In early October of 1360 DR, in the Kingdom of Cormyr, Dimlight Village stood on the shores of Dragonmere.
It was a tiny fishing village. Its squat houses, shabby streets, and damp surroundings all spoke of its poverty. The men went out fishing early every morning and spent nine months of the year working at sea, while the women washed clothes, cooked meals, dried goods, sewed and mended, and raised the children.
It was a typical little fishing village, so typical that the lords and nobles always kept their distance from its lowly inhabitants, except when they sent someone to collect taxes each year. So typical that even though Marsember, the kingdom's second-largest city, stood only twenty or thirty kilometers away, not the slightest trace of its prosperity reached this place.
Quite the opposite: any young person in the village with even a shred of ambition had packed up and left. Most of the men who remained were over twenty-eight, and they made up the bulk of the fishermen.
They all shared certain traits: bad throats, frequent coughing, plenty of phlegm, and poor joints. Almost everyone suffered joint pain on rainy days. Their skin was always dark with a reddish tinge, and cracked to varying degrees.
If the fishing village had any building worth seeing, it was the shrine to the Ocean Goddess.
Lately, however, frequent disappearances and reports of terrifying creatures sighted along the shore had frightened the people of Dimlight Village. They had cut back on their fishing trips. The few fishermen who insisted on going out returned with vacant expressions and an overpowering fishy stench that no amount of washing could remove.
Amid this tension, a Purple Dragon Knight arrived in the fishing village at midday.
The Purple Dragon Knight wore handsome armor and a spotless white