Utterly Mad

Thanks, plot holes like that are what I most want spotted. I've made the corrections in the main document.

Similarly, if he did have notes from being there, but has gone missing due to being put on a refugee ship, and has yet to be discovered, how did she end up with the notes?

Imagine a trunk or something like that kept in the attic or the basement. You go through things like that for one reason or another and find documents or letters that would give insight into the owners life before they left/died/disappeared. In this case, she found documents her father had inherited when his father died.

A bit of background on the writing, I was putting together a collection of lore for a game some friends wanted to make, based on scraps of short stories I'd written before. While I was doing that, I suddenly had a beginning, a middle, and an end to a story. I went ahead to write it when my friends decided they would rather work on commissions or get real jobs and this is the result.

edit: I'm thinking of axing the explanation stuff near the end.

As I say, more in depth review to follow later. Just a heads up, I'm going for constructive criticism, not just complements, and am going to pick this apart a bit. It's a good story with a pretty unique theme relative to most fantasy, don't get me wrong. But someone else from here who had me give them feedback on a story once said that most of the people here are too nice about things because everyone here is friends, and that having someone come in and tell them all the problems rather than just the good was very helpful. Hopefully you find the same.

That's fine fine. That's what's needed.