From the introduction: "Ruin has come to our family." "You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial; gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor. I lived all my years in that ancient, rumour-shadowed manor." "Fattened by decadence and luxury... and yet I began to tire of conventional extravagance. Singular unsettling tales suggested the mansion was a gateway to some fabulous and unnameable power. With relic and ritual, I bent every effort to the excavation and recovery of those long buried secrets, expending what remained of our family fortune on surly workman and sturdy shovels."