Expedition Log 001: Landfall

Filed from the frontier coastline, distance from The Forgelands in excess of 40,000,000 blocks. First formal log of the expedition.

Position and Condition

Landfall achieved on a gray headland coast after the final overland push. Position fixed by dead reckoning; the maps from here forward are ours to draw. Equipment status: three pickaxes lost to the journey, food stores at forty percent, morale better than the numbers justify. The first field camp is sited above the tide line, in the lee of the headland — palisade up by the second nightfall.

Observations

The territory is not empty. Three observations, in ascending order of concern.

First: worked stone on the headland, old and weathered, builder unknown. It predates anything else here and has been marked for survey.

Second: a disturbed patch of ground inland that proved, on excavation, to be the lip of something deeper — a cache, hidden deliberately, by someone who expected to return. Contents logged separately.

Third: sails. Two, at dusk, on the southern horizon. Square-rigged and dark-bannered, holding formation. Pillagers do not, in any prior record, sail. These do.

Assessment

The expedition planned for wilderness and found a frontier with owners. Standing orders revised accordingly: camps go dark at dusk, smoke is rationed, and nothing is built on a sightline to the water.

Forty million blocks from home, and the neighbors are pirates. Log ends.