#muire

Several moments has passed since he called.

K: Again, O Edjeneill I wish to speak with thou!

Again he waits.

A: I believe he will not answer to anyone, O priest.

K: What is his reason for seclusion?

A: I believe he has become obsessed with the pursuit of knowledge. As have many who learns under my word, that is the word of Cognonomy; he seeks the singular truth of will. It is something I searched for when I was young for many years and did not find. But the prestige of a unifying theory is all too great a tempter for us scholars. He has borrowed many books that are by now meant to have been returned to our library, I could consider this theft and banish him from the Radjit Academy but I know his plight well and wish to extend grace to him.

K: It is noble a desire, O friend, but if thy student has become mad with obsession it may be wrong to offer leniency and expect solution. The rot smell indicates there is something dead in that room. Depending on what it may be he may receive imprisonment or a worse punishment.

A: It may be food or vermin that rots.

K: Thy knowledge is that of learnedness, O wise scholar. My knowledge comes up from within me. There is danger that lies behind this door. There are worms eating flesh, and mould sprouting from something that should have died but did not. Has there been any food passed through the door recently?

A: None to my knowledge.

K: Then how could it be he still lives despite weeks passing since the door has last opened?

A: But he is not dead, that we know.

K: And that is it. He should be dead and yet he lives. I will summon the guards immediately and open this door.

---

Transcription ends.

This note was found beside the door to Edjeneill's room, but he was not found within. The only window in the room was open, the curtain torn down from it.

There was one expedition into the great south during the age of Yore, a group from the now fallen kingdom of Kalpho consisting of mostly knights and magisters, but also one scholar who was reporting the journey, whose name has since been forgotten. This much I was able to confirm. That scholar was the only one to have survived and successfully made their way back to the Common Basin; the group as a whole went as far as a few trot-miles inland before the scholar turned back to the ship, disturbed by the others’ behaviour. As the story goes, the group began feeling a fever for moving inland, as if manically pursuing something lying deep into the plains of the Great South. The people of Yore had a way of knowing when a person in a far off land’s life had ceased, a canary whose vitality was inextricably linked to a person. When the person died, so too did the canary. It is worth noting that killing the canary does not kill the person whose life is attached to it, it only works one direction. What is interesting about this, O Brother, is that supposedly the canary would perish in a way analogous to the mode of death of the person. There were twelve canaries, the first was found decapitated shortly after the time which the scholar would’ve turned around. The second, third, and fourth all simultaneously suffered instant death, presumably from heart failure at the time the scholar returned to Kalpho. The fifth died from malnutrition shortly after. And this is the part that I require external verification for and have sent correspondence to the historical scholars of Radjit to study this more extensively: According to local legend, over the course of the following winter, the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh canaries slowly began to mutate, strange calcified tumours and growths and horns appeared on their bodies. Their feathers dropped away and their skin hardened into a solid carapace as their forms swelted and twisted into shapes that ought to be impossible for living creatures. At some point, the overseeing magisters and scholars at Kalpho concluded it was some sort of magical error and put each canary out of its misery.

If I am to believe this frankly apocryphal story, those six explorers mutated into something horrific, somehow without dying, after being mysteriously drawn in to the centre of the Great Southern plains. This seems to me an old wives’ tale, but nonetheless is worth recording as valuable folklore of the area. The more verifiable history of human settlement in the Great South is that some time after the beginning of the Muire age the once great, now declining kingdom of Farlrerse established a coastal port town, Harlsmerld, to mine rare minerals from the other side of the Chain Mountains. (Farlrerse is located directly on the other side of the Chain Mountain range that separates the Common Basin from the Great South, I know geography is not thy strongest suit, O Brother.) I digress, at this point the population mostly consisted of workers, but as the mines began to dry up, the residents became self-sufficient, and thus forming a permanent settlement. This is when the first children were born in the Great South, seemingly much more accustomed to the frigid dry climate and paranoia that frequently ailed early settlers. With it though came a reluctance to go any further than Turmleyld, a tiny community set up earlier in a vain attempt to relocate mining operations. The community is still around, but somewhat isolated from Harlsmerld, the residents of the town seem wary or even unwilling to go to Turmleyld. Luckily there was one sailor that needed to go there to see family, he told me his name was Talbot. Once I have made headway in Turmleyld I will write again.

belonging and comprehension. I am foreign to this land and it does not understand me, thus I am not privy in understanding it or those of it. The sailors I travelled with seem to be of both worlds, however, and can speak in mixed language with the natives. Curiously though, O Brother, and this is something I have also informed Schaunpaik in another correspondence, the natives of this land were born here, but to say they are truly ‘native’ may be a misnomer. For the Great South is not a birthing place of humankind, people have only come to inhabit it during the start of the Muire Age, and likely had no human settlements or even contact during Yore. Thou will have to wait for the reason or reasons why unfortunately, I am working on procuring a permanent translator for my research but have not had any luck. I plan on staying within Harlsmerld for another few days until my curiosity has been satiated, then starting my one-way journey into the Hinterlands. I would love to document as much of the Great South as possible, but its scale begs that even if I were to not meet my end in the Hinterlands I would most certainly not be able to traverse even a fraction of it before the end of the age, and the end of my theoretical maximal lifespan.

greatest aspiration it seems. Every soul in these lands worships a god called Lurschein, or: The Great Undier. I believe this to be equivalent to a minor figure in the myriad pantheon us Vreijhans consider, whom we call Skargrinne, prayed to as the Elk for long life and prosperity. It's curious, how the Vreijhans do not view a long life to be necessarily a worthwhile one so we don't pay as much attention to the Undier, but to the Werstúmi longevity is everything.

I've arrived on the third and final day of a festival or perhaps some ritual they call the Wersteum Jäna Klatsis: everyday once upon the hour from day break to dusk they recite the names from the book of the good dead, for which the festival is named. They revere these names as they are the ones of the family's ancestors who have achieved enough and been good enough a person to be written down there. I'm told this is to assist with enduring the barren cold of winter, and come spring's break they hold the Färduhilt: another festival, twice the length and merriment where they read from the Wersteum Hellu Klatsis, the book of the bad dead. They rejoice in the pejoration of these figures, ancestors who have soiled the family name. They make effigies and burn them, and sing songs of their misdeeds and subsequent punishments so that they may hope to be looked upon by Lurschein more favourably.

Hospitality seems important to these people, I wandered in here a musky filthy wretch and have been bathed and fed, vegetables stewed in milk. They've even space for me in the house; not amongst the stables that I am so accustomed to sleeping in on my travels. Tomorrow I will take a ride into the city, and hope to gain entry there.