How did you maintain your ammunition and powder supplies on your journey?

"I started my journey carrying a lot. I didn't have to worry about it until later. When I started to run low, I spoke with my darling wife-to-be, and we prepared a production pipeline. There are plenty of mines in Drangleic, so we weren't hurting for ingredients."

Is the material used in bombs compatible?

"There are different mixes for different things, but you can interchange them without too much issue most of the time. My gonnes are durable enough that they can use anything.

All those explosive barrels you found throughout your journey– I bet you wondered what they were for. It's not like the King was excavating, right? Those powder kegs were all for gonnes. It's just that hollows aren't exactly great at maintaining weapons that have a chance to explode."

Are your prosthetics commonplace or are they unique?

"The iron ones I had at the start were common enough. The sort of thing given to servants of the King who needed to be fully functional. Most soldiers just got by with hooks and pegs.

The ones I have now are my magnum opus. I worked with the finest craftsmen in the East and an expatriate of the land of giants to make it. Look at this beauty! That's wood of a tree of giants!"

How prevalent were soapstones at that time, of any variety?

"About the same. Summoning wasn't the only solution. You could always just ask someone for help instead of conjuring a shade of someone long gone. Of course, that was more for the hero types. I mostly just ran through.

As far as messages go, I learned to ignore them in the brief time I had between becoming undead and Aldia taking me. You can only read 'woman ahead, therefore try holding with two hands' so many times."

As impressive as a King's Gate is, all in ebony and gold, the manor yard was and probably still is a dump. Half the trees are dead, and there's half-rotten leaves everywhere like the ass end of autumn. If I'd dropped a firebomb, I probably could have set the whole place on fire and saved both of us some time.

The stained glass windows on the manor itself still look beautiful from a distance, but I'll tell you now that the Duke paid very poorly for them, and they don't actually have a design. Just giant panels of noncommittally-colored glass. You'd think the mad sorcerer would have some arcane symbols hidden in them, but no.

Of course, there's ivy crawling down from everything. That's the main difference between the Ducal manor and other spooky, abandoned buildings. The ivy is crawling down. I never learned what they were growing on the roof, but I'd bet you it was related to the green blossoms of Oolacile, because everything just has to connect to some lost kingdom in the north. Always the mountainous north; never a pleasant beach in the south.

Anyway, you might remember that old shed in front of the manor. I never learned whether it was a servants' hovel or something some undead built while looting the manor, but it was occupied when I arrived. By a looter, of course. I saw the bonfire from the gate and was curious as to the poor bastard who had somehow gotten locked inside the walls.

I approached and tried calling out. A danger, maybe, but I had confidence in my aim. If a fight was going to break out, then it'd be better to start it while I was still at a safe distance. To my surprise, one of the southern knights came out and waved a friendly hello.

Ah, by "southern," I mean of Drangleic. Mirrah, across the harsh mountains from the Aldia dukedom. I pitied him if he managed to cross that border, only to get trapped on the grounds of that manor of madness.

Oh, you know the fellow? Aslatiel of Mirrah? How's he doing now?

Ah. Hollowed. Well, that is unfortunate.

He was certainly a little rattled when I came upon him. He jittered and twitched a bit. No doubt he'd seen glimpses of things in the manor which he rather would not have. I wasn't able to tell how close to hollowing he was, though. He never removed that bearded iron mask the knights of Mirrah wear. Our interactions were quite straightforward.

"Ho there! What possesses a man to make camp on these defiled grounds?"

"Desperation," he said. "The Duke of Aldia is said to possess peerless treasures. I don't expect to survive this Curse, but…"

He gripped his sword's blade in a strange way.

"If I could bring something back. Something to settle the wars or at least to assure someone's safety… That would be worth this accursed body."

It was a practical goal. You almost never see those in undead. Everyone thinks they can save the world just because they don't stay dead as well as they should. Well, I suppose I'm talking to the wrong person about lofty dreams, aren't I?

I told the knight, "You'll probably have better luck in the castle. Maybe drag home a few good sets of armor."

