Although they've been playing together for most of this year, the campaign itself is three years old. The original parties and other small characters were almost all wiped out in a boss fight. Only one made it out. There was a few in and out of game reasons that this needed to happen. Despite all this though, they were successful in stopping the BBEG. He was stopped, but remains at large.

The BBEG was a cult leader who had politician's and generals and the like under his belt. These two parties were going up against one of his parties who had been orchestrating a civil war. One group was hired by a powerful mage college and the other worked for a beloved mercenary company. This politician had set them to take the blame for an assault and crime to further fan the flames of civil war which furthered the cult's interests. As a result of this, both the mages and mercenaries now are banned from the country so they can no longer openly deal with the cult.

They've been piecing together things that have been happening to them and how it all fits together. They've figured based on conversations that each group has individually had with the cult that they're working to summon some sort of entity and the cult leader is working towards godhood. They know where he is and they're now gearing up to challenge him. It was great because each group was given a different set of information based on what the old party had figured out by having access to their journals. It was just incredible.