Captain's Log, The Exordium, 989AG

Captain's Log, The Exordium, 989AG is a tome discovered amongst the Wreck of the Exordium in the Hurst of the Incarcerice.

## Description

Written by Captain Tibero Ambros, the log of the master of the Exordium details the travels of a small aerial fleet into the lands of the Hurst of the Incarcerice, their intentions and subsequent troubles.

## Reading

### Completed by Arnica

[...*departed Esterving without much fanfare, travelling the short distance northbound to the staging post operated by the High College alongside the Cynosure and the Peroration. The intent was for Third Magus Nulluz Amor to join us upon the journeys forthcoming, but was instead recommended for another task by the Increscent Calvinas, and so his place was instead filled by one of his attendants, Lin Sung, who has been provisioned research chambers alongside that of Captain Antia Boldwood's chambers upon the Cynosure. A few of my crew are more green than I would care for, in truth, many losing the contents of their bellies as we transitioned through the gateway created by the ring of stones, though naturally those of Milltall's Second-Generation Coghearts remained predictably stalwart all the same*...]

[..*.in truth, the mishap in positioning proved of little concerns, besides the time lost travelling to our intended quarry. The space between the spheres was wide-reaching, and so gave us all time to find our bearings. The Necklaces provided by the High College no doubt proved vital for ensuring our comfort, allowing instead our discomfort to come from the sights before us. Over the passing weeks, we passed fetid swamps, jungles teeming with life, deserts devoid of it, and mountainous highs and vast beach-like flatlands, through all of which the weight of eyes watching hidden from within and afar, like a burdenous weight at wrist and ankle. Past a river rich and sanguineous we sailed, never daring to land, but simply, as we were seemingly being so too, observe*...]

[..*.travelled for what felt like an eternity between the lands we had seen, and those that now emerged into view. Ever shifting, these spheres seem sometimes to grow close to one another, elsewise distant, much as the scholars would have us understand of the Wandering Worlds, coterminous and remote, or something of the sort. I'll have to send a message to Sung, but there is only so much that can be asked in two dozen or so words, and the devices are intended for emergency use, given their limited nature. Nonetheless, we persevere, onwards to new horizons, through night and day*...]

[...*stumbled across vast plains of snow and ice, valleys frozen in place. It is almost as if the land itself delights, or at the very least, toils itself with an unyielding need for preservation, a warden over its contents. Captain Vel Nirimen landed the Peroration amongst what appeared from afar to be a forest covered hill devoid of leaf and twig by the passing blizzards, only to find the trees instead vast columns of ice - a hurst of the dead, incarcerated in the ice, beasts and men, but many other creatures besides, some twisted into devilish and demonic forms, others more divine. Those we did strike from the ice, a stubborn process all things considered, proved to our folly, for we had not the scope to heal the wounds upon their bodies that opened up again with their release, having left our healing supplies aboard the vessel*...]

[...*lost in the winds, and all the crew with it. It had been just a few hours before that I had conversed with Antia as we flew alongside each other, planning on how to deal manage the oncoming storm. The chill here is vicious, stirring into great fits that threatened to freeze those upon the deck, creeping in through the fixtures of the Quick Deployment Pods mounted in the bow. And yet, that storm was different, filled with a bitter malice that would prove the bane of flame and life alike. We did not wish to wait for it to come for us, and so decided to split our paths, circling either side lest it give chase as it had the fiends we had encountered a few days prior who subsequently fled at its approach*...]