The bitter winds of winter thrashed across the sparsely covered plains surrounding the abandoned settlement of Twer. We had arrived several days past, a small band of tired warriors and several women. The cold was fierce, hacking at us in a spiteful way, and if not for our thick furs and youth we would have succumbed to natures enmity long before we had reached this stark place.

Our first task had been to fix the shabby hall at the heart of the settlement. We could tell this place had not long been abandoned for the hall looked effortless to repair. My men set to their work with zeal, eager for a warm place to sleep. By nightfall on the third day, their hard work saw us reclining around a blazing fire, drinking warm mead and eating the roasted meat of a wolf that one of men had taken down with a spear.

Twer was a new start for us. My tribe had been nomadic hunters hailing from the eastern steppes. We existed only to hunt, tracking the herds across the plains. For many years my people had lived this way, indifferent to other tribes. That was until a dreadful enemy came from the far east, from a land no man in my tribe had heard of. They were dark, this new enemy, with slanted eyes and strange armor. They were expert horsemen and they came in droves. For several years my tribe struggled to keep ahead of them, and we succeeded much of the time. But every so often they would swoop down on us and snatch away a handful of lives. My tribe dwindled over the years, until there were less than sixty folk. That was when we decided to leave the east behind us. We trekked west into the unknown frontier, and that became our daily ritual. The enemy fell away and we saw nothing of them for a year. That was when a harsh winter overwhelmed us. Progress became slow, some days we made no ground at all. The elderly and the young suffered the most, sickness struck and people began dying. By the time that winter was over my tribe numbered only thirty folk. Our spirits were broken from the losses we had taken, but we did the only thing we could, we continued west. We seldom saw other tribes in our travels. When we did it usually resulted in a cautious impasse with each side harassing one another at distance. But on one occasion there would be no respite, just a brutal clash that claimed twelve more from my tribe. There was no victory for either side, just a frenzied scene of desperate warriors determined to kill each other. As the sun fell from the sky all that remained was a field strewn with mangled, bloody bodies. I took a nasty gash over my left eye, but also the respect of the remaining men of my tribe. From the gash they have given me the name, Dreadeye, but more importantly they now look to me to lead what is left of our tribe.

That was one full moon past and we have since arrived in the abandoned settlement of Twer. The timber palisade is strong and our spirits are on the mend. Our women are healthy and our mead potent. Our bellies are full and a new dawn greets us on the morrow. We are the Fenni and our tribe must begin anew.