4th September 365 SR

Miracles in Northern Yew?
After a bliss-filled honeymoon week at home with my beloved, I returned to the inn at Empath Abbey to seek customers for my itinerant craftworking. Its becoming harder to make a living now and times would be dire if I didn't have savings from the fat years of the '50s: before the blackrock monster-plague, before the ore seams began to erratically shift and overnight making gold-claims not worth the paper they were written on. And when us ordinary folk had more cash to spend.

Here, I thought - with a rebellion in full swing and battered and blunted gear to repair or replace - would be work enough for an itinerant blacksmith and tinker. The old woman, who had she but known it, started the uprising was burned at the stake by the Yew Militia for gathering herbs. It was her martyrdom that triggered a commoner rebellion in these parts of Yew.

Even then it was whispered that bones and ashes from her pyre were being kept as charms. But this was some months ago, and on my return to Empath I sense that fervour has if anything grown. Word has been spreading that miracles have been taking place attributable to this simple old woman - a single charred bone from her pyre capable of effecting miraculous cures and changing hands for staggering sums, the sound of a chorus of monks in the heavens singing her praises, and a blood-red halo seen around Trammel when its at full-moon. And today I have seen there are flowers placed at the Shrine of the Flame in Empath Abbey with offerings and prayers to the soul of "the Martyr Mary". Perhaps this is one of the secrets behind the rebels determination to fight on.