Unto my fearless young nephew Blackhawk, comes this missive from Maximillian Fox. Written the fourth day after Candlemansa, in the Second Millennia following the founding the Western Kingdom, in my rooms within the Guild Fortress in Bliss.

Well met, young hawk!

You remind me so much of myself at your age... so eager to leap into the abyss. Well, I can’t blame you -- and no amount of logic from my side will dissuade you in the slightest. So -- I suppose it behooves me to answer your questions as best I can.

Your first question regards how best to start off adventuring in the Isles. A Good Question! The truth is, I think you’ll find that it will unfold at a reasonable pace. Your ship will arrive in Bliss -- that’s where I am now, and it’s the headquarters for the Guild of Adventurers here in the Archipelago.

Bliss is a beautiful place. The weather is warmer in the summer than Ardania ever enjoys, and the winters are mild. Not as green as we’re used to, but the hills are covered with grapes and olive trees, and the water is as blue as a lady’s sapphire. The only community of size on the island is the port itself -- consisting of hundreds of whitewashed stone buildings holding tight to the steep hills. The Guild complex is a huge castle -- bigger than Castle Chilton! -- that was captured during the Wizard Wars by the Rangers.

It is to Bliss that you must go. There the Guild will give you living space, and keep you fed and safe while you find your way. If you offer your services to the Guild Masters, they will negotiate contracts for you that will be appropriate for your abilities. They will also provide opportunities for you to continue training under new masters.

(Which reminds me -- one aside about Bliss bears mentioning -- a Great Many retired members of the Guild live in Bliss. That means that any person you encounter on the street could be a Grand Knight or an Arch wizard -- so try to be on your best behavior, okay?)

One of the side gates into the inner part of the Keep serves as an employment board -- people who want to hire Guild Adventurers, but who don’t want to pay any sizable cuts to the Guild hierarchy, leave requests nailed into the wooden doors. The profits can be much greater than those offered by an arranged Guild contract, but the protections aren’t as great, and no one will size up the task ahead of time and gauge whether or not you are likely to succeed.

And I suppose I can mention the third (and most common, really) source of employment -- the countless public houses and taverns, which line the harbor and the streets approaching the Guild. Profits here can be higher still, but you must always be on guard -- the contracts will usually involve various degrees of illegality, and the participants may bring you more grief than riches. Not a week goes by that some young adventurer doesn’t get his throat cut in a dark alley behind an inn.

So. Go to the Guild, work directly for them while you feel your way around. After you feel confident, start to take commissions directly from the Gate. Avoid the taverns for employment if you have alternatives. By the time you have made a bit of a name for yourself, you’ll be ready to hire a ship and to start surveying unexplored territory -- which is where the real money lies.

About your second question -- I could play coy, but I suspect I know what you are talking about. It never made it into any of my published books -- the public has no desire to hear about the Companions’ failures, and I am not as yet willing to admit defeat. Perhaps this trip will be my best story!

Therefore I shall not tell you the location of what you seek -- you are nowhere near prepared for the attempt, and the guarantee of vast riches has been known to kill the good sense of even the wisest youth. When you are sufficiently skilled, and hopefully not before, you will undoubtedly find the clues that will lead you there.

I’ll tell you a tiny bit though... if for no other reason than to give you a feeling for why the Company of the Black Gryphon failed to claim the treasure, and why I think you should avoid it yourself.

Some treasures take lots of research and exploration to uncover. Not this one. We found some records of the Wizard Wars tucked away in one corner of an elvish library. One item was a journal of a human soldier, one who had been responsible for supplying troops -- “logistics” was the word he called it. Anyhow, the fellow was quite a compulsive little accountant, and he described -- in great detail -- all the wealth that was in the Paymasters’ chests, as well as the plunder and magic which the army had accumulated as it swept across the Isles. Every square inch of his journal -- including the margins -- was filled with endless tallies and ledgers. While most was boring beyond belief, there were these occasional nuggets -- things like, ”Necklace of Emeralds, 14 stones, each no less than 100 cts,” or “Smallest cartable pieces of a solid platinum statue, 5 in total, about 100 pounds apiece.” Well, you can imagine how exciting those passages were.

But the real thrill was when we figured out which army this accountant served with. For this fellow had served with the one of the High Kings! This particular High King had fallen in battle, along with most of his army, and the survivors had buried him in the old tradition... with All of His Treasure!!!

And... to put some powdered sugar on the whole confection... our elf had seen the very tomb marked on an old map!

Well, needless to say, we lost no time traveling to the designated spot. It was an small island in a very isolated region of the Isles. Very rough place.. the rocks making up the island thrust themselves out of the ocean quite precipitously.

