#tezelin

In answer to your question, yes, it is dangerous.

Not the planer creatures who can set fire to things with a thought, or the flying invisible things with spikes and claws. These I have fought and escaped unscathed. Only once have I been in serious jeopardy:

Some stupid bastard who didn’t like that I beat him at cards, so held up our coach and shot me. With a rifle. Which bloody hurt. Eventually I nicked his rifle, but it turns out they need quite some skill to shoot. Still, better mine than his.

We went through a variety of pissant villages - including the inept card-sharks - tracking this thing. It’s still consistently Southeast of us, but the road goes East. One of those previously mentioned invisible flying things was tracking us from above (they can’t stay invisible forever, fortunately) and led us fairly effectively into an ambush. Not without difficulty, we beat them at least without casualty, and found at least one of them had come from an old tower nearby. Not so much a tower anymore, mostly it too was underground.

Inside I found a couple of demonic lackeys, bound with silver and set up as a power source for some kind of area protection spell that used to cover the vicinity. I tried - with middling success - to convince them I was a friend and to tell me the plan, but apart from “The call has gone out” I didn’t get much. Something reached out and freed the third lackey from beyond, and I suspect Our Ancestor’s involvement, but still nothing concrete. We couldn’t let the lackies live, so we shot them in the cages. Seems sad, somehow.

Anyway, we’ve made it to Black Hill without much further incident. Newspapers around say there’s a big ancient magical items display down the road a ways, which looks interesting (and might have some clues), and the creatures we’ve been fighting have been seen a lot more. 

Black Hill’s surprisingly dwarven, even for a dwarven city. It’s like a diorama of how you would expect a dwarven city to look. Even the hotel we’re in (again, levels down, not up) is trying *very hard* to be as dwarven as possible. We passed through here on the way up to the “Lodge”, but we’ve got nicer digs this time. Plus, the hotel has a post service which leaves in... about ten minutes, so I should sign off.

“Regards”,

My lady. 

The following, and - I suspect - the next several letters I send you are going to be part travelogue, part confession, and probably part evidence at whatever trial analogue the university can cook up for us. I’m telling you this because it’s something to do with our family, and someone other than me should know what’s happened. I deeply apologise for everything you’re about to read.

We graduated. That in itself is the cap on a set of wonders and coincidences that should be documented at some point, but as a last hurrah, the outgoing exec of the historical society decided to take one last trip to a site. Or, if you look at it another way, our first trip without the backing of the university. 

Serada (Wyrnham. Yes, them) has a “lodge” up in the forests to the north-west of Travesford, and invited us (Edric (the religious guy with the hat), Durlan (the other Warlock trained), Astili (The one who set the table on fire) and Emma (The one who put it out)) up so we could investigate a dig happening nearby at Ash Hill. 

By the kind of complete coincidence that I don’t believe in, Ash Hill has something to do with Our Ancestor. It used to be some kind of... monastery without the monks, is the best I can think of. The first level underground seemed to have been home to some nasty things for a long time, The next level library was blighted by a heavy curse, below that a librarian poltegeist tried to kill us, and the last level was still inhabited by the “Library Council”, a group of liches who had sealed themselves away due to some great evil in the land. The whole kaboodle was sealed twice, once by them, but then again by... well, guess who. It opened when I shouted at it in demonic. We cleansed the library (some really weird elementalism going on there) and the Library Council gave us a spell that could track by blood. (Magic, powered by blood? Yeah... Not that we’re in any position to question, right now), so we are tracking the origin of the creatures who tried to kill us.

Oh, yes. Also in Ash Hill, creatures of Our Ancestor’s plane. Imps and some kind of spikey dwarf thing. Things that can turn themselves invisible are entirely unfair. 

Thing is, I think I’m coming into my inheritance. I’m certainly getting really quite a lot better at wielding his power. But he’s up to something, it’s coming to a head.  We caught one thing alive, but I couldn’t convince it I was part of the plan enough for it to tell me the *rest* of the plan.

We’re back at the Lodge now, preparing to find this thing - it’s tracking south-east of us. I’ll send you more later.

Pretend you’ve said hi to my father from me,