[insert witty title here]

New Caerleon is a tiny village in southern Ohio, just set off Old Logan Road. Right in between both Lancaster and Horns Mill, New Caerleon would act as possibly the only interesting sight in between the two destinations. New Caerleon is simple, as befitting its size, and mostly self-contained. Everybody knows each others’ names. Everybody’s neighbors with each other. If you live in the community, everyone considers you a friend.

In 1803, in the admission of Ohio to the Union as the 17th state, New Caerleon was one of the first American cities founded in it. The remains of a long-forgotten Fort Ancient village provided a solid foundation for settlers to build up from, and they quickly went to work making a tightly-knit community. A single monument was built right in the center of the city, celebrating the many heroes that had given their lives for this town, and that the blood would not have flowed in vain. The “Hero Monument” was carved as a man in armor, raising his sword high in one hand and clutching a gun in another–signifying both the evolution of war, and how a warrior is ready for combat all the time.
Little has changed as the centuries went by.
The town is still small, and the monument is still up, though developing technology has upgraded the town from huts to houses to apartments. People have moved in, established a trade, established jobs, and life goes on.

As the centuries went by, artifacts started turning up by the dozens. Native American descendants interested in preserving their history had been digging (with local permission) for the Fort Ancient remnants–when they found Viking and African artifacts as well, interest in the town shot up exponantially.
The Hero Monument was expanded, an entire museum built around it to celebrate the history of warriors across the globe and their achievements–the town named it the Eisenhower Museum, after the five-star general himself. It became the main tourist trap of anybody travelling the long distances across Ohio, as the tales of heroes long past and the cultures surrounding them were romantic tales of adventure and glory. What child, or teenager, or young adult could resist such epics?
In the mid-60s and 70s, however, patriotism hit a new low with the Vietnam War. Protests against the war and against war in general raged across the entire United States. The Eisenhower Museum got a large backlash due to its glorification of war when the current movement was of peace.
Tourists to the town reached an all-time low, where they have remained ever since.

The Eisenhower Museum still stands today, as does the Hero Monument.
Upkeep is maintained, however, entirely by volunteers and history majors. With very few tourists going out of their way to head into the town, profits have reached into the negatives for such a grand museum.
In the late 70s, the sci-fi boom borne from outer space films rose another attempt to create a tourist trap–thus the Roswell Observatory was built, a museum of alien encounters and unsolved extraterrestrial phenominae. A cynical cash-in at best, it both lacked the soul of the Eisenhower Museum and the historical facts; alien encounters are a fuzzy science at best, and thus many of the customers were either people looking for more evidence to further their conspiracy theories or men who had explanations for everything and refused to believe in alien life. The controversy, however, generated enough income to keep New Caerleon afloat as a village. As with all fads, though, the sci-fi craze died out and New Caerleon was once again reduced to nothing more than just a tiny group of houses between Lancaster and Horns Mill, Ohio.

For a new face to peek into New Caerleon now is a celebration–in a place where everyone knows who you are, friends are great but more friends are greater. The village’s financial woes are swept under the rug with a constant smile and an invitation to stay a while. Life is simple, but happy, and this is just the way they want it.
The economic recession has hit the place even harder, but New Caerleon hopes to persevere. Unity and the power it provides has lead even the most stalwart heroes through dangerous wars, and every mighty soldier is backed up by an entire platoon.

Only problem is, a week every twenty years does a mysterious and bloody fog settle on the village. And now is that time again…