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Hello everyone, this is Asclepius. I am delighted to introduce our newest narrator, Cordelayne Valkaris,

who is bringing us a wonderful story from Trenyc, entitled

The Grim Sisters’ Found Letter: a Warning, Transcribed.
Background music is “Restless Soul” by Smartsound

The Grim Sisters’ Found Letter: A Warning, Transcribed

It bears no name and no title. Its canvas is black and liquid, as though soaked in oil and tar, with foreign symbols writ in dim, luminescent silver. The smudging of the words tends toward the bottom of the page, as though the shapes themselves cry in agony. These qualities are unimportant. You will know it if you find it; you will feel the darkness reaching into you.

Tal sharak. The Shadows will not live much longer. I come from a place called Merdia, a land far removed from your own. I am sorry, reader, if you have the wit to read these words. If your people can know evil, I have done you a great wrong.

You will know it if you find it, reader. You will know because it has found you. The feeling is unmistakeable. It is lust, fear, anger, hatred. It is all that is evil in every world, removed but palpable, as though you stand before the most vile creature ever made in any place. As though you belong to it. When you feel this, you will want to die.

Know, reader, that it cannot be destroyed. As we burn it, it is born again somewhere new. Nine men lost their lives attempting to destroy it by tearing, piercing, slashing, pounding. Do not try these, reader. If you find it, run.

Do not approach it. Do not touch it. Most of all do not attempt to read it. You will not recognize the symbols thereupon writ; nevertheless I compel you: do not read it. When you feel its claws digging at your mind, do all you can to shut those thoughts off from all that you know and do. It will rail against you. It will flay at your soul and burn its brand into every part of your mind. Even so, you must try in every way your strength allows to remember this only and above the corruption: that you must not read the page. All that you love depends on it.

I am sorry, reader. This act will weigh on my soul eternally. The Shadows are dying now. I pray this letter falls to a world uninhabited, where it can threaten no one. If you find this, make it known. Your people must know […]
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END OF TRANSCRIPT

The original copy of this message is written on a fine canvas page, ripped across at the bottom with a purple tint and burn marks along the line, and its letters are sloppy and hastily written. Most peculiar of the note’s properties is that the canvas is elaborately made and quite delicate while the ink is clumpy and a very dark, almost black, red–the blood of a Necromancer, the Grim Sisters say. To date all attempts to validate that claim, or even the claim that the ink is blood at all, have failed, as have professional attempts out of Brittany and Aerie to determine the origin or maker of either the canvas or the ink.

Some rumors suggest that the Sisters simply made it all up to sell copies. Of course the two maintain a certain ignorance of the letter’s origin, though they have never told where or how they acquired the letter. Only one thing about it is known: that nothing about it is known, except maybe by the Crones. And they simply will not say.

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