SWEETIE JUHO!

Hi! It's been too long since I wrote to you last, but perhaps this letter will elucidate why! First off: I LOVE YOU!!!! I miss you, and I'm hopeful that maybe you'll be able to come help me, which is part of why I want to loop you in!

OK, so, you know the basics! Forest People. Maybe you don't know much about their religion, though! You see, the 'Lanternlight' Forest Folk believe they were sent to this world as a sort of bridge to their true afterlife, a place so incredible that the Forest People dare not speculate on its features beyond that it supposedly 'slopes infinitely into ever deeper gloam' and 'promises an endless ascent, basking in ever greater light until it's so intense as to thresh your soul, washing it back down the mountain and into the mortal realm once more as the light that feeds plants!' You know, normal stuff!

All it takes to cross through our dreary little pitstop and into eternal glory is a little bit of wanton killing (and specifically killing at least one gnome, apparently...?)

Well, King Ekwin is on the scene, and he's here to get himself a VIP seat on that weird mountain! The Lanternlight Folk were very hostile before, but not terribly organized, so the Lantern Bearers had little issue keeping them mostly under control. However, when Ekwin appeared, he alleged that he was a great King who had arranged for the mass death of Forest People back in their mortal plane so that they might vastly reinforce them here!

Yes, the Forest People are completely bonkers. Because he apparently WASN'T lying! After he showed up, two huge Shadow Fonts opened in their territory, spewing out tons of new and furious souls prepared to join the holy war! Ever since then, Ekwin has been organizing his Forestkin like never before! It's getting really bad, I won't lie: just a few days ago, a caravan containing a dangerous artifact--a Gravetap--was completely butchered by Forest People! They killed multiple high-ranking War Bearers and displayed a lot more magic than we'd seen from them before! All in just a few months, they've started using intricate guerilla tactics and improving really fast in both magic and martial skill across the board.

Ekwin himself is a mage of unspeakable power, and the exomagic he's using is a real problem. The Magehunters don't know what to do about him, because he's more or less a God of exomagic strutting around on our plane--so even if you forget all the other stuff, he's still a HUGE threat they gotta' wipe off the board fast. The more of that stuff he spews, the worse things get. And the Gravetap, Gods know what they're doing with that--if you don't know, they're prohibited artifacts used to concentrate and amplify negative energy in locations for rituals! They're deliberately creating these sites in an effort to use the Gravetap to gather enough power for... something, but we don't know what, because they haven't succeeded yet.

Despite all of this, we still don't really know what they're... doing? They don't care about territory or expansion, it seems like they just have some kind of holy mission to cause as much havoc as possible, consume as many souls as possible, and then die! We've yet to piece together a pattern or any kind of target they might have, other than, inexplicably, gnomes? I swear, they are HUNTING gnomes. Lantern Bearer agents have shown up to multiple blasted sections of forest just to find that a gnome had to defend themselves against some Forest People! They don't go out of their way for anyone else in quite the same way!

Maybe if we could figure much out about their religion, it'd offer some context, but it's as inscrutable as you'd imagine! The stuff we know for sure: they call it ZOL, and ZOL is some kind of multidimensional entity! At a minimum, ZOL has the ability to send his people across universes, and seems to be a source of a novel kind of exomagic. It's remarkably similar to that belonging to the Vress, but with a lot of key distinctions! Ranging from like, simple color differences to a pretty huge divergence in what the world looks like when it's all saturated with it!

We've had a few chats with the somewhat-friendlier 'Pinefolk', another population detached from the Lamplight population way out in the west! They suggest that ZOL feeds on the souls of those 'consumed' by the Forest People, which would explain the grisly oblivion that awaits their unfortunate victims! Why ZOL has chosen our world as this 'intermediary', and the extent to which he relies on souls from our plane versus other sources, is yet unclear! We also tried to ask them about the gnomes, but even saying the word made them so mad that we had to leave with our tail between our legs! Really dunno what's up with that!

Now, there's one other really scary bit, the cherry on top! Ekwin keeps preaching that he has a 'champion' on the way that will usher in an 'age of violence', but she simply has some important matters to attend to on their mortal plane first! So that's great! Really looking forward to that! Yippee age of violence! [A really, really widely grinning smiley is depicted here.]

I thiiiink that's everything worth discussing...

Anyway! I hope you're doing well and that that stupid centipede isn't giving you too much trouble! I can't wait to see you again and I'm even more excited to work with you again! Please tell Salmon that I love him and I will give him so many yummy treats when I see him again!

[Salmon, Sal or Sally for short, is here depicted. It's Deziree's favorite warbird that she insisted she get to name.]

Yours in madness,
DEZIREE!