The only real feature was an enormous volcanic plug, nearly half a mile high, thrusting up from the island. No signs of any human presence, save for a number of dark openings very close to the summit. The island was so small that it was clear the rock pillar was the only possible destination.

In retrospect, we should have known all was not as simple as it appeared. First off, Brother Crystopher (the Angelican priest) got a worried look on his face the moment he stepped onto the shore. He refused to explain what was troubling him, but he jumped at every sound and kept his eyes sweeping across the empty terrain constantly.

Colleen (our druid) started out fine. But as we set up camp above the beach, she kept stopping and looking around quizzically. The suspense was killing me.... “What!?” I demanded. “There are no animals here,” she said. “Nothing. Not even a mouse. In fact, I haven’t even seen a single insect since we landed.” “Is that all?” I asked, my tone now as worried as Crystofer’s expression. “Well, I don’t know what to make of it... but although there are some living plants here, they all seemed to be touched with what we’d call Dark Earth... plants nurtured with blood and sacrifice and human suffering.”

Subtle hint that we should depart... but Brimbar would hear nothing of the kind... and most of the others were excited at the proximity of such a large treasure.

That afternoon we decided to hike to the base of the pillar, and assay possible routes up to the top. It took about an hour to hike to the base. The plug was composed of very hard black stone, but there were innumerable cracks and crevices running vertically up the pillar, and it was clear that with patience you could ascend all the way without needing rope. All of us were quite capable climbers by that point, and it looked easy enough.

We started back around as the sun started to descend behind the pillar. Crystofer suddenly became extremely agitated... “We must hurry to the boats!” he cried... and just as suddenly he started sprinting down the trail. We did our best to follow. We caught up to him just as the sun set. “What are you going on about?” I asked him.

Just then, we heard the distinctive sound of a trumpet, its martial cry echoing across the deserted hills. “Oh no,” said Brother Crystofer. Colleen echoed with something less ladylike.

The surfaces of the hills started to move. That is to say, it looked like they were tired of their grassy coverings and were in the process of throwing them off. In a moment it became clear that there were figures coming up out of the ground... out of every square foot between the beach and the pillar. Thousands and thousands of skeletons and half decayed corpses. Some looked ancient indeed, wearing armor and weapons that dated back to the Wizard Wars. Others might have been adventurers at one time. Countless others could not be identified at all.

(Colleen later told me that there were -- to her -- even more disturbing sights. Not only were the bodies of humans climbing out their graves, but the skeletal remains of animals.... and birds... and probably even her bugs... were crawling out into the night sky.)

But nothing previous compared to what happened next. The vast assembled army of the undead... THOUSANDS in number... turned as one and started moving down the valley towards our camp.

I have fought in wars... I have fought in gladiatorial arenas... I have fought for my life in the darkest places under the earth. But I have never fought so many enemies as I did that night. In the short hundred yards to our boats, I must have destroyed at least 300 of the creatures, and I confess that it was not enough to even lightly turn them aside. If it were not for Crystofer casting spell after spell and turning the undead in-between, we would have never survived.

Once we made it to the boats we shoved off with all of our might and rowed like crazy. Fortunately, the undead seemed to lose whatever motive force drove them the moment they stepped into the water. From several hundred feet off the shore, Vendal the wizard proceeded to lob a string of fireballs and explosive magicks across the water into the swarming mass. To tell the truth, it made no more difference than trying to turn the tide with a sword -- but it made him feel a little better, so we didn’t try to dissuade him.

We stayed there all night, floating out of reach of the monsters. The next morning, around daybreak, the vast army broke up, and scattered across the hills, vanishing before the sun could clear the horizon.

We remained (in the safety of our ship) for 4 more nights. Each night, at sunset, we heard the lone trumpet’s call... shortly thereafter the masses of undead pushed their way down to the beach to watch us with sightless eyes.

We came back better prepared a few years later. This time, we had a sorcerer named Jafrik with us. He had listened to our stories at great length, and had what he thought was a perfect plan.

“Flight,” he said. “That’s what we need. No time wasted -- just wait for the nasties to go to bed at sunrise, use a magical carpet to zip to the top, and collect the goodies. Be back to the ship with the choice loot by lunchtime.”

It didn’t work that way, of course. Jafrik was in the lead, flying with the aid of a magical ring. Colleen, who had kept muttering that she should know better than this, flew behind shape changed into a eagle. The rest of us glided slowly behind on Jafrik’s threadbare-but-functional carpet.

