Franz Lohner's Chronicle - Better off Lost

An absent-minded man of mysteries, Franz Lohner relies on his bulging journal to keep track of occurrences, intrigues and arguments around Taal's Horn Keep. Sometimes his notes are even useful, believe it or not. The Franz Lohner Chronicles are extracts from that journal.

I tell you, one good thing about these little forays into the frozen north is that I’m learning new bits and pieces all the time. Well, I say it’s a good thing, but some of the things I’m picking up along the way ain’t exactly stuff you’re glad to have known. Trouble is, the only way to know what you don’t know is to know it. Or at least to know that you know that you know that you don’t know. 

Wait. I’ve gone and given myself a headache.

Anyway, point is that sometimes you can’t help finding out things you wish you hadn’t alongside things you were glad you had, if you take my meaning. The Lost City of Marakza, for example. 

Can’t say I’d heard of it all before old Saltzpyre led our merry band on a cavalcade of carnage through its empty streets. I mean, if you want to call them streets – there’s not much left. But yes, Marakza ain’t a place that shows up in any book I’ve ever seen, and as I might have mentioned before, my private library has one or two choice items that would quickly put me at the sharp end of any conversation with Saltzpyre’s superiors. It’s like the place never really existed, even before it was lost. 

Even the name ‘Marakza’ doesn’t mean much of anything in any language I’ve ever heard. In fact, we only call it that because of an old journal Olesya found buried beneath one of the towers. Don’t ask me how the old biddy got there and back without fetching an axe to the head. Like I said, some things it’s better not to know.

This journal – ratty old thing that it is – purports to recount the last days of the city. Full of daemon worship, it is, with the fervent going door to door, looking for ‘volunteers’ to hop up on a sacrificial altar while their mates draw daggers and give it the full Marius Leitdorf, if you take my meaning? Blood in the streets, debauchery, destruction and not a lick of mercy to be had. That’s all bad enough, of course, but it ain’t what’s set my nerves on edge. I mean, have you seen this world of ours? Ain’t exactly a nice place, is it?

No, the unsettling thing about Marakza – if that truly be its name – is that there are hints within the journal that it ain’t exactly from around here. Chief among them? The journal-keeper was a bit of doodler and filled page after page with maps of the heavens. Only the stars ain’t right. Not for there, nor for anywhere else I’m familiar with, and that’s a pretty long list. Proper head scratcher that, so I did what I do whenever I’ve a problem worth inflicting on someone else: I asked Olesya. 

You know what she said? That Marakza’s an echo of a city from somewhere – and somewhen – else. Swallowed up by the ghastly Realm of Chaos, she reckoned, and what was left got spat out near the Citadel of Eternity. Even suggested it might be worth a closer look, see if we can learn more about what happened there. Or will happen. After all, what if what we know as Marakza used to be Altdorf or Middenheim or whatever? Or will be. Or is. Or … 

Headache’s back. I knew I shouldn’t have tried to write this down.

Anyhow, Olesya had that look in her eye again when she said all this. You know, the one that hints at a joke only she’s in on? That one she wears most days, in fact. Personally, I’m pinning my hopes on this journal just be some elaborate prank. Probably of hers. And if it isn’t, and what we know as Marakza is a portent of things to come? Well, I’d rather not know. How do you keep fighting a war that you’ve already lost?

I’ll not tell the others. They’ve enough to worry about.

I’m sure it’s a prank.

Has to be.