Diary of an Ooze Witch (Joseph de Steel) 1.1 - 1.2

1.1

My name is Joseph de Steel, second son to the illustrious Steel Mining Company. Ours is a business that stretches across the kingdom of Widegard, providing the lionshare of its mining needs. Based in the eastern city of Steelbane, we have helped build it up from the makeshift camps it once was generations ago and into the sprawling metropolis that stands to this day. As the second son in line to the family business, I am wanting of nothing as all of my needs have been met. I have wealth, health, and sufficient sense of self. Any woman would be glad to have me and I am a credit to my family’s reputation.

But even with all of this, I am given pause. Despite all of my accomplishments and accolades, there existed an emptiness within me that is without rest. It is a nagging yearning that eats away at me in my soul that I cannot quite quench. At first, it was a minor thing easily ignorable, filling it with trivial desires to numb the feeling. But over time, this hollowness began to eat away at me, keeping me up at night to the wee morning. I had everything a young man could want, and yet still, I am unfulfilled. Why was I not satisfied? The question weighed heavily on my shoulders, turning simple tasks into arduous labor.

I attempted to relieve my listlessness through other means. I made donations to the local church, turned to charity and funded projects to uplift the poor, hosted lavish parties open to all as a way of glutting myself on frivolity, anything to assuage the emptiness in my soul. This hollowness of spirit continues to plague me, haunt my troubled mind like a specter. Perhaps I should redouble my efforts…

---

1.2

I have taken it upon myself to petition Father about overseeing the family business dealings outside of the city. I reasoned that the Steel family needed someone to truly grow our business into other cities amidst the kingdom. While we were quite entrenched in our immediate surroundings along the eastern provinces, the western kingdom was well within our grasp and it would be foolish to not strike while the iron was hot. I was in the middle of informing him of Steelbane’s market share of the ore in the kingdom when he stopped me and mentioned that he would mull over the idea. With my older brother seeing through things in Placedo, he seems reluctant to send his second son so far from his power base. I have faith that he will give his approval in due time, as my record of diligence and loyalty to our family should shine through to him with any consideration.

It may seem fickle to push to get out from under Father’s immediate control, but I am nothing if not meticulous in my scheming. I have been afraid that I am stagnating in Steelbane, slowly leeched of my passions over the drudgery of this iron forged city. I have ill known much more than this and fear that I am destined to become a graying dullard, made hollow by a life of mundanity and comfort. By arranging myself to keep active, I am taking my life back, to find my purpose in the world.

I told an old friend of mine about my ploy over a tankard of ale. Jeru is good company as long as you put a drink in his hand and a tune in his heart, though his advice tends to be gauche if not a little blunt. After hearing what I had intended to do, he burst out laughing and swatted me on the back. He told me that for all my bluster and rhetoric, the crux of my problems were that of a romantic nature. In his opinion, all I really needed to do was find a nice girl with some meat on her bones and plow her like a Ventian Farmer does their fields. I found his analysis scandalous and told him as much, calling him a drunkard to boot. He laughed the insult off and continued to push that a woman would put my ills at ease. It felt like an all too simple answer to my woes, to simply bed a woman. I tried to explain romance was never my forté, but Jeru continued to lay into me, saying that romance had nothing to do with it. He said that I should simply have a roll in the hay and leave it at that.

While I can appreciate his different perspective, his answers tend to be borderline degenerate. And yet, I still treat his suggestion with some thought. Surely it couldn’t be so easy? Bleh, such simple and base concerns are beneath me… So why do I consider them so thoroughly?

• Joseph de Steel