Though you first think about exploring the outskirts of this city, you decide it to be an ultimately poor idea - how laughable would it be if you were felled by a shot from an enterprising marksman, or fallen into some manner of hole or trap? You'd be better off getting to write to your family in Portblanc.

With your goal in mind, you go about setting up your tent inside the area where your own regiment's camp will be. It had been decided, you were told, that your regimental camp would be westwards of the current one, expanding upon it to ensure general safety - though part of you thought that it was so you would be the first ones hit if an relief army came barrelling from the westward hills.

With your lordly tent soon set, you began to write your letter, the sounds of carpenters and soldiers working on the background as you take your feathered quill to parchment.

To mine honoured brother,

I must entreat thy pardon for my long silence these past months. Though I did greatly desire to send thee some word, the nature of this campaign hath rendered such a thing most unfeasible. It hath now come to pass, however, that I am not likely to depart from my present station for many months hence, mayhap even years, though Splendour forbid it be so. If it be thy will, direct thy letters unto this place, and the bearer of this missive shall know well how to see them returned to me.

Much hath come to pass, I must say. I have felt myself the tremors of battle and seen with mine own eyes the great spillings of blood. It is not out of joy that I say this, but I myself have claimed the lifes of more than one foe. Say naught of this unto our mother, for the sake of her own health, but I have found that it to be entirely impossible, as a leader of men, to wholly shun myself of danger. But a week before I had written this, a band of Himmerians - yes, brother, giants - had seen it fit to attempt an ambush upon my person! Trouble not thyself either, brother, for by Splendour's grace, I reain unharmed, and the giants were slain.

This land is not as I had reckoned, dear brother. The heat is great, like the fiercest summers in Uharta, yet what surprised me most of all was the humidity - Though I had thought Portblanc, as a city by the sea, to be wet and oft rained upon, it is as naught but a desert compared to the unceasing showers of these hills i trod upon, and worst of all, it is not yet summer! I cannot fathom how those who dwell in the northern reaches of Straccia, where I am told it raineth more still—endure such a clime in any sensible fashion.

But I prattle too much of mine own affairs; tell me, what hath passed in Portblanc since my departure? How dost thou fare, Jonatan? I hope you are able to sate my thirst for news; Not since my days in Mascaloma have I been so long estranged from our home.

With mine enduring affection,
Don Alessandro Galliota, this 17th day of December, in the year of Our Splendour 1542