Today is Boomtime, Bureaucracy 18, 3176 YOLD.

In local time, it is Late Winter – I do not know the year as it is reckoned in these parts. Time passes strangely here – the sun seems to always shine, and there is no cloak of night under which to rest one's head or perform deeds in secret, yet I still grow weary after exertion and consciousness eventually slips my grasp. When it returns, with it return… memories of events that happened in the meantime. But if my consciousness was absent, who is it that observed these things? Passing strange. But this is far from the strangest shore I have found myself on.

Today a man has joined me in my retreat. He was sick and delirious, poor fellow. I have fed him tea – one of the last brews given to me by a kind lady – and wished him well. This is a calculated act: though from his appearance I believe him to possibly be the most feared man* who yet stalks this valley, hospitality to strangers is a sacred obligation in the mountains and I would be remiss in my duties were I to leave him. Besides, now he owes me his life. Let me hope that he in turn will honour that obligation.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

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Speaking of tea, that was the only drink available in the so-called "Hillside Tavern" outside which I awoke to find myself on first arriving in this place. I confess, my first acts were taken out of sheer survival instinct, taking all the essential supplies I could carry from those stockpiled in a rough rock cairn, then scattering the stones so as to muddle my trail and fleeing southwards. There I found a rough assortment of huts, stockpiles, signposts, and campfires amidst the trees, along with a few fellow wanderers. Here I met the first of my sometime companions, she known as Grey. A finer cup of tea I've yet to taste.

It was there also that I encountered a man whose offering was to shape my destiny – though I did not take him up on his offer, to my lingering regret.