Be the party, a ragtag bunch of misfits living in a small town near the border of a peaceful neutral good Kingdom.
Do not be the Dark Empire, ruled by an Undead Wizard for the last 500 years, on the other side of the border.
Rumours of war, armies passing through, we sign up to fight.
At first the campaign goes well, skeleton armies show no tactics or strategy, but their numbers start to tell against us.
Demoralised by fighting our own, raised as undead, running low on hope and food, we end up retreating.
Decide to stay behind and form a resistance group in the Dark Empire side of the border.
Infiltrate a settlement of miners, get jobs in various associated service industries e.g. smelting, entertainment, whoring - stuff the undead are no good at.
I'm playing the bard, so I'm in entertainment for the miners. It's about 50/50 living/undead in the mines. Undead for the grunt work, living to instruct them on how to. Some vampires in town as well, adding to the number of customers.
Singing songs, playing the lute, learning some local mining songs from the days before the Evil Empire took this town.
Little bit too good at appealing to nostalgia, miners riot, crucify the vampires, trap the undead in the mine and explode it with oil barrels and naturally occuring gas.
Run for it with the rest of the party, find another settlement.
Try to fit in as a bard, but my fame preceded me, captured.
Dragged in chains to the nearest prison, which is in a grim black stone castle.
Lightning nearby, followed by thunder as the doors slam closed behind me.
Beatings, interogation.
Resist all the attempts to get me to spill what I know, eventually they send me to the capital city called Rumwun Owone, to be tortured by the Lich himself.
They lock a cage around my head, with a starving rat in an adjoining cage, and threaten to let the rat eat my face if I don't love the Undead Wizard lord.
Lich-erally 1984.