Good morning, heroes. In accordance with our previous discussion, my writings regarding your dealings in Dalganaf and the spellforge are being withheld from general publication. I hope you have found the records of my research to be of value. However, the below piece has been released for wide distribution as I did not believe it to contain any sensitive information.
Be well and safe.
Khelek
The last moments of Dalganaf are mired with confusion and disjointed information. On the day the undead arrived, many of the survivors recall the smell most vividly as the prevailing odor of rotted flesh filled the city cavern before the moans of the assailants did. Amid the confusion and chaos, clear orders did not emerge from the palace for many hours, leaving the common folks to make their own way.
Most citizens - confident in the city's defenses - opted to barricade themselves inside of their homes.
Some simply decided to leave, as the main entrance to the city remained unobstructed.
A smaller portion made their way to the Foundry - possibly the most well-defended building aside from the palace - only to discover that it was from the Foundry where the bulk of the undead emerged. We spoke to one woman who managed to escape the Foundry alive: a blacksmith named Kuldira Coaljaw.
"I had just started as an apprentice - three months on the job - so I can't say I had a good sense of what was going on, but everyone seemed to be acting peculiar. Arundil [ed. the foundry wizard] in particular, who was always kind of kooky, basically disappeared into his room a few days before the invasion started. I remember one day he and Durgeddin [ed. the forgemaster] came into the forge room and they were arguing something fierce about this ring that Arundil wanted to have cast in the spellforge. It had to seat this weird gemstone that looked kind of like a brain. Durgeddin was cussing him out, said that the stuff he was working on was abominable. But Arundil said something about 'desperate times, desperate measures' or something else like that that crazy folk say."
Kuldira recounted some anecdotes of her bizarre final days at the Foundry while we dined at her private workshop just outside of Scornubel. She lives a quiet and successful life now and does not seem ashamed of her time in Dalganaf like many of the other survivors do. "I was not born in Dalganaf. I was raised in a lesser clan and moved there to apprentice since they had a spellforge. In those old days, it was hard for a woman to get an apprenticeship at a forge, but I had no shame. I just wanted to prove myself. So, when things got bad, I felt no obligation to stay and fight. I turned and ran."
Among all of her stories, perhaps none were so harrowing as the final one. "The night before things went bad, we got sent home early because Arundil and Indalla [the Foundry's bookkeeper] were having it out, screaming all up and down the halls. I liked Indalla. I think everyone did. She was not a smith but had a lot of interest in everything we did and seemed to genuinely care about the Foundry and the workers, like a house mother. But I think Arundil didn't like her looking over his shoulder, so to speak. They butted heads a lot, but that night it was bad. Arundil was threatening her, and I don't think Durgedding wanted us to see that."
"But we should have stayed. The next morning, Indalla did not come in to work... that is assuming she had ever left. I went into her office to check in on her, but it was locked. I shouldn't have done what I did, but I put my ear to the door and listened. Arundil was in there, speaking to some woman whose voice I didn't recognize. For some reason her voice poked at me like barbs and I could listen no longer so I went back to work."
"An hour later we heard screams from the forge room. An apprentice spotted a couple of zombies pulling themselves out of the drainage duct. We were kind of all in disbelief with what was happening, but then Arundil came in along with a demonic-looking woman with wings and the two of them made short work of the first dozen zombies. He then started weaving together some kind of barrier spell, but then there was a blast from the other side of the duct and a before we knew what was happening there was a big old hole right in the back of the foundry and zombies were pouring out of it. Arundil and the demon fought on, but what could I do? They would send a fireball to cremate a dozen zombies, but I could see the heads of hundreds more lined up behind them in the cavern. It seemed inevitable, so I left. I didn't find out until months later that the city had fallen."
And with that recount we conclude what is known today about the fall of Dalganaf. At the time of this writing, one of our agents has informed me that the Heroes of Vildanel have succeeded in their quest to bring the spellforge to Ghisale, so perhaps we have closed this grisly encounter with the city lost to time.
I hope to report soon on whatever exploits follow for our precious Heartlands.
Kelehk of the Quill
Leaffall 15, 1491