He said something like, "We have plenty of war materiel in Mirrah. I was hoping for something more… magical. Not that I would recognize it if it bit me."

Of course, I decided to be a bit smart and said, "Oh, you mean like all the monsters inside which used to be people but now try to bite your face off?"

He went quiet, of course, and I awkwardly walked away. Certainly didn't mention that I was one of them.

Now, inside, there are a bunch of traps. The ones which were actually built as traps probably don't work anymore. The "traps" which are actually just experiments put in cages too small for them or too close to a fire or whatnot are absolutely everywhere.

Honestly, working my way around everything – the basilisks and demonic mirrors and all – makes for an interesting technical piece. However, since you probably managed to brute force your way through, I won't bore you with the details of me slowly making my way up the central staircase.

I of course avoided the giant basilisk you no doubt killed for the ore refined in its belly and entered the lock chamber. The manor is of course divided into the front, which at one point actually managed to entertain guests – and the rear, where Aldia didn't even have to pretend to not be a monster. There's only that one passage between the halves, and only one door may open at a time. That way, there's no risk of an experimental subject (or a guest who got lost) escaping.

So, how did I get out to begin with? Well, to be frank, I think Aldia arranged it to see what would happen. Not for me specifically, mind. I'm sure you've seen some of his handiwork in places far from the manor. By no means was I the only creature which escaped when an explosion damaged one of the manor walls.

So anyway, I made my way to the stupid dragon statue and willingly trapped myself in the back half of the manor by pulling the chain in its mouth.

Now, there's an interesting story as to why Aldia has so many old paintings and why most of them are faded to black… and why some of them have scabs. And why there are white-robed cultists who don't work for him sometimes hiding behind the paintings. But if you haven't already heard it, then you're better off asking the madman yourself.

One of the cultists who did work for him greeted me when I stepped into the darkened main hall. Sort of. The cultist wasn't exactly working for him at the time. That giant amber globe the dracolytes wear over their faces was glowing like a sun and flashed as it spoke.

"Ah, Experiment 631. What a pleasant surprise to see you have not only endured but returned here. For what purpose have you sought-?"

So anyway, I shot the dracolyte in the dome, and the shattering amber made a mess of everything. Blood and grey matter all over the floor.

I said something "heroic," to the effect of, "Show yourself, coward! I have a deal to make!"

A trail of fire lit in the dracolyte's blood, and it snaked down the hall before splattering on a door. Well, as the Carimins say: in for a penny, in for a pound. I followed and opened the door. The next room was almost orderly. Someone probably packed everything away neatly before going totally mad.

There were glowing green bottles everywhere. Now if you're familiar, I'm not saying that it's that fancy, glowing, green glass. Whatever was in the bottles was glowing. If I knew an alchemist at the time, I would have swiped one. Honestly, I might go back and do that now. Some of my clients in Catarina would surely be interested.

Mind, I'm not totally ignorant as to what sort of effect might have been contained there. Did you get a good look at the shelves?

The ten-petaled Green Blossom?

Perhaps something related to stamina regeneration since the actual plant was nearly driven extinct. Or maybe you know the significance of it as a symbol? You know whose symbol it is and the significance of it appearing amongst Aldia's secret research.

Well, I certainly didn't. Not then. I knew I'd seen it before, across the sea, but I didn't know the context.

Anyway, I heard the sound of a secret passage opening downstairs, so I chased after it. It was that little room with the bonfire, right above the spiked cage full of putrifying giant-gore.

Just the same as you, I approached the bonfire without as much caution as I ought have. I didn't intend to link with it. I'd have been a fool to have trapped myself in the manor like that. But a bonfire has that draw, you know.

Of course, Aldia exploded out of it and scared the piss out of me. And by piss, I mean bullets. I shot him right in the eye twice. Of course, the bastard is effectively immortal, so he just blinked out the lead slugs.

I don't think I even minded that he had been reduced to a severed head made out of roots and vines. I regretted that I didn't have the firedrake stones set, so that I could light him on fire. Not that fire is his weakness as he is now.

