Unlike my father and beloved Uncle Alistair and so many previous generations of Kelforts, I was gripped by wanderlust in my youth and left home shortly after my eighteenth birthday. For thirteen years I traveled the world and beheld such wonders, from the vast Library of Talruah to the bawdy taverns and pleasure houses of the great port city of Bormelo and even the great jungles of the Southern Isles. Every day was a new adventure and life was good. Until one day when, after recovering from a night of wine and song in the city of Corthell, I received an envelope bearing our family's signet ring and another envelope stained with blood. I recognized my uncle's handwriting in the letter, though the words appeared to have been written with an unsteady hand. But what was written shook me to my core...

My dear beloved Alexander,

I write to you in haste and desperation. By my own hand, ruin has come to our family.

You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor?

Like your father and grandfather before him, I lived all my years in that ancient rumor shadowed manor, fattened by decadence and luxury, and yet I began to tire of conventional extravagances. I hungered for something...more, especially after you departed on your adventures. Singular, unsettling tales from my youth suggested the mansion was built upon the ruins of an ancient city and within these ruins lay a gateway to some fabulous and unnameable power. Foolishly, I resolved to find this city and the power that lay within.

Over the following years, with relic and ritual, I bent every effort towards the excavation and recovery of those long buried secrets. My pursuit exhausted what remained of our family fortune on swarthy workmen and sturdy shovels. At last, in the salt soaked crags beneath the manor's lowest foundations, we found what remained of this lost city that was built long before recorded history. Further excavations led us to that great portal of antediluvian power.

What we found inside...what we awoke...no words could describe it.

Those who did not succumb to their own madness were devoured by the horrors that lay within. I can still smell the blood and hear the screams. In the end, I alone fled laughing and wailing through those accursed ruins and blackened arcades of antiquity. Until I reached the surface and consciousness failed me.

You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial?

No more.

It is a festering abomination, laid claim to by the terrible forces which I unleashed in my greed and pride. I beg you, dear nephew, to return home and claim your birthright so that you may deliver our family from the ravenous clutching shadows of what lies within the darkest dungeon.

With all my love,

Alistair Kelfort, Lord of Barhallen

As my eyes fell upon his signature and then upon the signet ring I now wore, the reality of the situation fell upon my shoulders like a heavy blanket. The day I feared for thirteen years had finally arrived.

It was time to go home.

-Excerpt from the writings of Alexander Kelfort, Lord of Barhallen

This was created in a flash of inspiration due to the fantastic game Darkest Dungeon. If you get the chance to, play this game. It is incredible! Incredibly hard, too.

And in case anyone is wondering, Darkest Dungeon is the property of Red Hook Studios.