Covered with tough rothe-hide, cleaned and dyed silver-grey, this journal contains a multitude of thin sheets of parchment, loosely bound. Thick lines of dark ink across the cover form a perfect heptagon, inside which is a bold, flourished letter 'A'. The lettering inside appears scribed by a practiced hand, though at points it quivers without warning.

Flamerule 14, 1346 C.R.

With trepidation, alarm and dread, great fear and apprehension, and an ill-lit view of an impending doom, I begin my journal on this day, writing with a shaking hand by flickering candlelight on the fourth-day of the second ride of Flamerule of 1346 by the reckoning of Cormyr, as best we can approximate so deep, so dark, forgotten by all beneath these distant lands.

Fickle will nor idleness move my hand, nor terror at unswerving doom; scratchings of ink on parchment will not save a man, for it is naught but realms, whole kingdoms, vast societies that are borne and fall and may yet be saved in written words. Of my time, too little has been as an idle scribe, a herald to no king, and yet dark and terrible ire it has drawn upon me. The manuscript of my last work, save for this, draws nearly to a close, and yet, I know not whether the strand of life yet binding me to this world will hold long enough even to finish that.

I will not go the way of Frederick and Melinda, and so many others; my struggle, the dark end that I meet shall not be wreathed in shadow. Even if they come for me, and they will, even if I disappear into the darkness as have all the others have who dared to unshroud our city's troubled past... my reckoning here shall perservere past my death, a cursed voice screaming condemnation upon traitors.

- Mendrick Archibald

Flamerule 20, 1346 C.R.

Cloying and acrid, yet readily heartening: faded is the vile mephitis, diminished the brisk malodour of unscarred printed parchment. Fresh and extant, past long days of waiting, the initiatory preprinting, and unfaded lines of ink and text belie the hidden subtleties contained therein. Revelations, and dark mysteries uncovered, past treachery revealed, the fuliginous fundament of future faithlessness, brewing betrayals brought to light; and yet, at this one instant of singular approbation, dread hangs on high and the menace and spectre of the enemy haunts me, haunts my footsteps-- I hear them whisper when I walk along the streets.

Copies will be scribed within mere days. I hope that is not too late.

Flamerule 27, 1346 C.R.

As predatory vultures circle out of legend, over a weary wanderer who, lacking in provisions, malnourished, clinging to the vital thread, yet staggers forth across a barren waste, resolute to end his travels on his feet despite impending doom... so do they, clad with dark knives rather than bright uniforms, lurk in my every shadow, so do they hound me, as hunters closing for a kill, so will they see me dead-- and perhaps better to die free than live a slave to Ivlysar's men.