Today is Pungenday, Bureaucracy 59, 3176 YOLD.
In local time, is Late Summer, Year 46, to the best of my knowledge.
It has been some time since my last entry, and much has happened. What concerns me most is that I appear to have hit a plateau in personal development – for every new skill I learn, an old one slips from my brain, and I wonder what else has similarly slipped from memory? Accordingly, this journal has taken on a new importance, and I have begun to seriously contemplate finding a more permanent medium on which to record it. Alas for this valley’s seeming complete lack of metals, caves, or anything protected from the ravages of Atropos!
War has come to the north. Well, and gone, mostly, after splashing sanguine & scouring the snowy slopes’ settlements. The man I revived proved to be merely the first of many intent on a great cleansing. I recognised some among their number who had also been in the St. Germaine Nexal Breath. Possibly out of gratitude for my deed, and possibly out of basic primal recognition of the common Void lurking in our hearts, they made me an offer: join them in their enterprise, or perish on the cold slopes.
What choice did I have? I joined. 🪦
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I must confess, it was… gratifying to be sweeping away the debris of human ”civilisation” and returning things to their natural state. Especially odious to my sight was a “highway” of huts despoiling the depths of the Westwood. Know not these people of honest roads and waystations?
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In addition, my companions were among the most congenial I have yet encountered. Hard, yes, and swift to violence, but possessed of a depth and intelligence uncommon in this world. Truly, they were not as simple as some of them professed.
One among them, a historian of sorts, filled me in on the local calendar and some interesting facts, myths, and legends. Apparently Hillside Tavern, where I had first found myself, was at the time the oldest standing settlement that had not been razed. (I say was because I, yes, took part in its razing. And I will not deny that it felt good.)
Citrus Hill was the home of the Red Lemon Empire, which they said was in conflict with their Nexal Empire, the remnant of a once mighty collective which had arrived in force after the ending of the last Nexus War and, amazingly, largely banded together in mutual support against both this harsh world and the other inhabitants. (Perhaps the Nexus was too kind to its inhabitants? I have never before considered such thoughts.) Sadly, most of them had vanished during the Great White Fog, an event of which I have only vague memories as I, too, fell victim. (Alas, had I only proceeded to Foghaven when invited, perhaps I could have prevailed during that time? Ah, but second-guessing is a fool’s game. Alea iacta est.)
“Was”— it, also, burned, and its supposedly famous lemon tree with it. Although neither I nor any of my companions sighted said elusive arbor, the scent lingered in our nostrils for days.
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As I write, I share shelter, fellowship, and tea with my companions, and prepare for further struggles that no doubt lie ahead. It is good to have a purpose, although I know not its ultimate end. On reflection, perhaps the destruction of Oro Percorso was the best thing yet to befall me?
As a former inhabitant of the previous village to occupy that ground put it vehemently (and repetitively), “You cannot kill an idea.” We fight in order that future peaceful villages may remain untroubled. As goes the adage, “Sic [sic] vis pacem, para bellum.” Let it be so.