You will agree that you have never received a personal letter from the Commander-In-Chief of Kania's Armed Forces. When I handed this envelope over to you in the Royal Palace of Shlegerloght, you must have least expected to find my parting wishes in it.
Nevertheless, I think that your formal mission and even the Emperor's Edict are less important than the key to the situation that I will try to explain to you. The more so as I am absolutely unaware of what documents could be useful in this particular case.
I hope you will spare some time and will not ignore the knowledge I am going to share with you. I think I had better start with the ancient times.
In childhood you must have heard various legends about Uimoir, the island of Great Mage Skrakan. You heard about the fact that nobody ever returns from there, about paradise and eternal youth that everybody there expected and above all, about unique knowledge and artifacts that can give you unprecedented might and power. There is no doubt that these tales have little in common with our reality, but this is essentially what you have to learn.
Uimoir is the largest of the Allods known in our world, primarily due to the fact that it was Great Mage Skrakan who found a way to prevent the islands from disappearing. He first used his method on Uimoir. After our world had regained its balance, Skrakan resumed his study of the hypothetical, Outer Worlds. We know that in the year of 576, of the Era of Islands, he was on the eve of an important discovery, of which he informed his friend, Great Mage Tenses. Afterwards, Tenses waited for further news and tried to get in touch with Skrakan, but to no avail. Uimoir, amazingly, was cut off from the rest of the world. This isolation was caused by a mighty spell that had been cast on the island from the inside. To all appearances, any messages, objects or people sent there went through the barrier and reached the island, but absolutely nothing or nobody ever came back.
Since then, many expeditions were sent to Uimoir. Great Mages trained and sent their wisest sorcerers and best fighters, but none of them ever returned. Nobody can still say what is going on in Uimoir.
We started to send our detachments even before the outbreak of hostilities and since then, we never ceased our attempts to solve this mystery. Over the last ten years we sent to Uimoir, 18 detachments of Kania's Royal Forces. According to our sources, the Empire of Kadagan has sent 20 expeditions. None of the groups ever returned.
Now a few words about your mission. In spite of the impressive success of our armies, we must admit that the war is becoming too costly to continue. Our resources are substantially exhausted as are the resources of Kadagan. Now, either of the Kingdoms can only gain an advantage over the other one by using newly discovered weapons. We are carrying out an extensive study for these weapons, but espionage and corruption are bringing all our efforts to naught. There is every reason to believe that Great Mage Skrakan discovered a new magic principle and, fearing that his discovery would be used to the damage of all of the Allods, isolated his lands from the others. You shall recover this new principle and find a way to transport it back to Kania. This is your official mission.
Your secondary mission is to survive and return, and be remembered forever in the Kingdom of Kania!
