Story: Part One Outline
Character: Aelis the Ronin Shield Maiden

Letter One-
With any luck, this works.
My name is Aelis, Shield Maiden formerly of the Guard of Illbrachenhauter Keep. I seek a train, it's a thing of many different names, the Locomotive, the Train of Decay, the Steam Engine Slaughterhouse. I hope to find it. All I need to continue is food, water and shelter. In these unnamed woods, food and water is unpleasant but plentiful and I carry my tower shield as shelter on my back. 
My life has not ended. I am still alive and with nowhere else to go and an abundance of years stretching out before me, I plan to waste my time seeking this mystical train. I have no desire to spend my time in any other fashion and I no longer have anything keeping me from doing so. I am nearly two hundred days into my journey but have not recorded my journeys until now.
From where I stand, I see a long journey ahead. Perhaps writing my journeys will ease my anxieties about the decades I am about to willingly spend… or willingly waste.
Aelis

Letter Two-
I have… found the Train of Decay.
I only wrote my first letter three days ago. I expected to have only enough to speak of after a week's travels in a years long journey to seek the train, but it has revealed itself to me… perhaps before I was ready for it.
My journey has come to an end. I am having difficulty approaching the thing. When my inspection is complete, my journey will come to an abrupt end. Perhaps amidst its cabins, I will find something worth bringing back to society.
Aelis

Letter Three-
I was able to hook myself onto the last cabin of the still moving train and climb aboard. I have traveled four cabins and I believe this to be the last one.
So far uneventful. The kinds of disgusting vermin, both magical and non-magical, that you'd expect from an accursed place. It is more cramped than I expected, room enough for me, but perhaps less so for my tower shield. How I long for the wide open battlefield that defines my most glorious victories. How I long… for… space? I long for something. I long for something I once had, but I'm not certain that thing has a name. Not anymore, anyway.
Aelis

Letter Four-
In a boxcar much further than the length of the train that I had originally counted, I have found the body of an old woman. Her throat has been slashed open. This was a grievous, fatal injury that was not committed to the body by any blade of anything but increasingly jagged quality. This was done by talons or, wishing to not let my imagination get the better of me, perhaps thick, sharpened fingernails. Yet she sustains no other injury? An animal would have left some other wound, perhaps eaten at her body, but…
She seemed to be a woman of great importance. Donned in strange talismans and silken robes, I imagine she was a religious figure. The poor thing. What was she doing here? Why would she be killed so brutally… and then left behind like an unwanted child left to the fore winds?
I… think I intend to find out.
Aelis

Letter Five-
A letter, unsigned, speaks of a man-creature called The Hollow King.
These tidings are grim. I found the letter behind scattered, broken furniture in the same room as the old woman's body.
Surely, this ghastly creature of undeath and bile is the thing that killed her. She was, of course, unable to defend herself. As long as I can carry my shield, however, I will not be. The Hollow King will not catch me unaware and will find me itching for a fight. He's all I've got left, after all.
Aelis

Letter Six-
I've been approached by a mouse. It's a brave little thing, undeniably. He approached me as though I was not roughly his size six hundred times over.
He responds to my words. At times I wonder if he might speak, were I only to ask him the correct question. I've asked him yes or no questions, but he doesn't shake his head or nod it. Perhaps I'm mistaking an uncommon amount of affection for intelligence? I don't know. There's something different about this.
Aelis

Letter Seven-
Dust has found my shield somehow. I'd like to think that the dusty halls are to blame… and yet I begin to wonder how long I've spent in here.
I find life to be simpler in here. My quest to find this train curved a million ways and tried for years to throw me off its trail, as if to dissuade me, but in contrast, the endless halls of this train drive me ever forward. I need not worry where I go next, my destination is the next room.
Eventually the Hollow King will show his wretched face and I will take revenge for a stranger who deserved better. And if he doesn't, then I will leave the train and seek him out until my dying day.
The thought comforts. It probably shouldn't.
Aelis

