Upon a cheaply printed sheet of newsprint, smudged with ink:

As any fool with eyes can see, strange happenings are afoot, my friends.
One only has to gaze up at the sky in daytime to see, well, that there
ain't no such thing as daytime. An eclipse, sure, I can accept that, but
this ain't no natural eclipse. And that beam of light, down there in the
Southern Vashnars? Ain't right. I've been keeping my eyes wide open and
my ears to the ground, pounding the pavement seeking out the truth of
things for you, my readers.

The girl down at the tavern has a cousin who lives near the ocean, and
they write back and forth a lot. The other day she told me, a few days
before it all happened, all the tritons in the waters down there up and
left. He saw 'em board some big shells pulled by whales, no joke, and
off they went. Not a glimpse of them since.

It's like my cat, Speckle, he'd been acting all jumpy-like, spooked,
just before it all went down. Everyone knows animals are more
perceptive. Not that I'm calling tritons animals, oh no no. But maybe
they could sense it in the tides. Weird stuff.

So there was a huge party in Hashan for the opening of a planetarium,
everybody knows that. All the bigwigs were invited - city councillors,
House Lords and Ladies, Church prelates, a veritable list of who's who.
I hear even Epicurus and Averroes came all the way from Ashtan and
Shallam, and the tsol'aa King from the Aalen, the mayor of New Thera,
all kinds, all dressed up.

This planetarium, some mysterious rich guy donated it out of the
goodness of his heart, right? Right. So from what I hear, the rich guy,
Tavarius, demonstrated a new contraption of his in the middle of the
party, and this demonstration showed him some location in the Southern
Vashnars. And he just leaves the party, and no one can find him, or this
place in the Vashnars.

Then the eclipse happens. Wow! I've never seen anything like it. Of
course, now the charm has worn off a bit, seeing as how it's been almost
a month of the same old, same old, dark in the day, dark in the night.
I'll tell ya what, I'll be glad to see some sunlight again. For that
matter, I'd be glad to see moonlight again. The moon is darkened as
well, and I hear tell there's been no sight of the Lady Ourania since
this began.

Of course, if things were left to nature, the planets would have moved
off again and the sun would be shining, birds would be singing, and all
that happy stuff. But Tavarius did something to make it stick, and now
those planets - Noxtra, Somnutra, Lunastra - are locked to the sun. And
now he's behind some magical shield up there on Mount Nicator leeching
power from the sun. Doesn't anybody have a hammer tattoo around here?

There's some who say he's doing it for our own good, and he means to use
that power to give us all immortality. I don't know about you, but me,
I'm not that trusting. All I know is, things sure have gone to hell
since this eclipse started.

Every night since the eclipse began, there's an eerie roar in some city,
and some demon called the nychtaur starts rampaging and killing folks.
People kill it, but it's hard to take down, and the next night --
there's that same roar again.

Don't even get me started on Ashtan. Not that it's ever normal in
Ashtan, but it's weirder than usual, what with chaos vortexes pickin'
people up and spittin' them out in other places, and who knows what
those things are doin' to your insides while you're in there?

I hear the forests took it hard, and the forest spirits disappeared. I
don't know what happened exactly, but a few days after the eclipse the
forests started shining with some green light, and they've seemed
healthy enough since then. But how long can that last? Green things need
sunlight to grow, and that's a fact. Don't you start about the
Darkenwood, that's what Mama calls an a-no-ma-ly.

What happens next? I don't make the news, I just report it. Something
tells me there's gonna be plenty more to report.

Your faithful independent reporter,
Maxwell Grant

Penned by my hand on the 1st of Daedalan, in the year 426 AF.