Weeks later, an aging man with a white overcoat and wavy, upturned, graying hair pores over a missing person’s report through a dimly glowing metal visor. He sits hunched over a scattering of similar parchments on a fairly ornate wooden desk, in his moderately spacious office. There’s a potted plant on the corner of his desk, and another in the corner of the room, plus a bench running along the doorside wall. A woman in armor lazily looks at the ceiling.

Christopher Nakeem, Warden of the Depleted Lands, shoves the missing person’s report and scowls. That’s the third disappearance this month.

“That’s the third disappearance this month,” he says aloud.

“Yeah?” his assistant, Mercuria, asks absentmindedly, from her spot leaning lazily on his office wall. “Maybe they’re getting tired of the place. Gods know I am.”

“Wishful thinking,” Christopher mutters, and reads further. “The numbers don’t lie, Mercuria. Something’s afoot. The Vimscape, the acidity in our soil samples…” He looks up, scanning the room absentmindedly, thinking of something. Reacting to this, Mercuria perks up, but rolls her eyes when he just goes back to reading.

Could a second party have entered the Depleted Lands? Christopher thinks to himself. The humans of the Kingdom of Reillynd have a near territorial monopoly on the strange region, since it was born of their worst mistakes, but that doesn’t necessarily rule out the arrival of one of the more elusive actors on the continent. Perhaps the Gnomes are here to study it. Skeeving little bastards, he thinks racistly.

“Mercuria, we’re leaving.” he suddenly announces, and pushes off his desk. His complex Vim-Reading Visor shows him the various data figures observable by its technologies present in the room. His office is cluttered with various magical instruments and items, all with their own Vim signature and ambient effects. The flesh of the Magentu Tree itself is worked through the foundation of this room, and has its own frequencies that the piece of gear he wears over his eyes relays automatically. All this data he perceives, understands, and files away, all without interrupting his main flow of thought. His mind is well compartmentalized.

“Finally,” Mercuria scoffs, and eases off her perch leaning on the wall. His assistant wears shining metal armor with an intimidating blade slung alongside her hips in a leather scabbard. She keeps her silver hair cropped fairly short - never past the neck - and her eyes, though calm, crackle with keen, constant bloodlust.

In truth, Christopher could - and usually does - handle all the busywork typically left to a Warden’s Assistant himself. Her employment, in truth, is mostly due to sentimentality and her unmatched killing potential. So long as he has her, the factions below him in the Staves vying for Wardenship can never argue that the current Warden has not the capacity to viscerally kill monsters.

In the Depleted Lands, Mercuria is generally very bored. The two exit Christopher’s office, and she looks at him inquisitively.

“What’s the procedure?”

“In any other region, these figures would be unimportant, or maybe the low rumblings of something to come years down the line. But the Depleted Lands are different. We’ll get to the bottom of this, as quickly as possible. I’m organizing an Expedition.” Christopher murmurs, as they weave down wooden hallways set into Magentu Tree branches. Mercuria looks at him, and lets out a low whistle.

“You really think something is finally going on?”

“Something. There’s no precedent in the 150 years since the formation of this region for fluctuations like this. There are, maybe, several dozen species of flora and fauna that can even live here, and we don’t count. My working theory is that a second party has infiltrated the Depleted Lands.”

Mercuria mulls that over as the two descend a spiralling staircase. They pass a guardsman going the other way, and Christopher gives him a nod as he respectfully stands aside. Christopher’s simple, gilded cane taps each step until they exit and make for the Council’s Chamber. He inputs his information and opens the door to the secure room, which bears a sweeping oval table and a smattering of wooden seats. Atop the table is a fairly complex magitechnical device that he quickly inputs a few commands on to bring out a summons to the Council. He and Mercuria sit and wait in silence until they start to file in.

First comes Oliver Rednav, the Quartermaster. He’s a shifty-eyed, punctual sort of man with some decent logistical acumen developed after he was crippled in combat in another region and was moved to his role in the Depleted Lands. He moves purposefully, despite his limp. He bids Christopher good evening, and nods to Mercuria. His face scrunches up in discomfort as he lowers himself into his chair.

Following him is the facility’s chief Vimitechnician, Alexander Geist. The lanky young man sports a tussle of unkempt hair and a prodigious talent in Vimworks. Christopher works closely with him to monitor the region’s Vimscape, and now presumes he probably has an inkling of what this is about already. He lounges in his seat like he doesn’t have a care in the world, and he scans the room, grinning without showing his teeth.

Finally, the Leader of the Guard, Mason Kuridin, slouches in. The tubby, overweight warrior has really let himself go, Christopher thinks. He should be replaced, but his connections run as deep as his appetite and sloth. He’s been hard to dislodge, in defiance of how stringent Christopher likes to be with the quality of his staff.

