"Only some of it is ciphered." He'll trace with his finger so whoever wants to look over his shoulder such as Nenio can see which parts and reads it aloud.

"Like the Worldwound, but with fewer demons?"

"The person who wrote this sounds so sad. I think... they felt betrayed by their friends, and they thought they had to keep going with their plan, because if they stopped it would be saying that the way their friends hurt them didn't matter."

"What a fascinating research project! Do you think there is any connection to the 'Heart of Mystery' mentioned by the ghost?"

He's tracing out a planar diagram, trying to understand what the notes are actually suggesting.

"I know only what I've read you," Blai tells Nenio.

"...You'd have to be an archmage to pull it off, I think. But I guess that makes sense, if it was supposed to be kind of like the Worldwound."

"Hmm. I recommend visiting the Heart of Mystery in case it is possible to learn more. The benefit to our knowledge of planar rifts could be considerable."

"Is it on our way to Drezen?"

"...It is not. Why do you ask?"

"Well, if you'll have to be an archmage to pull it off then there will be no substantial delay in putting the information to use if you only visit the place after circling up a bit."

"Knowledge is still of value even if I am not yet sufficiently powerful to make direct use of it!"

"So is not getting eaten by demons because you ran off into the middle of the Worldwound, though."

"At any rate I don't want to divert the army over it. It has presumably been there for many years."

Emphatic nodding.

"We" (gesture at the wizards) "should all get together and look at the spell diagrams, I don't know if they're related but they might be. Or they might have something else useful."

"I suppose that is acceptable."

"Do you need anything from the rest of us to do that?"

"Paper and something to write with."

"Am I good to see what's in the other one?"

"Go ahead, Mr. Jefto."

The second chest has a rather different focus. By volume most of it is further containers, but those containers have diamond dust, ruby dust, spellsilver, some sort of red-and-blue marble with a hairline crack...

Discounting the marble, it's a considerable haul; the diamond dust alone could fund ten of the cheap Restorations or one of the expensive ones.

He whistles. "Sweet! Maybe Nenio was onto something about checking out the Heart of Mystery."

"A good haul," Blai agrees. "We can check out the Heart of Mystery another time. Is the marble magical or just broken?"

"Definitely magic. If I take a closer look I might be able to guess what it does, can you hand it to me?"