From the Kickstarter campaign: Abelia Prem was a peculiar woman. Born to a wealthy merchant family, she grew up with no desire unfulfilled. However, she did not inherit her family’s lust for wealth. She had ambitions to be a scholar, a traveler, and an explorer of unknown places. Throughout her life she studied, remaining bookish and reclusive while her siblings engaged in the more typical mating rituals of the idle rich. When her parents left her a sizable inheritance she built a secluded manor, a sanctuary of intellect away from what she saw as the crass, banal world around her. In her middle age she was known for hosting extravagant salon parties for the local nobles, scholars, and bardic colleges. Her gardens were considered the most extraordinary in the region. Her study of horticulture continued well into her later life, when she developed an interest in rare and hybrid species of plants. This interest eventually led Abelia to discover a most interesting legend about the rarest flower of all, the Stygian Rose. Supposedly this midnight black rose grew in compact bushes along the banks of the river Styx, the physical boundary between the realm of the living and the underworld. As a learned woman, she regarded this legend as common superstition until she came across the writings of the great adventurer Leopold Malando. In his journals, Malando described a chthonic expedition wherein he not only found this plant, but used it to restore life to one of his dead colleagues. Unfortunately for Abelia, this discovery occurred just prior to the dementia that claimed her mind in the last years of her life. She became obsessed with the prospect of finding the Stygian Rose and adding it to her world-renowned garden. She contracted a team of dwarven diggers to tunnel below her gardens and search for the river of the dead. In the end, she may have found it. 10 years ago Abelia Prem vanished without a trace, leaving her property abandoned. In the months prior to her disappearance, she suddenly released her servants from duty in a fit of dementia. Neither Abelia Prem, nor her team of dwarves were ever seen again.