NOTE:

 

This is, we believe, as truthful a retelling as we can expect from that period in history, for the closed book was passed down through many generations and the order grew up around it, dedicated to trying to solve its mysteries. Some of our members may well have succeeded in working out how to open that book and even read some of it, but according to rumour they could never get far before descending into fear and paranoia, subsequently destroying any account of how it was opened.

 

Who knows what is written in there? Maybe the secrets of the universe, predictions of the future or a truth that will terrify us to our core. And who was this hag and what was in the forest that she guarded so fiercely? Hag is such a loaded description, arising from the skewed perspective of a people long gone. What did they mean with that word? Was she a horrible, evil old crone with warts and a cackle, or merely an unmarried woman over the age of twenty? We are far removed from the people of that time in many ways and cannot fathom their reasons.

 

All we know is that the book is now safely hidden somewhere in our deepest vaults, and the Order currently devotes itself to solving other mysteries, until that day when the lure of curiosity becomes too strong for someone in the Inner Circle once more…