Lore: Thalos' Memoir
Located in the hallway leading up to Lydusa in Bloodless Throne.
My father, King Kolket, was on most days a wise, measured Pan, having been a warlord in the times before plague. But as he watched his kingdom crumble to death and disease, he could not help but look back on his bloodthirsty ways and think it retribution. Yet for all his misery, he was a strong Pan. He would not bow to Fate, nor would he permit his people to do the same.
Those days on the Viilk Marzha were harsh. The Pan who did not wither from the sickness starved or went mad, and those whose eyes and tempers succumbed to craze were gathered up on a single vessel and cast away from the rest.
I wish I could say I did not witness my kin die in misery. I wish I did not watch a fellow Pan eat the flesh of his lifeless kin-brother. But in those dark times, I witnessed it all. We all did, and we looked away.
One day, Fate was particularly cruel. The darkness seemed unending around us, twisting and tossing our vessels in every direction. Those that broke apart vanished at once, sucked into the black, churning nothingness.
I do not know if we were struck by an object or caught in the grip of something beyond knowing, but our vessel was turned from its course and separated from the rest. I saw a glimpse of the king’s vessel on the faraway black horizon, and that was the last I ever saw of my father.
When the Viilk Marzha at last calmed, only a handful of vessels remained. The other Pan, shaking and terrified, scoured for those left alive, and counting me amongst their number, bowed their heads and groveled.
That weakling prince, whose patchy fur and short horns were once a constant source of humiliation, was now their king.
It was not long after we landed on this new shore that the plague caught up with us. Our agonizing journey across the Viilk Marzha had been in vain, or so we feared. Those few of us left grew sick and frail, myself among them, though not as sickly as the others. As I had endured the affliction once before, it would not take my body so easily a second time.
I left my dying people in a secluded gully and set my hooves upon the untrodden paths of this strange jungle. I did not intend to be away for more than a day. Even now, I cannot tell you what I sought to find, but I knew that my father would never allow his people—nor myself—to lower their horns and give up. I am the son of Kolket the Warhanded; I could not sit idly by and do nothing!
What I did not expect to find was her.
I heard a strange, sweet harmony emanating from a cave, and with the remaining bits of my strength, dragged my way into its mouth. For each day, the plague seeped deeper and deeper into my body. I lay on the cold rock, panting and shaking. That is when I saw a strange being. 
She was at first demure and would flee whenever I writhed or called out to her. After a while, she was not so fearful, and though she kept her distance, she began to sing again. That sweet voice, I will never forget it. Her song was to me a panacea. Her voice enveloped my senses and cleansed my body of disease, my mind of despair, my heart of its lonesomeness.
She gave me the gift of her language and told me her name: Lydusa, Spirit of the Land, daughter of Stem and Stream. She asked me to stay with her, and in my awe-inspired state, I obliged, though my suffering kinfolk were never far from my mind.
Those precious and private memories I made with her I will not commit to ink, as they belong only to her and I. A year passed outside, but in that cave, in the embrace of her immortality, it was a blink. Selfishly, I wish it had lasted longer. But she gave me the cure for the disease that tormented my people, and so I returned to them a savior.
After my time with her, I knew that Fate had forgiven us. I felt deeply that Lydusa and I were destined to meet; that Fate had aligned every cruelty and hardship I had endured in my life to bring us together. We would build an empire eclipsing those kingdoms of my ancestors, and graciously rule this new land together for centuries, mortal and goddess.
