Horace's Folly

While Horace Gorman spent most of his career not leaving the walls of the Matratut Royal Academy, he did do the minimal of field research in his younger days. The most famous (or infamous) of these trips included a trip to the Wasted Lands to examine the ruins there that would eventually give way to the Door of the Fall.

Gorman was working with one of Matratut's top minds, Corell Starp to uncover artifacts near the lands of the Lithoni Tribesmen. It was while digging that he struck an underground stream. Living in a desert, the Lithoni rejoiced at this new and easy source of water, and Gorman and his team gladly gave them access to it and resumed their search in areas they hoped would be more fruitful.

Within a week all the Lithoni that had drunk the water were dead. All their crops which they had so diligently watered were now dead, and to this day nothing will grow in the area, now named Horace's Folly. The spring, also called Kek's Tears, is all that remains.

Horace himself never drank the water, but Starp had and has not yet recovered. He is still under close examination in the Catobi Sanitorium.

- From Lady Sybil DerUndar's biography of Horace Gorman