Dearest Jebet;

It has been a week since I last wrote - a week spent in hectic flurries of preparation. You would be surprised at the scale of the commission! It seems I can hardly turn a corner without seeing my scaly face staring down at me from a signboard. Truly, it is almost enough to give me stage-fright. Almost.

(Yes, the artist did thankfully depict me from my hale side.)

In any case, allow me to set the scene - a spacious, timbered tavern, (great acoustics), vibrant with the variegated sounds, smells of this sunburst city. At the prow; Shaw the Gigan, the steadfast presence keeping the whole establishment together, his heavyset figure hunched over the bar.

I was soaring in the opal depths of song, that transcendent expanse of the increate that surges through the soul, pours out from beyond the self in all the arts a person may pursue. Returning from my reverie, the smiles playing upon the faces of the patrons were a joy in and of themselves.

And this is where I come to the day’s drama! You see, some time after my performance, a group of heavily-armored Locustkin began decrying the city, exalting instead a certain “Shinap the Cult Creator”. The name sent the pages of my thoughts into disarrayed flurries, leaving me grasping at its uncanny familiarity - the slogans these men were chanting, all “tear the corruption down” only exacerbated this condition. The frankly worrying worship stirred the ire of an enigmatically cloaked figure, previously pestering old Shaw - myself and Ranger (who happens to be the first Drakiir I’ve met in Widdergrove, a delightful fellow with a drawl the color of a harvest sunset) began throwing encouragement and invectives at the combatants, only to be promptly detained and brought before the king alongside the other troublemakers.

You see, it soon became clear that the little cloaked enigma was in fact none other than the king’s son! Now that seems like a story just waiting for its telling, I simply must inquire further. Despite this fact, the lot of us were put to work shoveling the gutters as reparation for the fracas - it seemed an absurd irony that our motley crew, met as we had within the storied potentiality of a tavern should land ourselves an adventure in the gutters!

Witticisms aside, I can’t help but return to those perfervid heralds. Between the aforementioned Shinap, and the equally aggrandised Carina the Sculptor, a new sort of religious fever hangs over the good folk of Widdergrove - I am not one to question the transcendent, yet these sermons seem to strike shrill harmonies. I pray that all is well in Riverridge, and that you remain safe and healthy in these discordant times.

Your (worried?) friend,

Arkadius Lumiel Chrome