Week 69 – Miron, Antiquarian

To: My Learned Correspondent:

Dear sir,

I was overjoyed to receive your communication. I apologize for my delay in responding; I have been several days on a mission into the darker thickets of the Weald in search of medicines from a waylaid trader.

Please accept my deepest gratitude for speaking with the Duke on my behalf. I gather from your letter that he is inclined to bend from his previous inflexible position, and I lay the credit for that entirely at your laudable feet. I trust the historically and mystically suggestive etchings enclosed will more than compensate you for your efforts.

The Heir to this place is dead. He slashed his own throat while I was lurking in the Weald, not that anyone cares very much. Bosc and Mathan and some of the others have been keeping a certain amount of order, although I have found the chaos somewhat advantageous vis-à-vis my purse.

I will send out some feelers to determine if the next Heir will actually come to the Hamlet or not. With any luck, and thanks to your help, I will be gone long before then!

Your Correspondent,

Miron.

Week 70 – Medley, Vestal

Dear Diary,

I give daily thanks to the Light and Her beneficence for my excommunication.

The Church misunderstands so much. They parade their piety and jaw on endlessly about service and sacrifice, but they are so peculiarly unable to see past their noses when they look at the Versebook! Mother Superior accused me of falling into the Travesian error. Error! Nonsense. How can one look at the Verses, written so far apart in time by different authors and yet so perfectly concordant, and not see the guiding mind of a single, personal being?

"Over-anthropomorphizing" my eye. The Light laughs at them, I am sure, just as I am sure She watches over me.

At any rate, excommunication is the best thing that ever happened to me. This Hamlet is dismal and strange and beset by monsters and madness, but that only means more opportunities to spread the true word of the Light.

No one is really in command at the moment, although there is a great deal of respect for some few. A prayerful but rough man called Dismas organized a group of us to rout out a band of undead beasts from the Ruins. One of my companions was a strange Eastern woman named Aljarhaa. She was missing a hand, but was no less dangerous for it – as the creatures that fell before her spear could attest.

I believe that she is a sorceress. She does strange dances and calls up snakelike shadows to attack our foes. I strongly suspect that she had something to do with the nightmarish serpent-demons that attacked us in the night. Something about the haunted look in her eyes, though, tells me that it is not truly her fault, so I am willing to bear the attacks.

I've been too candid, I'm sure, but I will keep this diary secret and safe.

Medley, in service to the True Light and Her Glory.

(The Travesian error is a minor heresy involving anthropomorphizing the Light, first mentioned way back in the Darkest Dungeon Diaries, Chapter 5.)

Week 71 – The Heiress

Wilhelmina Constantine von W-, Heiress and Lady of the Hamlet: Her Diary.

The disorganization apparent from even a cursory examination of this place is appalling. I don't know what deeply, deeply hidden gifts my cousin may have had, but management was not one of them. And apparently the two who had been keeping everything running, Raoullin and Pevrel, died in battle several weeks ago.

So for almost a month, the only check on the ridiculous and dangerous collection of mercenaries, barbarians, occultists, and abominations that my cousin collected have been an ex-robber named Dismas, a few retired lawmen, and the willingness of a few of the warriors to enforce the dictates of the frankly useless local constabulary.

When I arrived, a motley group was just returning from an expedition to my Weald, loaded with loot, heirlooms, and other valuables, which they just… dumped in front of the constables' office, taking their pay from the more liquid commodities without receipts or records of any kind. And the group! There was a half-naked woman wrapped in chains and a shifty-looking Eastern sorcerer who I am almost sure I saw secreting some additional valuables about his person. I never saw such a bizarre pack of reprobates.

Things are going to be tightened up considerably around here, I can assure you. I've had several conferences with the most respected of my cousin's mercenaries, and they and the rest are hungry for proper leadership. I've called a meeting of the lot of them in the town square later today, and I intend to let them know that particular need is about to be met, in spades.

Maybe we can do something about these damned mosquitoes, too.

Lady W., Heiress.

Week 72 – Craon, Librarian

Dear Diary,

Everyone in this town is insane. Balmy. Utterly loony.

I must have been sent here by mistake. I don't understand it, I was just going to pick up some rare volumes from a manor library, but there was an error in the records and the manor's burned down and I don't understand these people, and when I went to the Lady to sort it out I think she thought I was one of her mercenaries because she skewered me with those incredible eyes of hers and ordered me out on a mission, and I froze. I just froze!

And I went. And then I spent days slogging through some hideous beach beating off fish-monsters with my books and tending to wounds and generally trying to buck up my compatriots. Don't even get me started on them! I'm pretty sure one of them is some sort of snake-worshipper. And one has a falcon that makes me nervous. I'm allergic to feathers.

Pancevolt's nice, though. A very clever sorcerer from the East. I like him. We talked about the Rubaiyat one night, and hearing him recite those poems in his own tongue was delightful.

I must try to ask the Lady about those books soon, so I can leave. But the pay from that few days was more than my stipend for an entire semester at the university. It might be worth staying around for a few weeks…

Craon.

Week 73 – Bosc, Plague Doctor

Words cannot express the relief I feel.

The Lady W. is educated as well as one can expect for an aristocrat, and she is making the most of a bad situation with commendable force. Expeditions are going out against the monsters that infest the surroundings with more regularity and direction than ever before. She also had a talk with the constabulary that seemed to put some vinegar into them, and the Hamlet is quieting down at long last.

I had thought this place was a mess before the Heir expired, but the weeks of anarchy that followed made the former chaos seem almost comforting. Mathan, Bellecote, Bossard and Dismas have all done their best, and Gwenllian and Von Kalmbach have been ready enough to bludgeon the worst elements into submission, but it has been difficult to be productive with hooligans rampaging around the streets day and night.

Now, at last, my researches continue. I have written often about the strange aspects to many of the diseases here, and with a firm hand on the tiller I'll be able to expect some more cooperation.

Speaking of diseases and the frequently-diseased, Dismas is finally shaking off the weight of what he saw and did down in the dark. Light knows it took me long enough when I came back.

I am, I must admit, rather glad that he is well.

Bosc, Dr. Md., physician.