Letter Eight-
Another body.
A younger woman. In the prime of her life. Did she not appear so malnourished, she could have easily been mistaken for one of the Guard of Illbrachenhauter Keep.
Her skin is a very pale icy blue. And… I do not know what killed her. Her body is cold to the touch, an icy cold, not simply the cold of flesh bereft of life, but feeling of frost.
I found the mouse next to her body. The thing was staring up at me, seeming to draw my attention to her lifeless face. I asked the mouse for more information, for more anything… desperately. But he didn't answer. Naturally.
I would feel so much better moving on if I could simply see what killed her. I need to find out, and soon.
Aelis

Letter Nine-
I've still not left the body's side. A fear of moving forward has gripped my heart. 
Something deeply sinister is at work. Here's what I know. The woman is wearing religious garments, though much plainer than the garments worn by the old woman. This younger woman has no visible wounds. There are no letters or identifying objects on or around her.
I shall need to compare her to the older woman.
Aelis

Letter Ten-
The train is closing itself behind me! I've only discovered this now. I intended to move back to the old woman's body but the train has blocked me off from doing so.
This place is deeply sinister, a darkness runs through its veins and it has infected me without my even knowing it. I must leave. Finding the creature who killed these two women I never knew is not worth allowing this place to manipulate me further.
But I know I can't.
Aelis

Letter Eleven-
It has been two days since I've eaten. It's time to move on. The train holds a greater promise of food and supplies than the woods surrounding the train, or at least so I… seem to be convinced? I can hardly recall a memory of the thick forests surrounding this locomotive.
I have three options in front of me: stay here and starve, never finding out what happened to this poor woman; continue to the next boxcar and hope to find another lead; or leave the train. I can do any of these three things, but only one of them is my job.
I'm taking one last look at the body.
Aelis

Letter Twelve-
There was a strange blue crystal lodged in the throat of the body. I would be lying if I didn't say it wasn't some amount of relief to find. This was a violent act against an innocent woman, and I am prepared to stand, shield brazen, against a violent act. A magician… or perhaps an act of madness? I feel less prepared to challenge. I may still do some good in this place, if only I can find out where it needs being done.
Aelis

Letter Thirteen-
It has been too many boxcars. Monsters that threaten no one but me, the woman who voluntarily approaches them over and over again. Nothing has happened.
The death of my Admiral sent us all in opposite directions. Admiral Outashak was deceived by one of her very own guard and none of us were there to prevent it. The traitor betrayed not only the Admiral who gave her food, shelter, but a reason to move on, but us… the women who depended on her.
Life is growing cold and empty again. I can't keep going like this. I am a tool worthy of use. I must be, right? I was not prepared for deception, but I am now! I would prevent another death like hers… even if history speaks to the contrary. Perhaps by continuing on this path, I can divert the stream that history has set for me.
There's dust on my shield again.
Aelis

Letter Fourteen-
I found a woman again today. A live one. She offered me food and supplies and I offered her my services in exchange.
Madame Fermi, as she refers to herself, asked me to deliver a letter for her. I found myself compelled to take the task, but horrified at the thought of leaving the train without finding the Hollow King and exacting the revenge I have spent so much of my time on.
The letter is for the church. Madame Fermi is requesting a new protégé. I asked her if I could offer my services otherwise. Reluctant to allow me to feed off of her hospitality for free, she asked that I either complete her request for a new protégé or move on in the train, having committed the task of taking a helpless woman's supplies for no recompense.
I asked her what she needed a protégé for and she told me the last one had failed her, and did not have the strength necessary to complete a task of extreme religious importance. And…
And she told me to sleep on it if I must. I plan to ask her about the task this protégé would take on tomorrow.
Aelis

Letter Fifteen-
The thing that has laid Madame Ulster so brutally to death comes ever closer. With a new protégé at my side, my chances of not only finding it but confirming my sightings of the crass, murderous beast have increase tenfold.
The truth will come to light. I may not see the truth here, but what I can see from here, with eyes blessed and voice heard, is that whatever the truth is, it will be found.
Dictated but not read by Madame Fermi
Written by Aelis Alkaffen, Shield Maiden of the Guard of Illbrachenhauter Keep

END OF PART ONE
