king
- as the delegation travels, the remaining trolls get worse and begin to raid
  human villages as well as their troll neighbors
  - news of the border attacks travels quickly up to the capital and what
    remains of the army is dispatched to meet the threat
  - when the king's delegation arrives, they are captured as spies and the
    king is locked in a tower (comfortable prison)
    - his advisors are given to the necromancers
- news of the atrocity beats the human armies to the border and the trolls
  decide to avenge their kin and save the king
  - individual armies begin to march toward the human capital, razing everything
    in their path
  - there is no organization to the attack, it is just a huge number of small
    troll armies with big pointy sticks and a general idea of the direction they
    are heading

The littles have an artifact
- there is an ancient powerful magical artifact at the centre of the little
  people's culture
  - overly large caribou skull, decorated with strings of beads and stuff
  - every year, there is a festival where the skull moves between the villages
    - the skull always travels, it has never remained in the same village for
      two consecutive years
    - the order is generally set, but has been known to change every few
      years when one of the village elders has a premonition to do so
      - the skull has been known to whisper to them, but they generally don't
        let on about that part of things
    - as part of the rotation, the skull travels the wrong way - visiting the
      other two villages on the way to its final destination
  - the festival involves lots of drinking and music and dancing
    - after a week of partying in the town that is losing the skull, everyone
      dances it through each of the other villages for a week-long party each
      time
    - after the month-long celebration comes to an end, everyone nurses their
      hangovers and eventually goes back to work for the year and forgets
      about the skull
- the rotation of the skull is the continuation of an ancient protective spell
  that keeps their valley safe
  - the river is rich in fish, the crops do well, and they don't have any
    violent crime or theft, the people are healthy and live long lives

One of the troll bands has a particularly bad sense of direction
- they misread their maps and stumble across the littles
- naturally (perversity of the universe) they arrive during one of the middle
  weeks of the festival and interrupt the proceedings
  - the chief takes the skull because it's a cool trophy and he can always make
    up some sort of hunting story lie thing when he gets it back home
  - as the trolls carry the skull onward, it begins to heal them of the sickness
- a few days out of the littles' territory, they are fully cured and the gravity
  of their crimes hits them - they murdered innocent little people who didn't
  really have much in the way of weapons or sobriety to fight back with
  - this has a fairly profound effect on the group and they stop marching for
    a while, set up a semi-permanent camp
    - the skull begins to talk to the chief and tells him that the human king
      really is at fault for the sickness
    - he doesn't let on that the skull's talking to him, but he does spread
      word that the thing is important, more than just a trophy
- one of the littles (our hero) has followed the trolls in an attempt to get
  the skull back
  - while the trolls are camped, he stumbles into their guards and is hauled
    in front of the chief
  - the bargaining doesn't happen, as the trolls also realize that the skull
    has cured them and they don't want to revert
  - they don't skoosh the kid because, well, he's a kid
    - he's welcome to travel along with them as they go to kill the human king
    - they'll let him take the skull back after they win the war
- skull improves their sense of direction remarkably
  - they manage to avoid any innocent villages for the remainder of the trip,
    stumbling in stead across abandoned farms and such to forrage

...

Trolls arrive in capital

War with the necromancers

Human king dies

Rescue the heir

Finish off necros and look for a cure to the blight