First letter:
Hello all. My name is Marcus. I once was an adventurer of Avendale, I was an officer in your army and knew many of the people who travelled in those lands a while back, when Duke Valerian was still alive. I have since retired my service in the army and gone into private contracting.
In any event, I had the opportunity (misfortune) of being locked in, paralyzed, imprisoned you name it in various rooms and locales while Duke Valerian Clearbrook gave long and involved lectures. Duke Valerian had many talents and skills, and the greatest of all was the ability to put large crowds to sleep with his tales. However I still remember a great deal of what I heard from him.
Duke Valerian originally was born in Quentari, there he rose up in power and became some equvilant of a Knight to a man named Sakalid. This man I believe later was better known as Sakalid The Liche. Much later I met Sakalid briefly and he was a Life Elemental then...go figure. By Duke Valerian's own admission, he aided Sakalid in Necromantic research that resulted in Sakalid's transformation to said state. At some point after this, he took a band of elves and left Quentari (I believe in disgrace but he did not seem to think so) and went to this place the Silvermyst Forest to settle. Here he joined up with the Lord of the Haunted Wood, a great and renown Faerie creature of immense power. He was turned into a cursed form of himself called The Hunter and sent to ravage and rend his people. Somewhere in there he was infused with elemental chaos, it might have been with Sakalid, it might have been after, but Chaos Elementals called him brother. Then he took advantage of some time fluxuations to send his minions back in time, and alter things, so he could bow out of responsibility for all the bad decisions he had made in his life.
Whether he really died in battle with the lord of the haunted wood, or he just got executed by his own people for his duplicitous methods is not clear to me.
As to the actual nature of the Silvermyst forest and the Haunted Wood and the Wood, is that there are spots int he Silvermyst Forest where the Fae realm touches the Silvermyst and that is why there are all these Fae there. This is what I understood from Valerian's lectures.
Oh Valerian also had a child who was a Faerie, and had a lot of very mighty powers, including charming people as if he were a vampire.
The Lady of the Wood I believe is like the feminine counterpart to the Lord of the Haunted Wood, its a whole male-female dichotomy thing.
I know nothing about the Spirit Tree, save that Valerian all but did not talk about it. I believe it was planted only recently be adventurers in Avendale, but I am a little hazy like that.
Anyway, look on the bright side, if your ever paralyzed in front of a wind bag, you might be able to get some information useful to someone else years down the road.
Marcus
for hire
Second letter:
Seronia, you may certainly copy my words for what they are worth to your library. I know that Ta'wane and the Gypsy Camp have a copy of a letter written by Duke Valerian in response to some anonymous rabblerouser who confronted him with his sordid history. In it he talks about some of what occured, however this was written after such the point at which he had his minions go back and alter time so that his attrocities had been effaced from books of history.
As was said then and I repeat now. You might change history, but you can never change the past. Valerian was and always will have been The Hunter, a Necromancer and a Monster and no words can change that. However here is the library reference I am referring to:
http://www.gypsycamp.net/brisbane2.html
I would have you note the inconsistancy from the beggining of his discourse in which he says that the nightmare being referred to is a legend. The nightmare was called The Hunter. He then later goes on to say that when he first came to the Silvermyst he was called the Hunter for he had taken up the lifestyle of a simple hunter.
He then goes on to discuss how he and the others of the Silvermyst watched the Gypsy caravans settle the plains of Brisbane, and he claims that he watched it grow to the Empire of Brisbane and that he then saw the Empire of Brisbane destroyed and lived on until just scant years ago. It would not take a great historian to tell you that this would place him at well over 3000 years old, far older than even elves live to under natural circumstances.
Finally in his closing paragraph he once more asserts that he was not the hunter and that he avoided this. He thus admitted awareness that the Hunter had or /might/ have existed and that he had taken steps to avoid it.
And historically speaking, this now may or may not be true. I personally bore witness to many of the temporal tamperings that went on as did many others, and I may assure you that before them he had been the hunter, and after he had still been the hunter, still been a being tainted by chaos (for chaos elementals did call him their brother, and did come to claim him once more), and he had been the fae gifted minion of the Lord of the Haunted Wood.
That is my perspective in any case,
Marcus
for hire