The World of Sion is vast, ancient and foreboding. Savage inhuman outsiders threaten the borders of civilization while the sins of men within undermine their own hearts and minds. At the heart of this struggle is the island Kingdom of Chival, once called Khimera. The people of Chival were beholden to the kings of Khimera for a thousand years before their prayers for a savior were finally answered. Saint Vespasian was the first to take up arms against the demonic kings of Khimera and their evil god Herod. The waning of the first ice age (known now as the start of the Age of Pentos) two thousand years ago prompted the first holy crusade known as 'The Great Cleansing'. Cultists of Herod were exterminated wherever they could be found, freeing the Chivalan people at last. Shortly after that they chose their first king while the saints elected their first patriarch. The church of Pentos has since grown into the largest religion in civilized regions of the western hemisphere, at great cost. After its inception, the spread of the Church of Pentos was resisted by the senate of the Great Republic of Gallia, yet welcomed by its people. After a few centuries, the religion was wholly adopted by the Gallians, but not in the way the saints of Chival intended. In a brazen act of heresy the people of Gallia elected their own patriarch, thus creating the Gallian Church of Pentos. Tensions between the two sects finally boiled over into war at the start of the 3rd Age, (1,000 years ago) when the Chivalan Patriarch of Pentos called for a second Holy Crusade against Gallia. Countless died; while as if in omen, a second Great Ice Age began. The war lasted for 250 years, only ceasing when the common threat of the rising Angul Empire gave them reason to put aside their differences for the sake of a common enemy. Now, all the civilized peoples of Sion prepare for worse days to come. Everywhere the threat of darkness looms, but Chival itself has never been conquered since the rise of the Church of Pentos. Reigning lords of Chival (and their many knights) have never feared the Cult of Herod the way their ancestors once did. They will soon learn different. One lord in particular will have to make an awful choice, a devils bargain, to save what he loves. His soul may be the first cast into hellish oblivion, but it will not be the last.