Dearest reader, I am almost at the end of my journey around Gewinn, yet I know there remain so many other places I have not visited. The Disputed Lands. The many cities, towns, castles, and tombs of each kingdom. The holy and unholy places our faithful deem spiritually significant. Yes, I should also visit Verot for the sake of completion, though I do not feel the compulsion. Krr’szch is next, though, and from there I intend to travel home.

Before I do so, allow me to write on the subject of Branduur. In many of these entries I have described locales rife with chaos, where environments and people are unpredictable and dangerous. Dear reader, in Branduur the land, the water, the fire, and even the air you breathe is unpredictable. This is a kingdom in flux, but unlike Pandemion, the elementors who call this place their realm (and it is a mighty, impressive realm of intense climates and environments, the tallest mountains and deepest pits, and places where lava flows as swiftly as water) master their elements. They can predict the elemental cycles. They know when lightning will dominate, when darkness will descend, when salt will devour it all. My understanding is that the Branduurians worship 27 elements in total, but I could not get one to confirm all 27 to me.

Let us begin with Frontereton, which must be the most accommodating of all the settlements in Branduur I encountered. Coastal, on relatively flat land, and with elementors who prayed to the sea at the expense of all other elements, I could at least discern their motives. Frontereton isn’t all that it seems, however (and what is, in these Monster Kingdoms?), as it must be one of the only places outside the Kingdom of Shards to trade with that kingdom, and the first place I’ve found where mass drownings are committed as sacrifice to the Old Ways. None of the bodies held under the tide ever wash up again, because an underwater city exists beneath Frontereton, and each sacrifice is dragged within to feed the submerged inhabitants. Allegedly, a council of water elementors rules down below, and each of them bears a glowing crown of power.

From Frontereton I traveled south across land until I reached Scabeton on the banks of the Supherg Canal, though I was forced to extinguish more than one ferine purity (the worst a crackling cloud of electricity sparking flames) on my way. The canal has dried up, supposedly due to Branduurian sorcery used to stymie any attempts by the imperials to invade the kingdom by water. Scabeton has an unpleasant name and an even less pleasant atmosphere. I avoided the people as well as I could, because the remains of some form of plague seem to strike here without notice. Almost everyone I encountered had open wounds, sores, or oozing scars on their skin, including the stone elementors.

What I was hoping to find amid the fire hurricanes and frozen gales that intermittently washed over me in Branduur was one of the legendary crownbearers. Many who face the monsters of Gewinn and overcome them become crownbearers, tis true, but the legendary crownbearers are notorious for their powers. The one known as Justice was said to have caused a recent earthquake close to Brindlescar in the south, so I passed through the dried canalbed, avoided patrols of what appears to be Branduurian dreadnauts (my archlich, I swear these monsters exist), and narrowly avoided being evaporated in a tidal wave of erupting magma.

Alas, once I had reached Brindlescar the people of Branduur were mining the fissure Justice had opened for them, but the crownbearer had departed. My initial belief was that Justice opened the earth as a means of attack against his own kingdom, but it became clear to me that his motive was to release valuable elements and ores into the hands and claws of his fellow Branduurians, likely to fuel the coming war against the imperials.

My hope of meeting a legendary crownbearer denied, my purse utterly empty of coin, and nothing left to me but my sceptre, my crown, my books, and my wits, I ventured east. At time of writing, I can see the bristling Krr’szch border, which is more tightly patrolled than any other border I’ve witnessed so far (this is not to imply it’s the harshest borderland, as I have yet to witness every one of them, but tis the most ominous of those I have seen).

From this wagonhouse, where I rest my head tonight, I shall formulate a plan to convince the orcs and elementors guarding the border that I am a chronicler and magus who means nobody in this region harm. 

I am so close to the smog and fire of Krr’szch that I feel I can grab it with my hands and coat my body in its pollution and feel the burn. Gods, I am so close. I am almost home. Thank you, dear reader, for your faith in me. It warms me like a spark of something I cannot describe in words.