Said quality, he laments, has fallen. Geist is promising, but untested, and Rednav’s passion never really left the forest he was maimed in. Kuridin gave up on being a good, disciplined Stave about a year into his tour in the Depleted Lands, and the final member of the Council, the Liaison Elric Watanabe, has seemingly elected to decline the summons.

“Anyone know why Watanabe is absent?” he asks the room, after a few minutes pass and he receives a notification on the summoning machine that his invitation was declined.

“Says he’s taking a message and will show up later,” Alexander replies offhandedly.

“Fair enough,” Christopher sighs, rolling his eyes inwardly. The failings of man. Though, he supposed, that was part of Elric’s job. Another section of his mind begins thinking on what message could possibly be so important as to delay him. Most likely, he thinks, the man is shirking his duties in favor of the Deadfield Ale he is so fond of having smuggled in.

“So what’s the procedure?” Oliver Rednav asks. He’s leaning forwards in his chair, running his scarred hands through his gnarled beard.

“Some of you might be surprised to hear me say this,” Christopher begins wryly. “But something is going on in the Depleted Lands.” Geist grins a little wider. He called it, as Christopher suspected.

“Something like what?” Kuridin asks.

“I don’t know for sure. But what I’m seeing here,” Christopher says, and tosses some diagrams across the table, “Is far enough from our normal patterns to essentially ensure it.” He picks up one of the diagrams and begins to explain. “The Vimscape is fluctuating at a far accelerated rate from what we’ve seen in any of the decades we’ve been studying this place, going from a 0.001 to a 0.009 in terms of magnitude in the span of two months. Unprecedented. We’ve had to adjust the Vim Readers every two weeks or so just to keep up, if you weren’t aware. Plus, the acidity, in our soil samples, it-”

“Uhhh, yeah.” Kuridin interrupts, though Christopher is fully aware of his general ignorance. “What does this mean, really, though?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Geist asks, and Christopher frowns at him. Better to internalize your scorn for the unlearned, like Christopher has. Let it give you a permanent scowl, hidden under your Vimitech visor. It’ll save you from countless pointless scruples with them in the long run.

“It means that something is happening out there. Vim is given off by living creatures and the spiritual essence of nature. As the Depleted Lands are, of course, depleted of most living creatures and the essence of nature, one can deduce that something out there is changing the Vimscape. Something alive.”

“Couldn’t it be something faulty with the Magentu Tree’s containment system? Vim leaking out?” Rednav speculates.

“No way. One, I’d notice, and two, even the Magentu couldn’t cause such a change in so short a time unless it was completely exposed. Which it isn’t.” Geist replies confidently.

“Indeed.”

“Still… How do we know this isn’t a, uh, Edo Worm mating season?” Kuridin asks.

“Mmm,” Rednav murmurs in vague assent.

“Because we would have noticed an abundance of Edo Worms in our soil samples. The raw data isn’t all. There have been four disappearances in these last two months, three this month. Which also breaks our pattern.”

“That’s true, mmm. The men are getting superstitious.” replies Rednav. “So what’s the procedure?”

“We’re undertaking an Expedition to get to the bottom of this.” Christopher replies. There is silence in the room for a moment. Such a thing, common in other regions, has never, since its creation, been undertaken in the Depleted Lands.

“Uhhhh… Isn’t that a little extreme? Over a difference of 0.008 Vims?” Geist asks.

“In any other region, it would be. It’s that simple. It is the job of the Warden, and of the Staves, to delve into and purge the depths of uncertainty. To protect humanity. This is our uncertainty. It’s an interruption in our routine, but it is our purpose out here.”

“You’re the Warden,” Geist replies.

“I, for one,” Mercuria interjects, “Am totally stoked for the barest theoretical possibility of finding something to kill out there.”

“Hear, hear!” Kuridin exclaims, his jowls wobbling.

“Mmm, yes, so we’re all on the same page?” Christopher asks the rooms, to a chorus of nods. “Good. I suppose I’ll brief Watanabe by note, then. I want the first vanguard patrols to be out there within the week, understand?”

As Kuridin nods obediently, a low beep is heard, and the door into the room swings open. Elric Watanabe the Liaison stands in the entrance, bearing a cheery grin. “My lord Warden, I bring wonderful news. Prince Frank will be visiting our great facility here at the Depleted Lands!”

The announcement is met with stony silence. Inwardly, Christopher groans. Royals. Great. He’ll have to order double shifts of, uh, sweeping, and tidying up, and stuff. Royals tend to bring along precisely the sort of mundane, worldly, contrived problems he ran out here to escape.

“Why?” Geist asks, smirking. Good question. Maybe, Christopher allows himself to hope, he's an aspiring man of science.

“For glory and death, of course!” cries a new voice.

Oh, he’s already here, thinks Christopher, as a lanky young man dressed in an expensive looking tunic and cloak sweeps into the room, bearing an enthusiastic smile. The gears of Christopher's mind begin to churn.