Nosdoden Beckons.

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Garik,

God help me, Garik, for the nightmares persist in their assault upon my psyche, and I can scarcely bring myself to fall asleep at night. Last night I awoke from a most horrific episode, one that caused such acute fright to sweep across my body that I lay muted with terror for what seemed like an eternity. The images play over and over in my head, Garik, and I have decided that I must confront whatever haunting messages these visions are heralding, or I shall be forced to take my own life, and end this accrused suffering once and for all. Truly, it has come to this.

It all started some nights ago, when my party stumbled across that hellish crypt called Trollheim. Arrogantly, we entered, seeking wealth; seeking a sense of adventure. But, as we entered, I could feel that something was amiss.. that something about that place just wasn't right. I wish I had acted on that intuition there and then, that I had left the cave never to return, but I pressed onwards, regardless, fueled perhaps by naivety, but moreover by my own wretched and foolish sense of bravado.

The walls were marked with sigils and runes of unknown origin. I was told by the shaman of the group that they were old troll words and completely meaningless - but I could sense, Garik, that there was something more to them. They shifted beneath my gaze, I swear, I found it difficult to look at them for any great length of time, and to focus upon their noneuclidean form was nigh impossible. They disturbed me, Garik, and I see them still in my nightmares. I have looked, long and hard, and still I can find no reference to their shape or to their esoteric origins. They were otherworldly, Garik, and intensely evil, I could sense it.

Distracted as I was, I was dragged onwards, into the central cavern of this labyrinth. Instantly, my senses were assaulted by a sickly and charnel miasma that even now makes my stomach churn to so much as remember it. It was a ghastly scent, like the stench of a rotten and long dead marine creature or Inconnu of some sort. I remember glancing at the faces of my party and seeing them each wretch and grimace at the smell, and the taste of the air in this place. Still, for all the warnings we foolishly pressed onwards, into the lower caves of this room.

It was then that I noticed the insects in this place. They were enormous and, I'm certain, not of this world. They buzzed about with a sense of purpose, Garik, with a spark of intelligence, and that frightened me to the very core of my being. They regarded me, each with bulbous, multifaceted eyes. I tried to look away, to tell myself that they were nothing more than flies, pulled inexorably here by the stench of death in this hell-blasted crypt, tried to tell myself that they simply weren't there - but I could not. The crescendo of their beating wings made certain that I was ever aware of their foul and otherworldly existance, Garik, and I could not block them out, and I could not shake the feeling that they were watching me. The other members of the party seemed indifferent to all of the horrors that I was behelding in this place, but I could not free myself of the constant, nagging feeling that the runes were not just runes, and the flies were not just flies - but that they were Guardians, Garik, and that they were watching me.

I wish, with all my heart, that this is where my story ended. I wish that I had ran screaming from that accrused sepulcher at this point, vowing never to return. Regrettably, this is not the case. We proceeded down into the lower caverns of this grisly tomb and it was here that we had our first encounter with the Morvalt. Bathed in the light of our torches, and the venemous firelight of their own crimson braziers, they clutched at their ghastly grimoires and weapons, their cowls falling heavily across their ruined, worm-eaten faces. Their eyes, Garik, their eyes were cold and dead, any vestiges of life or sanity having long since fled from their tired and rotten form. Squamous things writhed in the darkness of their jagged maws. They were ghastly and evil beyond measure, and I was sure they would tear us apart so much as look at us; yet they stood, nonchalantly, as guards at the mouth of another cavern entrance. It was not until we drew nearer to them that they began to move, lurching and stumbling towards us like broken marionettes.

They hissed and spat and howled a bloodlust so intense that I was momentarily held with fear. Daemon-fire rained down upon me and my party, waking me from my languor, and I charged their ranks, cleaving in two the skulls of several Morvalt. I felt no remorse, Garik, for I knew that these creatures were already dead. Their eyes and their form gave it away, rotten flesh hanging from their limbs, and the stentch of the creatures would suggest that they had been dead for some time; but if that were the case, how could they move? How did such atrophied corpses retain their ability to move and to fight? Was some unholy monster lurking in the shadows beneath this place, controling the souls of these poor, damned creatures? Sadly, Garik, I would later uncovour the answer.

We entered the final cave of Trollheim, and there slept Nosdoden. The air became redolent with foulness and evil as we gazed upon this wretched creature. Dear God, Garik, it was grotesque and defied any mortal compreshension. Oleaginous; batrachian; crustacean; it was morbidly obese, and festered with tentacles and claws. One enormous, fang-bound orifice was present at the front of the slug-like hell-spawn. I watched, Garik, in horror as a further array of swarming tentacles spewed from the mouth of this creature, each one green-blue and dripping a thick, black ichor. Twenty, thirty, forty eyes I beheld, wreathed in ebony scales, and beneath them a cackling, mechanical maw of wicked razors, grinding themselves in raptuous hunger.

I pleaded with my group to turn back at this point, told them that I could take no more of this foul place, but they persisted and told me that they were here to slay the beast Nosdoden. Stupidly, I agreed to stay and help them.

We charged towards the creature, and it stirred from whatever hellish slumber it had been enjoying. I could not bear to look at the thing, Garik, as it rose to obscure our view with its fell, unthinkable bulk. Its tentacles rose high, six times six claws raw and shining diamonds in the flickering lamplight, poised to descend upon its first, gruesome victim. The savage in the group did well against the beast, I confess, and for a time I thought we may be able to fell Nosdoden. I watched, mesmerized, as the savage danced in the darkness, razor-tipped tentacles lashing in vain as the savage darted to and fro, claws dipping forth again and again, ripping great rents of blackened blood in the hell-spawn's cavernous torso.

Alas, Nosdoden eventually managed to slay the poor fool, who collapsed to the floor with a dull and sickly thud. What I beheld next, Garik, was such a gruesome and eldritch display of callous sorcery that I can scarcely bring myself to recount it. The creature, Nosdoden, reanimated the very soul of my fallen comrade, and puppeteered him against us. It was barbaric. The soul of the fallen savage charged against us, his eyes now cold and dead, bereft of any final shred of free-will, and he clawed through his former friends with wicked abandon. We did not know what to do. The party became divided, some trying to deal with the accrused wretch Nosdoden, whilst others struggled frantically to escape from the whirring blades of our fallen ally. Others, eventually, fell to the beast, and I watched as their souls, too, were puppeteered like play-things in service of this elder nightmare.

I was the only surviving member, Garik, and I am not ashamed to say that I ran from that place as fast as I could possibly run. I ran screaming, as that thing and all its hellish, unholy spectres cackled after me in the darkness, but I did not stop and I did not look back. I ran and ran, out of that place, and back to Bjarken, to my home. I have been here, Garik, ever since the event, scarcely able to do anything but sit and greive and remember. Though I am exhausted beyond all measure, sleep has fled, perhaps never to return, cowed by the insane visions that yet dance before my eyes. I realise that I can not continue to live like this, so I will return to that place and face Nosdoden alone, perhaps that I might finally join my comrades in death. I can see no other possible course of action.

I implore you, Garik, live well and be safe. Do not follow me; stay as far away from that crypt as you possibly can. Resist it with every fibre of your being, it is.. wicked beyond mortal conception.
 

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