Hello there! How are you? Are we feeling comfortable today?

Is it nice in your little corner, minding your own business? I hope it is, and I hope it's all that you dreamed it would be.

I've been meaning to ask you something for a while, and I'm so sorry if this feels bold. When did you change?

Do you recall when you were young and all the world was open, full of possibility? Before your boots grew dusty and you found the efficient path? The safe one. The one where you could engage in rote violence without truly paying attention? Before you knew all the steps in the dance with whatever it is you kill for gold or talismans or what have you?

There was a time before you got comfortable where you had no choice but to face the unknown, for all things were unknown. When you jumped into a ruin with no idea of what was where, for if you wished to learn its secrets there was no other choice. Was that spark not to your liking? That thrill of adrenaline and the excitement of overcoming?

I do get your missives, incredulously asking me why I am doing this as visions of Deathsight reveal my occasional failed experiments. How could I do something so absurd, you ask? Shortly after you ask, an ogre brute crushes your skull for the umpteenth time, or you are consumed in a miasma or struck down by an opposing city that struck you down last month and will strike you down next month.

When did that miracle of curiosity fade from your eyes, your hunger to know? Surely you hear the elders (or your contemporaries for some of you wizened folk) speak of the old days and old glories, of unique challenges that later generations will never get to face. Perhaps you speak of them yourself.

Today it seems different, as you stand on the side and roll your eyes at those facing dangers unknown, right before you walk familiar roads and chase tangible, repeatable resources that will surely aid you in chasing the same tangible, repeatable resources a little more efficiently tomorrow.

I'm not judging you, please don't misunderstand. I would like to understand you. I do think you are hampering yourself, if I may be so honest. After all, what we do today can never be done again. Instead of living a great adventure, you shall only have the stories of others if even that. If that is enough for you, I do support your life-choices but as for me I do not consider the struggles of these trials to be in vain. Often the reward is intangible, though occasionally very tangible. The jewel of my life, regardless, gains a new facet. I learn things that no one has known before me, and may never experience again.

Perhaps your jewel is complete, all the facets it will ever need. If that is true, I congratulate you on your wondrous achievement. If that is true, please kick back and relax, enjoy the libation of your choosing in the comfortable security of the familiar, and we who are not content shall charge into the unknown.

You can read about it in the news, I'm sure.

Countess Nezaya Visindi
Abyssal Master of the Krymenian
Witch

Penned by my hand on the 14th of Miraman, in the year 959 AF.