The Lore of Archmagus Salvatore of the Grotto

Close to Dream Master Lake lives a wizard, in a beautiful grotto filled with crystals, next to the giant waterfall. It looks like a natural grotto but, in a land filled with magic, who can tell. All the local children know he is a wizard from his white hat, a dead giveaway, but he calls himself a gardener and you don’t want to argue with wizards, even Zenlike ones.

The only time he lost his cool was when anyone approached the apple tree at the far end of his orchard. He had put a waist high wooden fence around it and a small sign which made it clear you should not cross it, or him!

One day, a few months ago, another white wizard turned up to talk to Salvatore and half the village found an excuse to walk past the grotto entrance trying to listen to their conversation. It was clear the second wizard felt something had changed and they needed to act now while Salvatore urged patience as they moved inside. The acoustics made it difficult to hear but they kept talking about ‘knowledge’ as well as ‘good and evil’.

What was clear to me, as I had been the only person there when he first arrived, was the look of fear and terror in his eyes when he first saw that tree. What causes that reaction in someone so powerful I do not even want to know as I have enough difficulty sleeping these days with my bad back.

Anyway the very next day I decided I had a responsibility to my family to put some distance between us and that place in case whatever the wizards feared came to pass. I quickly gathered some apples from the orchard floor for the long journey while my wife baked bread and collected clean water.

On the journey, as we walked through the heat of the day, almost all the food started to spoil very quickly but to this day one of the apples sits in my sack, as red and shiny as the day I collected it. I know I should probably just throw it away, but I can’t help but feel there is something else I am supposed to do with it.

• Note entered by clerk after being overheard in a Calista’s Citadel drinking establishment.

Entered by: 0xFa43…08e9 and preserved on chain (see transaction)