Session Notes
A joke that I have recently heard in the streets of Elder Pool: What goes into one of Gilda’s brambleberry scones? Answer: Sir Kog’s fist!
It is I, Dear Reader, Buck Headstrong! The greatest Sage and Chronicler of this or any age. Vellan, do you hear me? I am the greatest Sage and Chronicler!
The joke, I admit, is a sad one, and no more sad than the truth that underlies it. Whilst the supposed cult continues to go about its filthy business undeterred, the great Circle of Darkmoor is spending their time upsetting the small local shops and eateries that are the lifeblood, such as it is, of Elder Pool. When it comes to halting murder and naked aggression, my friends, the Circle excels at arresting suspect grain.
The Circle discovered, I am told, the cult hideout at the Grain Records office about which many of you, please do not deny it, were already well aware. Inside, however, they were quickly thwarted, after having narrowly survived a cut-and-thrust encounter with a pile of rocks, by a series of damp stairs. Rather throws some suspicion on the recounting of that fell squirrel1 Fluffy that this group managed to defeat the famed Shambler of the Swamp, doesn’t it?
Now, at least, the Circle has departed. Off tilting, it seems. at windmills. Leaving us to our own devices. Which may simply be for the best.
I did foreshadow in a previous missive a discussion of the great beasts, the Aldermane, did I not? I arrived here at Elder Pool for the first time, my friends, young and full of vim, knees still shaking from a journey in the fantastic carriage of the Earl of Eregore, that great noble of this region. I have witnessed for myself the uncanny speed that can be achieved by such an enchanted vehicle pulled by a team of Aldermane upon the legendary High Way. If you ever manage to experience it, Dear Reader, you will have lived a very full life. Let us not, however, delude ourselves. You never will.
The Aldermane were once bred here in Darkmoor, by the Seldan family, under charter of the sixth Lord Grey. Yes, Brannick Seldan, who today toils with more mundane horseflesh at the family farrier trade in Elder Pool is descended from the family who alone possessed the knowlege of breeding these fantastic beasts. At the end of the Great War, however, as with so many once-booming industries in Darkmoor, that enterprise collapsed.
The Aldermane live on, wild, in the Twisty Wood. The King’s horsebreakers, with their cruel magics, impress the great horses of Darkmoor into servitude. They are, I understand, short-lived and temperamental in this forced labor.
The carriages themselves are a wonder, and also, in the bright days, produced here in collaboration with black Anthracite. As well, that business has fled this benighted land.
It is a dismal business, recounting the wonders of a gilded age long past, when our present is one of squalor and our future looks no brighter. And yet that is why you have parted with a hard-earned copper in the cup of that filthy ragamuffin who has carried this letter to you. To escape from these Grey Days and to dream of a time the likes of which none of us shall ever see again.
I salute you, brave reader. Except you, Vellan. May you choke on a brambleberry scone.
- Surely, by now, you no longer require this footnote. ↩︎