The year was 1348.. It was a dark and grim winter in the north..

The six wandering folk musicians had been playing from village to village for as long as any of them could remember. Both they and their music where loved by all people they met along the way. The beautiful tones from their instruments made the flowers blossom and the children gathered around them as they traveled. Everyone danced and rejoiced when they played their songs, everyone was happy!
But the musicians where poor people. They where thin and meager and their stomachs where constantly empty. They where lucky if they got a piece of bread or a quart of milk or mead.. and at those times it was counted as a party! But their constant hunger grew stronger for each day and their bodies became weaker and weaker. Despite that they continued to smile and laugh while they where playing.

An even darker and even moor grimmer winter night the musicians looked for shelter. They where to far away from the nearest village and had to seek shelter in the woods from the icy winds. Suddenly they found a tiny little cottage. There was smoke coming from the chimney and from the tiny window came a warming and welcoming light from a tiny candle placed on a table inside the cottage. A hint of a burning warm glow from the fireplace found its way out from the cottage into the snow outside.. the door seemed to be open. The musician closest to the door raised its frozen hand and very gently knocked the door‚ it was quiet, no one answered. Just before they where about to give it up the door slowly opened. It almost seemed like the door opened by itself. They all decided to go inside, at least for a short while to get a bit warmer and melt the ice from their fingertips. They looked carefully around, the cottage seemed to be empty.
In the fireplace a small cauldron was still warm and smelled deliciously good. They all gathered around the fireplace and enjoyed the heat that was coming from it.. but the delicious smell from the cauldron made their empty stomachs cry for something to fill it with. They all knew that they shouldn't eat from the food that wasn't theirs. But the hunger took over and they threw themselves over the soup and ate everything. With a bad conscience and finally a satisfied stomach they all fell asleep from exhaustion‚

The next morning they woke up and the sun was shining through the tiny window. The owner of the house had still not arrived and they decided to leave and continue their journey to the next village.

At first no one noticed anything different but no one wanted to talk about what happened that night. They had all felt the same strange feeling and knew that something wasn't the same as before. But the musicians continued to play in a new village each day. The peculiar thing was that they didn't seem to remember how and when they left the previous village and always seemed to wake up on their way to the next. The flowers no longer blossomed and the dancing children seemed to keep their distance away from something. News began spreading across the land about pain, suffering and illness had been affecting people in the villages that the musicians been visiting the days before..

It all had connections to the cold night in the lonely cabin out in the forrest. The following days seem to repeat themselves and each village they visited was the next day tragically stricken by plague.

Since the beginning when the musicians began spreading joy and happiness across the land an evil and gruesome Witch had been following them planning to put an end to it. She didn't want people to be happy, instead she wished the world misery.
The soup she had planted in her cabin was an sinister brew made from pure death and disease. When the musicians ate from the brew they had become cursed. They where doomed to be the spread of plague.
When the night came they turned into skeletons and the tunes from their instruments brought nuisance and disease from thousands of rats invading the villages nursing from the humans flesh. The plague was spreading fast from their tracks the land was covered by a dark atmosphere.

The beloved musicians where never the same again, they had become the carrier of evil...

Source : http://www.blackmagicfools.com/