We were almost all the way to the summit when our luck came to an abrupt end. We were approaching the first sign of man-made construction -- a ring of inscriptions winding around the circumference of the plug, surmounted by a ring of sculptures of heroic looking figures.

Jafrik made an abrupt squawking sound. One moment he was smoothly rising upward, and the next he began to plummet downward. You could hear him screaming out spells as he fell... he knew “feather fall” I know for a fact... but nothing seemed to work for him as he shot downward.

All this was happening in the space of a heartbeat... a moment later Colleen came up level with the ring of inscriptions... and just as precipitously found herself restored to human form. After a second, she too began to plummet.

We were a little better prepared for this. We raced the carpet down till we were next to her and caught her in mid-flight. After a moment spent congratulating ourselves, we looked up. And started cursing.

The air was filled with winged shapes. They looked like pigeons from our current elevation, but it only took a moment to ascertain they were gargoyles. THAT’S what all those statues were. And they were flying full tilt toward us.

We did pretty well. We only had to fight a couple of them -- once we crashed at the base of the pillar, and were no longer airborne -- they lost all interest in us.

Of course -- that left us injured at the base of the pillar -- trying to hike back to the beach with twisted ankles and the like. As you can imagine, it was excruciating. We got to the beach just as the sun was starting to set. We got a signal fire going in the hopes that the crew of the Griffin would see us and come to our rescue. They weren’t being nearly prompt enough for out taste, so we prepared to swim to get away from what we were certain was coming.

That’s when we made our next big discovery about the island. Jafrik stepped out of the brush.

Or -- what had been Jafrik. Things that die on that island are instantly animated by whatever black magic permeates the place. Jafrik’s head was twisted back at an impossible angle, and his legs and arms had all kinds of odd twists to them.

Later, Lady Firiel theorized about what we had learned. She believed that the High King’s Chancellor was a Necromancer of great ability, and when the King died, he ordered the soldiers to build the tomb at the summit of the volcanic pillar. When the work was done, the Chancellor cast a spell which killed the soldiers, and used their life force to conjure the massive necromantic spells we saw in use. Everything that dies on the island gives up its life force to the spells, which in turn animate the dead things to protect the King’s resting place. There’s obviously an anti magic zone created by that magical inscription, which is to deal with beings who try to “fly past” the defenses. Lastly, there’s the gargoyles (an easy feat for any wizard worth his salt to create) to keep out any flying beings that aren’t killed by the null magic circle.

The third time we came back we had ONE success. A very brief, and tragic success. A rogue by the name of Tobias -- brother to our Tomas -- had come along. Like Jafrik, he believed that he could succeed where so many had failed.

What he did was straightforward enough. We all went to the beach at sunrise, made camp and prepared to launch the boats at a second’s notice. While we were doing that, Toby sprinted toward the pillar at breakneck speed. When he arrived, he began climbing the side like one of those monkeys you can see in the market in Bliss, entertaining the crowds with their antics. He used nothing but his hands and fists and feet, but somehow he raced up the side. It took him most of the morning, but around lunchtime he crawled past the statues and into one of the dark openings. He was gone around nearly half an hour, but then Gelmir spotted him making his way between the statues and down. It took all afternoon, and to our consternation the sun was quite low on the horizon before he made it back to camp. We beat a hasty retreat, congratulating ourselves for our success.

Back on the ship Toby enthralled us with stories of the vast treasure buried in the tomb. He showed us a souvenir he had taken... the very emerald necklace mentioned in the journal... and he also brought out a mithral dagger, which Brimbar swears is worth more than the necklace.

The next day Toby was eager to try again. Everything went the same as before. He stayed longer in the tomb -- nearly an hour and a half -- and although he rushed in his descent, he made it to the beach only seconds before the mob of undead.

And that’s not the worst of it. Colleen spotted something in the moonlight -- “A dragon!” she shouted. Not quite though. It was -- an undead dragon. Much to our horror we learned that it was not bound by the shores of the island -- it followed us across the water toward the ship. It destroyed our boats in the first pass, set fire to our ship in the second pass, and strafed us with some magical fire that killed all the younger crew (including Toby) and left the rest of us with a mixture of frostbite and savage burns.

Brother Crys ended up saving us. He -- you can’t say summoned in this context -- he “invited” an angel to appear. It did, and the light it gave off was like a sunrise. All the undead disappeared back into the darkness, and the dragon screamed and flew away from the angel at full speed.

That was our last attempt. I can’t believe I’m contemplating making another visit.

Well, that’s more than you wanted to hear. But you know how it is when someone asks me to tell a story -- I can’t help myself.

Best of luck with your endeavor. I shall catch up with you in Bliss.

I remain

Your devoted servant,

Uncle Max