Dearest Constable Corbin,

I hope that this missive I've left in your inexplicable escape tunnel finds you and your wife well… particularly given that your town has burned to the ground from a cannibal elf and dragon attack. Also, your wife may have a permanent limp now. All the same, I'm glad you are still alive to find this note.

If not, and someone else is reading this, then please be aware that you are either quite rude for being a snoop or you are a welcomed historian attributing this notation to a significant moment in history. I suppose that leaves a two out of three chance that my writing here will be of positive result.

We are off in the morning to find this other encampment that my companions insist is important. I'd much rather spend my efforts insuring that you and the surviving townsfolk make it to safety, but the majority vote is the majority vote. I must trust in these people, if we are to succeed in our tasks.

Honestly, I still don't follow exactly what the long term goal is here, but I'm hoping it will lead to all of us reuniting with the people are care about. I find that I count you among those dear to me, as if not for your efforts I would likely have not lived long enough to see this unfortunate catastrophe and complex series of events unfolding before our eyes.

I bid you well from afar, if I never see you again. You are a man of honor and integrity, dutiful sir.

Sincere appreciation,

Voltaris Windward

I do confess that this forest gives me such mixed feelings. I enjoy the arboreal simplicity and beauty of it, but if not for the constant oppressive mind-magics and nightly interruptions to our sleep I would be tempted to call it home. At least for a time; I'm too much of a city-dweller to be comfortable in the wild for too long, I have found.

In short, we journeyed the better part of a week through the trees until we came upon yet another fort. Do these primals always have military bases of operations everywhere? Are there any non-walled cities which simply exist, or is every community expected to be constantly on guard against sieges?

Tanariel explained that the shambling, near-mindless husks of the soldiers at the outpost were animated by some sort of necromantic and/or floral forces. Truly, they were hideous but equally pitiable. The bodies of these people, devoid of their living souls, were as decaying shades of their former selves. I saw them honorably-yet-mindlessly locked into their duties and it horrified me to think that any of these men were once as diligent as Corbin until they were stripped away into near-nothingness.

Yet another scroll fell into our hands (accompanying more maps of this world ages ago), suggesting some sort of elven treasure would be found a long distance away. I worry that journeying too long will turn some of our large company into forest-addled husks of a different sort. I also wonder of the identity and purpose of the woman in green silks who seemed to have orchestrated, or at least impartially observed, the violent destruction of the town in which we all met.

So many unanswered questions, each leading to more unanswered questions. I leave it to my gnome and human friends to sort out the details.