"Your reflexes haven't failed you," he said. "Yet I cannot imagine you have endured all this time without decay. You have restored your humanity recently, haven't you?"

"Yeah, yeah," I admitted, knowing what was coming next.

Almost unconsciously, I followed the orders I was used to. Order he didn't even have to give. I removed my breastplate and coat, then my tunic. Wedged into my Darksign – and no, I won't show you – was a ring of ceramic shards bound together with silver. One of those shards is what makes the King's Ring work. It took Aldia several attempts to reduce it to a reasonable size.

Inside that ceramic ring was an addon. Something extra. Something that didn't belong, that interfered with the regular functioning of the Darksign. It was a crumbling black stone which I scraped out with two fingers.

The Duke, severed plant-head that he had become, extended a vine to me. In it, I knew there would be a pearl. Without looking, I pressed it firmly into the device, then dressed again. He took the time to lecture me.

"Take care not to hollow too quickly, 631. I have precious few imitation pearls remaining. It won't be long before you must seek the genuine article."

"The woman with the pearl crown," I said. "Works for me. I came because I want to go back. You can get me a ship and crew, can't you? Have you run out of giant corpses yet?"

Now, he said, "Ah, that project is long since concluded. Yet how kind of you to offer, 631. Whatever would possess you to request passage to that phantom island of horrors?"

Of course, if I wasn't half in a daze and half pissed off, I would have snorted. Instead, I just said, "Are you really asking that, when you've made worse?"

He found it hilarious. Have you heard him laugh since he became a plant-thing? It's horrible. He's got at least three voices, and they don't stick together much when he gets emotional. The woman who speaks the loudest when he gets sassy-!

Well, he stopped laughing after a moment. Gave me as serious a look as a severed head can give someone.

"Truly?" he said. "You wish to return to that place? The land Vendrick failed to subjugate, and his father Ferran before him?"

He paused and loomed over me for effect. It shouldn't have intimidated me, but… my body won against my mind. Even now, I have an instinctive dread of the man.

He finished what I knew he would say: "You would return to the land where a monster slew the men under your command and cost you your limbs? Where you crawled away like a worm until an enemy took pity on you?"

My knees would have buckled if they weren't iron. I grit my teeth and hissed at him.

"I'm going to fucking kill that dragon."

"Well," he said, "that is a Want. Perhaps we can be of use to one another.

I will do what I can to prepare a ship. My astronomers can plot a course by the stars, but you will need a map to navigate the rocks which surround the isle and sink any ship which tries approach. All my copies have been lost to me. Since poor Vendrick is no longer with us and hid his lore for fear of his dear foe, you must seek another source.

Seek Ferran the Last, the King of Iron. He may yet possess a map, scarred into the steel or stone of his fortress as memorial of his failure."

Of course, I didn't know what you did. I hadn't spoken with the talking cat or anything. So I said, "Isn't the Old Iron King long dead?"

"If only," the Duke said.

That monster stays so perfectly calm, it's hard to believe he was human once. Yet here, he spoke with such disgust, I was taken aback.

"Vendrick had it in his head to leave his enemies alive, that he might extract more from them in the future. Ferran lives in prison of his own devising. Travel to the Iron Keep and speak with him beneath Eygil's Idol."

I had questions, but I wasn't about to disturb a moody madman. I roughly knew how to get to the capital keep of old Alken, though I'd never been there. I knew I should leave immediately, else Aldia might never let me leave. As I turned to go, the Duke gave me one last instruction.

"While you pass through, it would benefit us both if you should perform an additional task. You lack the strength to slay a holder of a Great Soul like Ferran. However, removing the loose end of his first wife should be within your means. She has failed in hers. Her pitiful form is crucially vulnerable to fire. Your bombs should make short work of her."

He didn't ask if I agreed. He assumed I would listen to his order without question, like I used to. Like one of his monsters.

He just added: "Return here once you have spoken with Ferran. There will be further work to be done."