Wine and Cheese Valindra's Message

Replica of a player handout from the mission: Wine and Cheese comprising several pages of handwritten notes.

To Lord Brynholm and companions does Valindra of the Order send felicitations.

I had wished to discuss our findings in person, but we have had to hasten back to Ruby Water as Lyria became unexpectedly unwell. I am entrusting this missive and draught to a contact who I can only hope delivers it with alacrity.

After receiving your request, Ruath made use of ancient ways to bring us to the southern part of the venerable Lúgglad. [Drakwood] With the changes of recent days however we found ourselves in farmed lands from which the ancient trees have been long removed.

[Several paragraphs omitted discussing the loss of ancient greenwood and geographic differences arising from the millennia that have passed, and comments from Ruath regarding difficulties with the ancient roads in this area being tangled and overgrown.]

The elven of the locals, though debased, was sufficient to learn that we had arrived in the vicinity of the Dreaming Orchard vineyard.

[Additional paragraphs removed on the similarities in naming of vineyards in Bowcourt and elven lands, and discussing the interesting vowel shifts between Eldarin and modern Elven and the impact of this on Lalange.]

It was apparent that multiple areas defiled by unnatural decay were present to our south and south-west; I detected nothing similar over the river to our north.

No proximate cause for this abhorrent phenomenon was apparent.

While it is clearly many years since our people walked these lands there is still magic of the fair folk here; that this is insufficient to stand anathema to such perversion speaks to considerable power behind the affliction.

[Further paragraphs ignored discussing the enduring and ecologically sound quasi-magical effects of long-term elven occupation of land.]

Lyria sought to connect with the land to determine how the areas that have suffered deleterious effects interrelate.
She was initially unsuccessful and reported that the areas appeared distinct and unconnected, but during her second attempt she suddenly cried out that "a great void", a blackness so deep and infinite that it threatened to swallow her whole and shatter her mind, had opened away to the south-west by Daug-Duin.

["Barbarian River", the Baratary.]

For a nightmare moment Lyria saw a dark web connecting the great void to the areas of decay, to a fell presence nearer us, and felt its edges beginning to impinge on nodes within the ancient roads.

A new area suddenly appeared, and then the great void blinked out as an eye closing, and Lyria collapsed.

She has recounted little since and we are taking her away from this place to recover her senses.

From what I felt second-hand through Lyria, whatever is active here is powerful and most likely ancient; it is with certainty outside of the natural cycles in which we deal.

I can offer that I have known the depredations of our twisted dark kin, but this seems wholly otherworldly, and without elven imprimatur.

I wish you and your companions well, but I am afraid that we may be able to offer little additional assistance.

(Ruath asked me to also note that if it becomes connected to the ancient roads there is the very real fear of rapid spread.)

Eleni sílar antalyannar [May stars shine upon your faces.]

Valindra

Eleni sílar antalyannar, Elven, tr.: May stars shine upon your faces.