[This leather-bound journal appears to be relatively new, it's cover and the pages within are free from any blemishes and stains, with the sole exception of a few dark lines running across a small portion of the journal's cover. Written across the front of the cover are the words "The musings of an Outcast". Immediately below the title is the name of the journal's author, Mebrith Galin]

For some time now, I have felt the urge to record my thoughts, to put them onto parchment. I do not know what first caused this thought to come into my mind, perhaps I seek to leave something behind to be remembered by, or perhaps I merely sought to gain some small measure of peace and serenity by penning my thoughts down, and by doing so telling someone else all about myself.

Fenmarel. Is this a sign of my faith weakening? I do not know what to think anymore.

I must push these thoughts aside and prepare myself for the coming battle, one of the local villages seeks to hire our blades to aid in the defense of their town... their mine to be exact. As always, I am amazed to see how these humans are more then willing to let complete strangers help them defend their own. If they could never hold on to what was theirs, then perhaps they never deserved such things in the first place.

The horn has sounded, our "valiant leader" Maruk is preparing to march. I can only hope that I survive this battle.

We should have left the platform and the mines for our contractors to deal with, but Maruk, still elated by his victory against the Black Claws and eager to finish our contract paid little heed to the danger before us, and so we found ourselves deep within the mines, the Surface nothing more then a faint shaft of sunlight shining down the shaft. We were trapped.

We spent what seemed to be hours floundering through the mines, the others failed to realise the gravity of the situation. They talked, laughed and even made a handful of (Crude) jokes amongst one another as we walked. How they were able to remain in such high spirits was beyond my powers of reasoning.

Eventually we set up a makeshift camp near the end of another painfully long stretch of tunnels. One of the band--The irksome Gnome woman--was to keep watcch while we made camp, but I still found myself unwilling to place my life in the hands of that one--or anyone else within the band for that matter--and so I found myself standing watch alongside her.

Hm. It would seem that Maruk is finally getting ready to break camp.

This does not bode well. We have only been in these mines for a few hours and already we have lost two men--Although I cannot help but feel some small measure of relief at the death of the Gnomish male, seeing how he sought to have me fed to the Goblins in an attempt to placate them--But... there is nothing we could do about this and so we moved on, taking comfort with the thought that we were still alive and pondering over the Goblin chieftan's last words to us; "Be wary of--[The rest of this sentence has been rendered illegible by a large smear of ink]

As we continued to make our way through the caverns, a strange... stillness seemed to settle over our band as they slowly began to realise the true nature of their predicament. We were in a mine far below the surface, and we only seemed to be going deeper into the caverns with every step we took. At that moment, I could not help but feel a twinge of pity for my comrades, as much as I'd have liked to convince myself otherwise, I had grown attached to them... most of them, at any rate. None of them need to know of this though.

Odd. I seem to have a sudden hunger for a slice of pie...