Journal Entry 40
I’ve been making a habit of keeping the door down into the cavern under the tower closed, when I’m not down there, observing the Goblins. There are no locks or anything on the door, just the handle, so I’ve been pushing a bookshelf up against it to keep it shut. I’m sure Master used Sealing spells to keep it closed, but I do not know how to cast them yet, so I’ve just been improvising while I’ve been studying.
I’ve made a few more treks into town lately, but I’m not too fond of going in. Every time I’m there, I get this odd feeling like someone is following me and watching me. I can never spot the culprit, and whenever I leave town, it goes away, but it makes me hesitant to go to town when I know I’m going to be followed.
The repairs on that little house I found are going well. Most of the overgrowth has been cleared away, the chimney has been cleared and repaired, and the door has been fixed. The windows and shutters are still broken, the walls are still filthy, and the floor is still a work in progress, but the carpenter says it shouldn’t be long before it can be used. The repairs have used most of the gold Master left for me to use so it might stand empty for a time before I can get some furniture put into it, but I think I might move into that little house when Master comes back.
It feels like home, even though it’s a filthy little hovel in a state of disrepair. I wonder what it will feel like when it’s finished.
Villager Observation 11 - Lord Carlos Dawnstone
This isn’t an Observation, exactly. Mostly because I’ve never seen Lord Dawnstone. In fact, very few people in town seem to have seen him. He never leaves his castle, built on the mountain, overlooking Willowdale. Occasionally, someone can be seen on one of the balconies, but it’s so high up and so far away that nobody's really sure if it’s actually him.
I don’t really know why he doesn’t leave the castle, and no one else does either. The rumours vary from paranoia to disinterest, to the King himself ordering Lord Dawnstone to stay within his castle. Only servants and guards ever seem to enter or leave, though they don’t really talk to anyone, and no one seems to know them. From what I understand, they’re from another town, or possibly another country.
A few of the miners are adamant that he has spies in town, watching anyone whom they deem suspicious. If that is true, then I believe they are the ones following me around. Others say that people have gone missing from town, dragged off in the middle of the night and into the castle, never to be seen again. While I do not wish to believe that it is true, I have noticed that some people - amongst them, people who I’d been considering observing - have suddenly gone missing, with no one knowing why.
One older miner that frequents the tavern claims that the dungeons under the castle, dug deep into the rock of the mountain, are full of townspeople deemed suspicious or dangerous by Lord Dawnstone’s spies, snatched over the years by his loyal guards. Some people are worried that he’s going to get snatched himself for spreading rumours without proof to support them, but he just tells them to “bring it on”.
I’ve been able to gather a little information that’s not just rumours from the people, mostly during my now regular visits to the Hog and Heifer.
Though no one seems to know what Lord Dawnstone actually looks like, there was a time when he left his castle - albeit rarely and briefly - and visited the town in his youth. He always wore clothing that was fancy but simple, making him stand out in a crowd but not overbearingly. He’d always looked his best, but he’d never tried to lord it over the people. He always wore a mask, for reasons unknown. A decorative, full face masquerade mask. The only thing people really know about him is that he has brown hair because that was the only part of him that wasn’t completely covered.
No one knows why he stopped visiting the town, but he did so shortly after his father died, and he became the Count. At first, people believed that he was too busy to do so and that he would come back eventually when he had adapted to his duties, but then he never returned, and more than ten years on, only a small handful still believe that he will one day visit the town again.
Another bit of information I was able to get was that he’d had a wife.
Had.
No one knew who she was, or where she’d come from. She arrived in a carriage that was completely closed off, and never stopped in town. Like Lord Dawnstone, no one ever knew what she looked like. Only a couple of people - invited to the castle for their wedding, to act as witnesses to make it official - ever saw her up close, and even then, she was as completely covered as Lord Dawnstone.
Whether it was by choice or force, she never visited the town. No one knew her name. No one knew the kind of person she was. She was as much a secret as her husband.
They were married just over a year.
The, one day, she disappeared. The royal guards apparently tore the entire town apart in search of her, though they refused to tell the townspeople why at first, and it was only after it had been determined that she was not hiding in the town that the people were told that she had disappeared - run away or kidnapped, they didn’t know - and her infant son had disappeared with her. The only place not checked was my Master’s Tower, because the wards wouldn’t even let the guards get close.
Some people believed that Lord Dawnstone had killed both his wife and child and that the hunt and announcement were simply coverups to keep the suspicion off him.
I am not sure how to feel about this ruler. He seems paranoid, disinterested, and cruel to me, going by the rumours. I know I shouldn’t judge him based on that alone, but as there is no way I will ever be able to meet him, I feel it safe to assume, unless he can somehow prove me wrong.
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