September 14th, 973
Wülfgang gazed over the partially translated eighth letter, mentally chewing on it like the gristle off an Abyssal Chicken leg. Starting at the beginning, he went down the entire letter, page after page after page after. . . “How long is this stupid letter,” he grumbled to himself. His reading history mostly consisted of recipes he had never cooked before.
Earlier he had recalling hearing Cassyndra mention that she had noticed every 8th letter spelled out words. Those words became the partially cracked 8th letter. It was clearly incomplete, but the thought of staring at more pages of this gibberish made him as mad as a wet werewolf. On the other hand, surely there was more here.
Wülfgang worked on the letters from right to left to see if more of the letters formed words. Nothing.
“Let’s try another 8 letters from the first 8 letters.” Slowly, very slowly, as the ale and exhaustion settled in, more words began to appear.
“Gods, 8 more over, then another 8.” Words were appearing reading top to bottom in columns 8, 16, 24, and 32. Feeling reinvigorated, he grabbed another ale and redoubled his efforts. Soon he was gazing at the completely cracked letter.
Emile,
Another village gone silent.We received word from Varnock—traders spoke of sickness. Nothing formal, just rumor. I dispatched a survey detail. They returned two days ago, light one man and heavy with dread.
What they found: half the villagers bedbound, gaunt and shaking. The other half had fled. No signs of spoilage in the food. Wells were clean. No rot, no pus, no usual markers of disease. Just… exhaustion. Hunger without cause. Skin like paper. And a quiet that settled in the bones.
We sent a healer. A proper one, third-circle. She said her cleansing spells slowed the symptoms but didn’t halt them. Sometimes her spells worked well enough to buy time for the victim to recover. Most of time, however, they didn’t.
Worse: there are whispers of similar symptoms in at least five other settlements, all strung along common trade routes. Merchants, travelers, traveling mendicants. It moves like contagion but spreads like an idea—silent until it isn’t.
The symptoms don’t strike elves, dwarves, or goblins. Only humans, mostly. Halflings get a touch of it, but nothing fatal. The rest of us—well, the afflicted fade. And not slowly.
The governor’s office has issued a polite bulletin about “seasonal weakness.” I’ve written a stronger report, but I suspect it will vanish like the last two. My clerk swears she copied and sent them, but no one in Edicaria claims receipt.
If you can, find a healer or a cleric who still owes us a favor. Get me a name. I’ll take her field notes if they’ve got any. Hell, I’ll take her second-year apprentices.
Something is leeching the life out of this province.
And someone—or something—is making sure no one notices.
Yours,
A
Exhausted but satisfied, Wülfgang started for bed. But something was nagged at home. Cassyndra seemed like a bright fellow, or lass, or whatever. They really hadn’t been formally introduced. But the intelligence was there. Why was this letter left half-cracked? Was it oversight, or something else? Hmm. . .
He tossed and turned in bed preoccupied with this and other thoughts and finally gave up on the idea of sleep and crawled back out of bed. For want of anything else to organize his thoughts, he reached for the 7th encrypted letter. He’d muster up some ideas now and present them to the group later – even if they turned out to be piss-poor. After glancing over the entire letter, he decided to where he was sure of something…
- 5 32 17 19 29 6 26 30 32,
- That’s probably E M I L E, since Nelson started all his letters that way.
- A composite of all that’s good. . .
- And we know 27 is “A” because that’s how Nelson ended all his letters.
- And there were a lot of tabs… maybe those could be the spaces between words?
Interestingly, the second number and the last number of the 5 32 17 19 29 6 26 30 32, sequence were the same, making it feel like an E.
But there are 9 numbers in the sequence, but only 5 in Emile. Hmm… Well, how about this?
27-A
28-B
29-C
30-D
31-E
32-F
33-G
34-H
35-I
Nope, that didn’t work. Rubbing his right temple and grimacing, Wülfgang carefully folded up his copy of the letter and replaced it back in its envelope. Two things were sure in his mind: he wasn’t gonna crack this tonight and if he ever met these two men, whatever it was that was haunting them was going to become the least of their worries.
Hours later, he shot up from bed shouting, “A composite of all that’s good! Remove the prime numbers!”
Returning to his desk, he scribbled on a notepad,
5 32 17 19 29 6 26 30 32
Removing the Prime Numbers revealed
32 6 26 30 32
which looked a lot like E M I L E. . . Not cracked, but closer. Feeling more relaxed, he returned to bed. He was on a trail.
A=27
B=
C=
D=
E=32
F=
G=
H=
I=26
J=
K=
L=30
M=6
The next morning, he was going to bring this to the rest of the group. What would happen if you threw out all of the prime numbers and worked with just what was left?
Satisfied that he had a lead to present to the rest of group, his thoughts calmed and he finally, finally (!) fell asleep.