Shahar Expedition Report/Scrap/Text

Shala Shahar

The expedition is lost. Send help.

There is a gap in the paper, then the message continues:

The runner did not make it more than twenty paces with this scroll. I had to fight hard to even get that far, just to fetch it back. It will be some time before we can attempt another message. Too much time. Time to think, and I suppose to write. I do not *like* time. I have no doubt that, when I send it, this scroll will be swollen with my thoughts and musings and regrets. The apprentices will have much to decode, eh?

Another day has passed, and with it more of our hope. There are so very many dead here. Too many, the shamen tell me. Many of the vah look to me as a leader now that Khusha is dead. They saw me fighting the spirits, and so the secret is open; perhaps the first time I've ever seen vah glad for the company of a rose. I'm not sure what to tell them. The most I've ever been responsible for were a pair of apprentices. Having this many lives in my hands, that I'm to save and not to take...it is a new experience, and not one I'd care to repeat.

Another day has passed, much worse than the last. The spirits found us in the watery hall. We fled deeper in and took refuge in a tower, but were forced to abandon much of our supplies. We may be forced to go deeper still, into the city. Given the abandoned camp we found in the tower, I suspect our Vahl counterparts to be in the same boat. While do not look forward to the encounter, I hope we do see them alive--the alternative would bode very ill for us.

The message continues in unencrypted text:

Whoever you are, please, bring this to the Vah Shahar. You will be rewarded.