Wreath of Shadows and Secrets

To awaken upon a beach, memories fragmented, a stranger in your own skin. You would think it a little cliché if you could even remember your own name, let alone whatever it is that made this a cliché. The upsettingly unfamiliar animal is still asleep at your side, though you do not know it, you feel you can trust it. The world around you seems untouched at first glance, rolling fields, deep forests, open ocean However the closer you look, the more you feel you weren't the first here. The land is not empty, villages of humanoids stand against the wilds, protected by ancient golems of rusted iron, overgrown with vines. They protect themselves from the beasts that come out at night, hordes of undead, limbless monstrosities that destroy themselves in an effort to take your life, massive arachnids... and grey skinned counterparts that are more content to kill and steal than to build anything of their own. However, nothing that any of these parties built seems to compare to the ruins deep within the jungles, underneath the waves, or even far beneath the ground within yawning caverns whose ceilings are so far beyond reach that one might take flight and never collide with it. Those ruins, deep within that beckoning abyss, they are not empty either, they writhe with a sickening parasite that claims all it touches, blind, but not without sight. Hold your breath and step gingerly, lest whatever calls these ruins home hear you. No, you were not the first ones here, but neither do these ruins belong to this world's current inhabitants... something ran amok in this land, scouring the earth clean so that mother nature may yet reclaim herself.