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[JoeBlank]

Dearest Father and Mother,

I hope this letter finds you well. Your young Dalin has much to tell you. Foremost, please thank my friend Brother Ben Selzkin for scribing these words. He has promised to teach me the ways of ink and quill, and considers this my first lesson. Ben is a good man, as you will see from the stories of our brief time together.

Only a few weeks ago I had rightfully won the service of a noble steed, complete with barding, and my breeches were filled with coin. On my way home to tell you of my good fortune I stopped in a small tavern and chanced to join an ongoing game of cards. Before the morn all of my hard-earned winnings were gone, and my vow to you was the only thing that kept me from placing my inherited chain mail and sword on the table. These I kept, but they would not have been enough to satisfy the debt I owed. As I promised you last winter, I did not come crawling home this time. Instead, conscription into the service of County Margrave was offered, and I accepted.

With directions to the Keep, I began a walk of several days. Rumors I heard along the way, of others answering the call to duty, but I saw none of these until the Keep was nearly in my sight. Near dusk the path through the forest narrowed, and the light of a campfire on the trail was a beacon for this noble soldier and three others. Before I could make the acquaintance of my fellow soldiers a ranger by the fire called out a warning of goblins the area. He called himself Serda, and his guide was an ox of a man called Pendra. We had not yet reacted to their instructions when foul little red-skinned creatures came at us from the trees on both sides.

Let not your heart be troubled, for your son lives to send you this letter. While I feared for my life, the training offered by you, Father, and by my brothers, allowed me to keep my wits while the beasts fired arrows from every direction. Almost instantly, a low-born conscript who I would come to know as Igor climbed into a near tree and dropped one of the goblins. I swear to you now that I later witnessed this hunchback leap into the branches of the next tree to attack a second of the monsters. Another recruit I later learned was an excellent archer by the name of Dram Smith moved through forest, loosing arrows at every turn.

Those days in the orchard served me well, as I too had to climb into a tree and teach my sword the taste of goblin blood. In short order we had slain seven goblins. I even managed to drop one with my crossbow as he fled. Three goblins escaped, one of them apparently the leader of the bunch. Pendra took a nasty wound and went down, but Serda administered some form of medicine that renewed his vigor. Brother Ben, a man of the cloth, took an arrow in the rear and went down as well. With the goblins likely the regroup, we made for the Keep in haste, Pendra carrying Ben.