Pilgrims of the Plague

It’s 1346, and the sun rises on a beautiful morning in Europe. The grass glistens with frost from that lovely little ice age you just had, and your cheekbones are sharp and fabulous from the last few years of bad harvests.  And what’s that on the horizon? Why, it’s a cloud of miasmatic air rising from Genoa. Today is going to be a great day. In fact, today is the first day in what is going to be a great six years. You can feel it in your swelling lymph nodes. 
You’re not the only one.  There are people like you all over Europe, ready to depart from home and enjoy what will certainly go down in history as a high point in civilization. Though your reasons may differ, you will all take leave of your homes and begin a pilgrimage across the continent. Perhaps you will meet fellow travelers in an inn and share tales. Perhaps you will contract a deadly illness and die. Perhaps at the end of all of this you will be enraged by the sheer scale of destruction wrought by the ravages of the Black Death and join an angry mob to find and kill anyone who is to blame. Or perhaps you will be a victim of that angry mob! 
You’ll never know until you take that first step away from home.