COMPLETE! The Wasteland. A woman screams in the night. Spotlights flash on a pile of dust in the desolate patch of land that lay just beyond the tall crosses that picket the boundary of Encampment R-34. A group of curious students leave their bunkho...
Log Book #1 belonging to the Knight James Woislaw, Castellan of Glogau
August 2nd 1684
I have left my truest love, Bertha von Kronstein. I have abandoned the comforts of my land holdings in Silesia to fight in the Great Turkish War against the Ottoman Empire under the service of my Duke and for the safety of Sclavonia. This war has raged for centuries and sees no end until a treaty can be signed. The Holy Roman Empire and its Captain, Pope Innocent XI, may yet see it through.
As all brave men, I am equally foolish and am paying penance with pen in hand. As of this day, I have only one. Such a task was set before me by the battle physician, who urges that I strengthen my left hand. I am to fill this log book and many others in order to regain awareness with script. Of the right hand, it is lost in a most unusual and macabre fashion.
During the night, I heard a skirmish coming from a nearby tent. I rose to assess this clamor, for we were in the hours of peace. The events of my memory are obscured by the aftermath, but of what I can recall there was a foreign man in one of our tents eating the flesh from another's neck. I drew my sword and he recoiled onto me, biting the palm of my right hand with teeth so sharp they could be of a creature. This cannibal, dressed in the old manner of a Wallachian, fled from view. I was set to give chase but was stunned in sweltering pain when the warrior from the ground, the one who had the displeasure of being another man's meal, severed me, hand from wrist, with a swipe of his blade. He then fell dead, gripping the remains of his neck. Seeing my own detached hand in the dirt, still bleeding from the bite mark, I lost myself in every way.
A mechanical hand of iron is being forged for me by the mate of the fellow I went to defend. Their service, as I have learned, was to a sect of Pope Innocent's, dubbed The Holy League. I am meant to keep this secret, and I shall. There is little use for the unknown on the field of battle. After the slain was buried, this Roman attended to me often before departing for Italy. Tomorrow, I plan to trade the feather pen in my left hand for steel and begin my drills. I must be of use in this fight to deserve the honor bestowed upon me by the Duke.
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