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[Morrow]

Dear Mother,

I cannot believe the barbarism of this swamp where I must make the case for Druzistan. I am only here because of the hope I have for bringing the local elves over to our cause. This is no safe place for free people.

I have taken employment as a bodyguard and adventurer with Lady Lavinia VanderBoren, and I am coming to have respect for her. She keeps her head and is a shrewd leader of her family’s interests, even as her psychopathic brother tries to kill her and anyone else who gets in his way. My work for her has also resulted in the Knowlern clan promising some money for our Druzistani cause.

Last week we exposed a plot by local pirates against our Lady’s life. These pirates believed wrongly that Lady VanderBoren was to blame for the destruction wrought by her murderous brother, Vanthas. The pirates had dispatched frog-people from the swamps outside the city to capture Lavinia in her home.

We had to fight our way through a street festival to get to her house, even battling crazed acrobats in the open streets. No law enforcement bothered us during this entanglement, so at least there is some basic respect for individual freedom here. When we got to Lavinia’s house, it was overrun by the frog-people. My companion Garnham had already single-handedly downed three of them, so they presented no challenge to the four of us working together.

We bested Lorb-Lorb Tub, a frog-woman fighter who was the most capable of their kind we encountered. We met another druid hiding from the frog-people; he and his colleagues also work for Lavinia, and had fallen to the frog-people only because of their overwhelming numbers and their surprise attack. Together we mourned the loss of his badger companion.

We found Lavinia and some of her other bodyguards bound upstairs. We killed the pirate Drevoraz and frog-person shaman who held them captive, but we were too late to save the kind halfling servant who had been loyal to Lavinia’s family for years. The cowards killed her because she was the weakest captive and posed the least threat.

In the cellar the true debased nature of this frog-person clan became clear. Their leader, Lorpth, was allowing his monster to torment one of the other bodyguards. Instead of tying Liamee upstairs with the others, he singled her out for torture. I shudder to think what he would have done to her if we had not arrived. I had hoped to live my life never seeing a man use a woman for his own sick purposes like that, thriving on her fear and helplessness. Naturally we killed the monster and captured Lorpth.

I have met men in Sasserine who treat everyone they encounter as tools for their own furtherance and pleasure. Men who would not survive among our people, because any civilized society would drive them out. This is a culture that survives on a system of oppression and control.

Lavinia, in her kindness, has allowed Lorpth and Lorb-Lorb Tub to go freely back to the frog-people village. I will not be so merciful.
Bolk has grown to her full size, and is even bigger than her mother. She is a fine companion and reminds me of all that we are fighting for in Druzistan. Give my love to father and our sisters, and, as always, to you, dear mother.

Your daughter, Elyoshenka