Heeey, so... this is weird, talking to all yinz at once like this.

[ Someone gave the newbie a crystal, and she's missing text messaging and like buttons so much right now. ]

But I figured it'd be the fastest way to get an answer to this. [ She lightly clears her throat. ] So's anyway, I'm a rifter. Just arrived. And I know that there's a project here where people are researching our green personal night lights and the rifts and all that. And I know a lot of us are probably itching to get home, but, like... what if we're not? Or -- okay -- what if I'm not? Like I've heard some rifters just up and disappear back home all of a sudden, but is there some way to ensure we can stay if we want to? Because that would be preferable.

[ That should be it, but then she quickly adds: ]

Also which division and project is the best and which should I join and why? Go!

[ Go ahead, guys. Talk up your projects. She needs something to do while stuck under quarantine in The Gallows.]

A year past and there are those who have left us, and many more who have joined so I find it a fitting time to ask again after tales told best about the hearth when the shadows grow long, become beasts or shapes that stalk and prowl.  Some of you perhaps recall when last I spoke of the tale of my mother and the legends of her, that there were such tales I looked for from any number of you.  

Perhaps recent travels to a forest with tales of hands and teeth are what stir the memory.  [The truth, of course, is often far worse to see it left bare beneath the branches flayed to the bone.]  There is a tale some may know of the Chasind, her sons slain by the arl's blades.  Who can say what drives a grieving mother to do as she does, perhaps 'twas not grief, grief must come later in the dark shadows before you take vengenace after all.  This woman drove a blade into her own chest that she had torn from the heart of one of her dead sons, cursing the arl as she did.  Her blood spilled upon the ground, and with it rose a mist.  It spread.  It spread far through the forest before it was everywhere.  If you have ever come through a forest with such a mist you will know how deadly such a thing might be, and such it proved to be for the arl's army that became lost in this fog.  Some will tell you that they perished there.  Others will insist that they wander the mist-shrouded forest to this day, and that his ruined arling stands now, their widows awaiting their husbads return evermore.

[The Korcari Wilds has the very best stories, uplifting, hopeful, warm.  She allows herself a pause before her voice returns to a more normal pitch after it had trailed off into something more unsettling towards the end of the tale, more befitting of a Witch of the Wilds who undoubtedly heard this firsthand in the swamps.]

Now there are so many more and I wonder who is willing to share?  So many new rifters have joined us of late - what tales have ever had you waking in the night with a cold sweat?  Or are there those that have kept you awake 'til the dawn brightens the sky once more for fear of what might come should you leave yourself so vulnerable?