The Diaries Of Duke Pardaillan II

A collection of books which made up the diaries of a Duke.

**Written here are a handful of diaries written by Lorenzo Pardaillan II, the Duke of Espérer. Found by the new arrivals to Vallecrosia, they hint at what happened to the town.**

***~***

***Summer I***

*Summer brings respite. The sun shines stronger and the abominations fall back into the shadows. The serfs and commonfolk are daring to stay in the fields and work harder for longer. Their happiness is my happines. As the day brightens, so does my mood.*

*My advisors and I are planning to throw some fetes and fairs for the working folk. Unity and happiness will save my land. Our attempts to get the clergy involved in planning the festivities are unnsuccessful. The priests are still inconsolable.*

***Lorenzo Pardaillan II***

***~***

***Summer II***

*Autumn approaches all too soon. The days are growing shorter and dimmer alarmingly rapidly. Snow is already settling on the mountain peaks and some serfs have gone missing in the evenings and early mornings.*

*My advisors are becoming tiresome. Their suggestions become inane and obvious. I turn to my oldest friends for ideas now; my books. Perhaps there is some useful titbit of knowledge in my collection.*

*I have considered communing with the **city spirit** but, as benign as she is, I imagine the help she could offer is limited. What is she to do if deities far greater are helpless?*

***Lorenzo Pardaillan II***

***~***

***Autumn I***

*The situation grows grim once more. Even in my youth, the absence of the Gods filled us with fear, but I remember that Autumn was still a time of celebration. Who doesn't love the harvest? But the working folk are too scared to leave the city to tend to the fields. I hear the same goes for the serfs in the outlying towns and villages.*

*It is crucial that the harvest goes underway as usual so that we may survive the winter.*

*I must find some way to motivate my people into fulfilling their duties. My books have, as of yet, revealed nothing to me. I have taken to sleeping in my attic, amongst my collection, so that I might dedicate more of my time to my studies. I am having any books, scrolls and tomes that can be found in the duchy brought to me, so that I might attempt to glean some information from them.*

*I was forced to dispatch Sir Marcellin and Lady Valentine to the **[Eymet northern villages]**, at the head of twenty fighting men. The dead there have already risen from the ground en masse.*

***Lorenzo Pardaillan II***

***~***

***Autumn II***

*In the face of the working folk's mass refusal to reap their crops, I have been forced to decree that any person who grows grain, fruit or vegetables and does not spend at least eight hours a day at work, will be flogged publicly. I just watched the first such floggings being carried out. It pains me that we have been driven to such barbarity.*

*Life is further complicated by minor annoyances. A great deal of my fine crockery was recently broken by butter-fingered servants, though they insist some sort of poltergeist is to blame.*

*I have moved from my manor to the city's library tower. Since I have ordered it, a marvelous collection of books from across the duchy has been amassed here. I must make my way through them. My wife pines for my company, but I now bear the fate of the land on my shoulders. Old pages have piqued my interest in certain subjects I thought little of before.*

*The city alchemist will soon have work to do.*

***Lorenzo Pardaillan II***

***~***

***Winter I***

*The harvest yielded far less than we thought it would. The crops did poorly in the unusually dull summer sun and we have barely enough to feed ourselves, let alone a surplus to trade away. The commonfolk will not be pleased when I announce that rationing will be enforced.*

*I fear that further public punishments will be required to maintain order. I miss that pallid sun now. It has been dark for almost three days. I have not given a single though to the clergy for a long time. Their distress made them all but useless. They have all vanished as it turns out; almost every church in Espérer has been deprived of its priest. No one knows when they left, nor where they have gone.*

*No deific aid comes from the local spirit either. She is acting as a wile, immature beast. I'm starting to believe someone has done something to offend her. I am, however, making headway with my own research and experimentation. Alchemist Nicolo and I have become close friends. We spend all day and night poring through my books and breaking open the raw stuff of this world, in case the key to our salvation is hidden within.*

***Lorenzo Pardaillan II***