foreword
by Reeme of Hackwood
Johaas Latour, this is the name of a wonderful young man. This kid is coming from being an anonymous son of the gentry to raise himself as a wonderful adventurer in the span of four months. Against all odds, he has achieved a daring venture all by himself, through the most desolate lands that we know of. At the age of only 18, one year after leaving his home in Berneem, he has gone to the wild as naturally as you would go to downtown for a stroll. He has linked Amaal to Aarden in only four months, without any exterior help, draved death on many occasions. And for what? For the pure sake of knowldege, for his venture was but an excuse for gathering a plethora of new knowldege on these rugged lands. With no preexistent knowledge, he has gone and described countless amazing animals and plants, has produced valuable sketches of the region's geography, and brought new insights of the earth's structure from his observations of The Peak. Truly, his dedication deserves to be recognized as a true gift, and I take immense pride for being the one he turned to to work on the results he brought back. As a man of science, I want to shed light on a young, worthy man whose name, I am certain, is sure to make its mark on the history of discoveries.
Chapter 1: The will to leave
The city's loudness, the smell and nuisance, I couldn't stand this anymore. It was time for me to leave
Amaal and my travel companions, to do what I had been dreaming of doing for ages. I all had starded back in my childhood, the tribulations of an infant leaving the warmth of his nest to discover the heat of the south. Such wonders had been offered by nature for me to fill my child self's curiosity, and nothing had ever since brought me a fraction of this joy of the past.
I wanted to leave civilization like many years before, but not in the safety of the army's authority which my father was. I knew that I was to go alone in the wild, for I seeked to surpass the amazements of a child's play in the outside. With an approximate map of the
Golden Sea as we knew it, I outlined the venture I wanted to achieve. Leaving eastwards from
Amaal, I would cross the
Wanderer's Pass, then cross the sands of the desert to reach for
the Peak. Perhaps I unconsciously wanted to find traces that my father had left in the sand before falling along with his army and his king, but my pride and distaste for my father's deeds wouldn't admit it. What would you expect? I am a young, rebellious man who deems the motivations of my elders outdated nd impractical. What use was there to go on a bloody and costly war, just for the control of a land of sandy emptiness? My father's honor had only allowed to die a useless death besides his king, that was how I viewed it. But filial love is strong, even hidden deep in one's heart. I felt compelled to try and reach my father in mind, maybe try to catch a grasp of the man I knew once again after all those years, that would lay hidden, far in the sands of the desert, waiting for his son to come and retrieve a memory of...
Going to the Peak would be no easy task, and then carrying on the journey all the way to the eastern ocean would be even harder, since I had not a single clue of what I would find there. I had to carefully plan my trip. I acquired four noomas to carry my belongings comprised of two sets of clothes, lenses and a compact telescope that I had a local craftsman make for me, a good amount of jars and boxes for my samples- I always have been a compulsive collector, and a series of notebooks. I gathered a substantial amount of dry food and several bombs of water, which it could never be close to sufficient; optimist as I was, I believed I could figure food and water out as I went.
Nothing could have stopped me anyway. My will was strong. On the morning of 719.II, 17 Faeesii, I reached the outer gates of the citadel. The world was lying in front of me, waiting for me to go and capture it.
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