City of Sinister Angles

Big Game Dragon Slayer

Personal dragon hunting diary of Deira Langschwert III, heiress to the Langschwert merchant house.

Dear Diary,

To be perfectly honest, my husband Oswulf and I joined the Noble Society of Hunters of Strange Beasts and Phantasmagoria only because they had been buying up so much of the local supply of decent wine, and we were keen to help them drink it all. I find that all the members have refreshingly refined taste in wine. The rest of the business of hunting strange beasts and phantasmagoria was never really my cup of tea.

It wasn't until Esmerelda Payne was explaining to me the meaning of the various lodges, over a particularly indulgent bottle of Gewürztraminer, that my interest became piqued. One of the lodges, the Dragon Slayer's Lodge, I was particularly taken with. Esmerelda explained that, owing to the fact that dragons had been extinct for about 300 years, there was no way for any new members to be inducted into the lodge.

It was at that moment, I feel, that I became a true huntress. I knew that, no matter what it took, I was going to become a member of that impossible lodge. I spoke to Oswulf about it that night and he decided to join too.

I hired an army of scribes and thugs to pour over Thule looking for every obscure reference to dragons. Through my tireless efforts I was able to track down a few sailors from Mu with tales of a dragon called Old Greeneyes that still lives on that untamed continent.

I am organizing an expedition to Mu immediately. We are going to investigate these rumors of a surviving dragon and, if they prove true, shoot it.

Dear Diary,

Oswulf and I sailed into the port city Ys three days ago, and have spent the intervening time assembling our dragon hunting party.

Our clear favorite is a man named Ballamy, a great mountain of a man with long beaded hair and a permanent look of worry on his face, who I'm given to understand is some manner of ranger. He's the only one of the locals whose name I can pronounce and he's pleasingly compliant so I've taken to giving my orders to the local guides through him. I'm fairly certain they all speak Lemurian and just pretend not to understand me, but it's more convenient for me to speak to them through Ballamy anyway. All told we have hired six locals, including myself and my husband that is eight dragon hunters in total.

It wasn't easy recruiting even our modest team, to be perfectly honest. The first queer thing that impeded us is the fact that the people of Mu, or Ys at the very least, seem very reluctant to accept paper currency. We were forced to trade in a large number of gold certificates for specie at a money changer at a significant loss, so right away our budget for wages was diminished.

Compounding the issue was the attitude the locals had towards Old Greeneyes. A great number of the small minded thought the dragon was a legend, making them entirely unsuitable as guides. Those that did believe in the dragon were often frightened of the beast, and unwilling to attempt a hunt or sometimes even speak its name. Regrettably, we were forced to go with some of our second and third choices for guides, and our little rag tag group is a tad more rag than I'm entirely comfortable with.

Ballamy is a good man, but he's very superstitious about things he doesn't understand. He keeps insisting that our rifles won't work in the jungles of Mu, and that we should use crossbows like him. I have noticed that none of the people of Ys seem to have firearms of any kind. Instead they all use some needlessly complex looking crossbows. It might be a local superstition.

Ballamy also didn't like our horses and didn't think we should bring them. I patiently explained to him that they were simply tame animals, and not monsters from another dimension. While he acted like he understood I don't think he really did, as he still recommended against the mounts.