Originally Published: 10 November 2022
02 October 1461
I understand that, due to federal age restrictions and international licensure requirements, Cere Professional, as with any other business selling talismans or spellcrafting material, does not simply let patrons walk in to buy. One must make an appointment in advance. So I sent a text message through my comm tab to the Cere Professional with several possible appointment times. Now I understand that they may inspect for items such as my camera-glasses, for photography is not permitted in most places like this. But I will conceal it in a carbon soap box in the bottom of my bag. That will not set off detectors, and I will place concealment spellwork on the item, itself, if they wanted to open the box for any reason. I have decided to go under the name, Alex Meron. And as I look fairly young for my age, they will believe that I am here to obtain a talisman for licensure training.
I expect that Cere Professional will respond within the next twenty-four hours.
In the meantime, I have been dwelling on the confrontation I had with whoever my enemy was in the Endwoods. I honestly cannot identify them; I could not even make out the figures. I thought of the rumor from Kyara Lon, and had a bunch of questions come to mind.
Where did the rumor come from?
Who were the campers?
When did this happen?
Who found them after they died?
So I decided to find Kyara again.
I met her, along with Claire Morlin, at Lon's flat in Kingston, where Lon made it clear that the notion of the campers being found dead was a fact and that most of everything else was speculation. She pulled out her comm tab and showed me the news article from the Kingston Journal.
The article was dated 9 June 1426. The two dead campers were named Theragrin Thom, aged 26, and Mortin Kornwell, aged 25. Again, the background was speculative, but according to text dialogues, they may have come across “platogrey clay”, an extremely valuable material in the field of talisman-making. I know that the Endwoods, to this day, are inhabited by wood-dwellers, who fight in rival factions over this material as well as territory.
According to such speculation, the two boys may have stayed at the cabin to communicate with one of the groups to negotiate trade in this material. Their friends and family had expected that they would stay for only two weeks, as the boys communicated. However, two weeks had come and gone with no sign of their return or any response to communication. That was when King's End County authorities, in conducting a search, found them dead at the cabin.
This prompted a wider investigation from the Province of Combria and even the federal government. However, to this day, no leads have been found. And this case is now considered a cold case.
So we discussed our speculations. First of all was the folklore of a figure known as Lachera Ciderna, an Indigenous Remikran from the 1100s. She ruled over the Frus Clan, who dwelt in present-day Combria since ancient times. Sadly, they had been driven out of existence throughout the early 1100s by the beginnings of Combrian industrialization. In the 1140s, Ciderna disappeared with no information on how or when she died. But there has been a superstitious rumor that her ghost would possess and kill people in vengeance, thus may have been the fate of the two campers.
Another speculation was that the two campers had committed suicide. Accordingly, they had, in a turn of events, murdered one of the rival wood-dwellers, and a team of avengers was sent to strike back, surrounding the cabin and trapping them. As it is known that wood-dwellers brutally torture enemies to avenge a death, the campers, knowing that they were trapped and did not want to suffer such a brutal death, both took poison.
A third speculation was that of the so-called Fernshadow Cult. The Cult's origin and purpose is unknown; however, they are supposedly enemies to all of the wood-dweller factions owing to their tendency toward cannibalism. Some rumors around this state that Fernshadow Cultists are actually a cross between wysps and humans.
None of these speculations seem to present more weight than the other, though. So I will have to look into this as time goes on.
**This story will be continued at a later time.**