The Private Notes of Lefran Dimitriv

The Private Notes of Lefran Dimitriv

Bishop of Ravengro, Priest of Celeborn

Found among his personal books and research journals at his home in Ravengro

14 Forelithe, SA 1608

A farmer's wife from Oakenway came to me today — her husband Orin vanished in early spring. He is the fourth man from Oakenway to disappear in as many months. The constable says they likely left for work in the city. I do not believe it. Orin Alish had three small children and a devoted wife. Men like that do not simply leave.

I have written to Mayor Gollin requesting a formal inquiry. I have also heard similar reports as far away as Bywater — two hobbit families with missing members. Hobbits do not wander.

19 Winterlilth, SA 1608

I traveled to Oakenway personally. In eight months, no fewer than eleven people have vanished from Oakenway and Woodhall combined — working folk, unremarkable, with no reason to flee. A hobbit woman named Rosie Tumblethorn told me she watched her husband Bram taken in the night by men on dark horses who carried no torches. She hid in the cellar with her children until dawn. She is terrified and has told no one.

I am praying for these people by name every morning now.

3 Rethe, SA 1609

I have been looking into who owns the land around the old temple ruins in Canterwall, north of Ravengro, in the Fangwood Forest. The records show it was purchased by a merchant company called the Amberveil Trading House. The listed owners are names I cannot find in any guild registry or census. A shell company, then.

An old archivist told me the land around Canterwall sits above old mine shafts, long since abandoned from superstition and the fear of of the dead. The mines are rumored to be rich in gemstones. I have since noticed an increase in raw rubies appearing in the markets of Gondolin over the past two years. I did not connect this before. 

7 Forelithe, SA 1609

A contact in Corsadocks tells me that unmarked shipments of raw red stones have been arriving there for eighteen months, sold quickly by agents using false merchant licenses. She also told me that a dockworker who helped unload one such shipment said the crates smelled of blood and earth, and that he thought he heard something moving inside one of them. He reported it and was dismissed the next morning.

I pray I am wrong about what that means.

3 Wedmath, SA 1609

I have been researching the noble families of Ustalav in western Erindor, following a reference in an old trade document linking the Amberveil Trading House to a noble house in the county of Amaans. Amaans is a cold, isolated place between Loch Lomand and Loch Firnen, largely ungoverned by any outside authority.

Its Viscount is one Oilic Galdyce. It seems impossible, but my research show references to him for over three hundred years. I can find no portrait of him made in the last century.  Could he be one of the dreaded vampires of Amaans? 

19 Wedmath, SA 1609

Confirmed, as near as I dare. An old monk of our order who served in western Erindor told me the people of Amaans live in quiet terror. The Viscount is never seen by day. His court does not age. The healthy disappear in the night. The local church of Celeborn was burned forty years ago and no priest will go there.

Oilic Galdyce is Nosferatu. I am certain.

He has a daughter — Aliriel, Baroness of Canterwall, who maintains her own court in the Fangwood Forest to the east. I believe it is Aliriel who manages the arrangement directly — taking the people from the Canterwall mines when their usefulness is spent and distributing them among her father's holdings.

The people of Oakenway are being worked until they break, and then they are being given to vampires.

I can barely write these words.

9 Afterlithe, SA 1610

I have been making quiet inquiries into the Amberveil Trading House again, following the money this time rather than the stones. What I found turned my stomach.

The name Sorendil has appeared in correspondence I was shown by a sympathetic archivist in Celwynvian. Sorendil — my brother bishop, silver elf diplomat of Azurespire — appears to have been acting as a kind of traveling representative for Amberveil, opening trade channels in Celwynvian and Azurespire for the gems coming out of Canterwall. His position gives him access and respectability that a wizard-advisor from Gondolin could never achieve on his own in those cities.

I confronted Sorendil privately, as a brother of the faith. I was as careful and as charitable as I could manage. He denied everything. His manner was calm, even warm. But his eyes were careful in the way that guilty men's eyes are careful. I do not think he was surprised that I asked.

I have no proof and will therefore not bring this up to the Cardinal Archbishop of Henneth Annun. At least not yet.

22 Afteryule, SA 1611

I should not have done this. I know that now.

The disappearances from Oakenway and Woodhall have not stopped — if anything they have increased. I could not stay silent. I requested a private meeting with Illynn Vondel here in Gondolin, framing it as a matter of pastoral concern for the outlying towns. I was careful. I did not name everything I knew. I asked pointed questions about the Amberveil Trading House, about the mines of Canterwall, about the people who had gone missing.

He was charming and he said he had no knowledge of any such company.

Then a man entered the room without knocking, as if he belonged there. He was tall — very tall, gaunt, with sunken eyes that seemed to take in everything at once. His head was shaved and I could see markings on his scalp, engraved or tattooed, symbols I did not recognize but which put me in mind of the arcane script I have seen in books on the Arcanists of Rhûne. He wore deep crimson robes of exceptional quality, his collar set with dark red stones. He said nothing. He simply looked at me with those hollow eyes and then looked at Illynn.

Something passed between them. Illynn's smile did not change but it became a different kind of smile entirely.

I made my excuses and left. My hands were not steady until I reached the street.

I believe that man is a wizard of Rhûne, or something very close to it. I do not know what such a man is doing in Gondolin meeting privately with an advisor to the King. I do not want to know. But I am afraid.

I am writing all of this tonight and leaving it with my books in Ravengro, where Kendaria will find it if something happens to me. I no longer believe I am being paranoid in considering that possibility.

If you are reading this and I am gone — the mines of Canterwall are real, the people taken there are real, and someone with power and connections reaching far beyond Gondolin is responsible. If any of my flock yet lives in those dark places, get them out. 

— Lefran Dimitriv, Bishop, Priest of Celeborn