Greetings. I am Volgrimm Morlu, son of the Lantern Circle and a nameless wolf painter, born in 1787 AA within the walls of Carcosa, and for more than eight decades I have been witness to the Cradle at its lowest ebb and in its rare moments of ascent. I have walked its alleys under the stench of the Great Scourge and lectured in marble halls when the air was clear; dissected the dead, the aberrant, the mage, and the myth, and found each more complex than their reputations allow. I remember the horns on the watchtowers, the terror of refugees, the quicklime pits at dawn, and from these grew my suspicion of easy answers. Of the Slayer, whose name we cannot agree upon, I speak with respect, for whatever his motives, without him we might speak only in whispers. Of Wordermund, who bound predator and prey under one law, I write as a student of consequence, not a worshipper; his empire fell, but his example endures. These pages are dissections, not comforts, stripping away rumor, preserving what truth bears weight, and leaving the reader to decide what legend remains.

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—V. Morlu, Carcosa, 1899 AA