It began in the east, rumors of a cave that adventurers would enter and never return. Then, when one finally did, they claimed that all that had entered had been turned to shadow. This was one of many stories that traveled the continent, and never gathered any special attention. Not even when towns began to disappear. Talk began to spread once some fringe cities began to go up in smoke, and regional forces were dispatched to discover the cause. While those very forces were crushed by this new threat, word finally gathered enough traction for those on the west coast to hear the news. Yet the great kingdoms did nothing but watch, sure in their superiority, and that this was simply a threat like all of the others they had weathered, and would be snuffed out in a year or two. Meanwhile, in the east, the infection spread.
The wakeup call for the continent that this threat was not going away, came from the burning of Eastfall. A nation that had stood the test of time, protecting it's people with an iron fist that made even the western kingdoms think twice about attempting to expand their territory in their direction. News began to trickle in from survivors and deserters that the plague that had been reported a year past is what had caused this collapse. Rumors began to circulate that the creatures that had attacked the kingdom had been made up of shadows taken from previous battles. By the time the westernmost kingdoms fought through the political infighting and panic that was caused by this news, it was already too late. Of the beings that had been absorbed by what had been dubbed 'The Umbral Throne', many were of military temperament, which caused it's otherwise mindless assaults to transform into organized armies, using corrupted versions of the absorbed nation's tactics to overwhelm the defensive forces of the western kingdoms.
