It's been quite some time since I've committed thoughts to paper, but please endure my poor quill work for a moment. I wouldn't be writing if I didn't?t feel it was important, hopefully this record will continue to exist when my existence has finally been extinguished.

I am Okiho McKnickle, I am a gnome who lived a full and complete life as a mercantile accountant before the corruption. I still recall, what used to be fond memories of time spent with my family and associates before the corruption. You see, I am a simple person, as long as my family are beside me, I could ignore the threat approaching from the east. And so I did, and encouraged everybody around me to do so as well. Many died; I can feel now that my devotion to ignoring the problem, echoed across my society may have led to the desperate situation we find ourselves in now. My family and I traveled west, to the sheltered islands long before the fall of cities, before the fall of heroes and decimation of Tazoon. Tazoon is still standing; of coarse I'm not talking about the buildings, for the buildings are but ruins without the people.

I've been old for some time, long past my youth before the corruption entered my life. I had few regrets and little unfinished business when illness struck me. Somehow, though I do not believe in life after death, I felt sure that this illness would reunite me with my deceased wife. Though I knew my family may be saddened by my departure, my life had been full, and it is my opinion that how the story ends is quite important to the quality of story as a whole. There comes a time in life, when death is no longer a persistent foe to be fled, but rather, a welcome retirement from living. However, as I lay on my deathbed, I felt a horrible fear. The natural order of Istaria has been broken, death is no longer release, and the idea of rising again to hurt my children's children drove me to call an able bodied neighbor over to assure that I would not rise again. The thought of becoming an unthinking, tormented minion of the enemy I'd refused to face in life was horrific. I'm sad to say, that my last thoughts were utterly selfish, before I died, I asked that I be burned so as to leave nothing for the blight to take.

Since then, I've become a firm believer in the balance of nature. You see, death is no longer a part of the life cycle, if you believe the historians by some nefarious magic user, or a god run amok. Because death no longer conforms to the circle, the mages of Istaria sought to combat this 'blight' with their power. Thus nature balanced itself. To combat a death that lives, they created lives that refused to die. Their sacrifice gave a gift to Istaria, and everyone who received this gift, came to be called 'Gifted'. A gifted individual has a body, a spirit that can endure any torment, any wound, any pain, any disease and recover to life. We, the gifted of Istaria were given a task; wage an eternal war, for the people, in the name of gods. We do so to this day, but the war we are fighting is already lost.

The blight is everywhere; its effects have spread even to the sheltered islands, raising ancient bodies and warping animals. Maggots grow incredibly large devouring the tainted flesh, few domesticated animals remain, and the wilderness is overrun with the power of blight. The gifted go out every day and rend the flesh, break the bone and scatter the spirits of those raised by the blight. One death takes them from us; three deaths send them from us. I can hardly recall the grief I felt when my son died. I suppose that since he was the last of my living family, I surrendered my emotions to the same funeral pyre that sent him to the sky. This is why or at least an example why, the war is already lost.

The gifted fight the physical manifestation of the blight, the horrors, the dangers, the walking dead. However, for every one we slay, another is created from the fallen of Istaria. Every time a fallen rises again, more fall to its hunger, its anger against life. We're fighting it still, even though there is nobody left to fight for. Every face I see now, I can tell. All of them possess the gift. The only people left are the ones who cannot die at all. The war is lost, but it will continue for as long as the gifted have strength of will left to oppose the blight. And that is what it comes down too, how much longer the will of the gifted can oppose blight. How much longer can their will be fed, surrounded only by other gifted. You see, the gift grants eternal life, and eternal life detaches you from life itself. I can't say I've lived, since the moment I died felt life anew thanks to the gift. Since the moment I breathed again, I've fought to save the lives of others, through magic, with mace and shield. I've not once enjoyed the things that make life worth living. Never again will I see children playing in the streets, never again will my cat purr against my ankles as I garden. All of these things have been taken from me in the pursuit of an empty victory. On the other hand, I'm certain these things still exist. The gifted, though deprived of their mortality, continue trying to live mortal lives, excelling in the pursuits of crafts, building themselves empty houses, living empty lives whenever they feel like rousing the energy. However, almost every gifted I've met has one task on their mind. One task, which they perform in utter silence apart from a few barked commands or cries of pain.

For each hour spent trying to maintain their mortal lives, they spend days in silence, felling blighted foes, felling forests for lumber. The gifted need neither food, nor sleep. Without needs to maintain their life, their lives become abstract, unable to restore their willpower, the one thing they need to continue their life. Just as life on Istaria is lost now to the blight, the gifted are failing in their war; because they simply cannot find a reason to lift their weapons against an endless horror. In a war of attrition, the gifted will fail, because the gifted still carry their hopes and dreams while the blight seeks only to infect the land completely.

An example? Surely these words will be met with mortal reactions. This cannot be true, how can this be? I do not understand, therefore it must be false. Okiho must have lost his mind. Don?t listen to a madman. However, those that dwell on my words may find the truth within them.

I went, with a party of allies to the island of Lesser Aradoth, some time ago. Our intent was to purge a patch of blight from a small islet off the coast. We approached with weapons drawn and the intent of hungry wolves. We fought with the horrific constructs of blight that dwelled there for hours. In those hours we fought out way across the twisted landscape. We could have fought forever there. No matter how many avatars of the blight we felled, the blight itself did not leave. The war is lost, because the gifted cannot fight the blight at its source, we're fighting the symptoms, the pain of a wound, rather than the wound itself. We could fight until the stars in the sky fade away, until the sun goes dark and the moon glows green. We cannot win fighting just the undeath, the mutation, the horror. However, we have no way to fight the blight itself.

Even if we could, I fear it is too late; the gifted that remain are too far separated from their mortality to be capable of returning to the lives they left behind. Even if they could return, their neighbors are gone.