Game Content: Diary Pages

Here's the short story I wrote in 12 pages of huge type for the artificially aged diary pages.
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7 Septmber 1881

Success! At last I have traced the rumors of underground monsters to a barrow in Kansas. Since the Indians left this territory their gravesites and camps have been left for anyone to occupy. A barrow where a great chief was buried has a colony of troglodytic beings that I am calling “Kobolds”, after the German legends of underground spirits in mines. These are flesh and blood, not ectoplasm, and as real as I am. I hope to make peaceful contact with them, and learn all I can of their civilization. There will be so much to learn about them!

11 October 1881

They have no steel. All the Kobolds' tools are bone and wood. The smith in town clearly thought I was simple when I had him scale down the blades of half a dozen shovels, but he took my money readily enough to do it. A few moments' work with a saw for the handles of the spades and I had tools the Kobolds had never even imagined. Forty dollars' worth of hardware and labor from the smith and I have been welcomed among them more readily than if I were an emissary of their rude and primitive gods. Now, to compile what I know of them...

1 January 1882

I cannot get used to this accursed lack of light underground, and the cold lantern dazzles the Kobolds to the point where none can tolerate its presence for even a second. They have excavated a chamber for my use, that I might write my notes easily but they will not interfere with me here.

I am beginning to enjoy the taste of grubs and roots. When I return to Wichita it will be for a bath and the largest beefsteak available in any hotel. But for now, I must continue my efforts to compile a lexicon of the Kobolds' language.

4 April 1882

The Kobolds have dug down to a chamber left here as a burial palace, though I don't recognize the carvings on the walls as anything originating from any of the plains tribes. The clatter and scrape of the half-sized shovels continues day and night as they try to work their way towards whatever these rooms may contain, though from the piercing shrieks that reverberate through the earthen walls of their own tunnels I take it that whoever constructed the stone chambers left devices to prevent tomb robbers from making off with whatever was there.

5 June 1882

The poor devils keep throwing themselves at that puzzle trap. The priest-king of the Kobolds (I cannot render his name in English letters) desperately wants whatever is in the chamber beyond the burial throne. And so many of them have died needlessly, but even though I am the man who inadvertantly made it possible for the Kobolds to discover these rooms of treasure and death, I cannot make them listen to me any more than I could speak to that seated corpse in gold and obsidian and get an answer from it.

17 June 1882
Dozens of the Kobolds were sacrificed to the will of their priest-king and finally the next chamber has been opened. Their ruler, if the rumors and chitterings can be believed, killed the one who solved that puzzle so he would be the only one who knows. They think my eyesight is useless in the dark but it isn't completely. Which is how I know the snakes go down the center of the puzzle board, and the green one is on the bottom-most square. When I get the chance, I'll try to observe the priest-king opening that chamber himself, and see what it conceals.

..

22 June 1882

Another breakthrough. The upper pieces are a bat, the snake, and a centipede from left to right. And it seems the left bottom two pieces are both green. If the leader of the Kobolds knew that I knew even this much, I fear my life would be ended.

What does he see in there?

28 June 1882
Another clue. Pieces 1, 3 and 5 (the ones on the top left, top right, and center, respectively) are all purple. I couldn't look closely enough to tell for certain where the orange pieces were placed without arousing suspicion.

14 July 1882

The priest-king has vanished. He got the puzzle door open today and went inside, according to his warriors. But when the door closed he either could not deduce the way to open it, or he chose to die inside that chamber, alone with whatever he found there.

Since their leader vanished, the Kobolds have turned to me for guidance. How much can I dare to interfere with their development? Can I bring them to the outside world or would the bright sunlight bring an end to all of them? I must think on this.

3 July 1882

Another clue. The columns to the left and right are opposites of each other; the bat at top and bottom of the left and in the center of the right.

If the priest-king saw me watching as he solved this puzzle he would have flown at me in a murderous rage, I am sure. Mother have mercy, he'll never know what these inky marks on the paper signify.

Whatever he sees in that chamber, he fears and desires it in equal measure. Some day he'll go in, I know it.

27 July 1882

The Kobolds squabble among themselves like murderous children. I am not strong enough for them to fear or wise enough to make them listen. Without a new priest-king I dread what may happen to this tribe. So many died to learn the puzzle lock. So many are resentful and hungry. The puzzle lock could kill me if I guess it wrong, but I wish I knew what was in that room. Could it save the poor devils? Will it destroy them? Have I the right to make this choice, not knowing what is on the other side of that immovable stone door?

3 August 1882

They're still trying to open the door again. I hear their screams as they die. My desire to study the truth behind the rumors of subterranean creatures may have doomed them all. The shovels I bought as a gift to ingratiate myself to their tribe may as well have dug all of their graves.

Damn me for not seeing what would happen. They were too short-sighted to make use of what was here. If they lived for centuries more in their burrows, ignorant and brutish, they would still be alive.

I hear voices, speaking English. They're coming closer and they want something in here. I will confront the intruders and get them to leave, if I can. It may mean my death. It may mean the deaths of all the Kobolds here. I am so sorry. I meant well. I will open the lock and hide the remaining Kobolds in that treasure room until the danger passes, then confront these men.

If I do not return, may the Father judge me justly for what I wished to do, and not for what I have done.

Josiah Tucker, 15 November 1882