Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

In the spring of 1845, two of the finest ships in the British navy sailed out of England and into the far north, carrying one hundred and twenty-nine men and the confident hopes of an empire. Their commander was Sir John Franklin, a celebrated Arctic explorer, and their mission was to conquer the last unnavigated stretch of the fabled Northwest Passage, the sea route through the frozen maze of the Canadian Arctic that had lured and destroyed sailors for centuries. The ships were named Erebus and Terror — words meaning darkness and dread — and they were provisioned for years, armored against the ice, and equipped with every advantage of the age. They were seen by other vessels one last time that summer, moored to an iceberg, waiting for the way to open. And then they sailed on into the white labyrinth and were never seen again by European eyes. Every one of the one hundred and twenty-nine men died. The full story of how they perished, and why so total and terrible a disaster overtook t...

In the summer of 1925, a British colonel named Percy Harrison Fawcett plunged into the dense green vastness of the Brazilian Amazon in search of a ruined city he was certain lay hidden somewhere in the unmapped interior. He took with him his elder son, Jack, and Jack's close friend, Raleigh Rimell, along with a small party of porters and pack animals. On the twenty-ninth of May, from a place he called Dead Horse Camp, he sent out a last message by runner, telling his wife not to fear failure. Then the three Englishmen walked north into the trees, and the forest closed behind them. They were never seen again. In the century since, more than a hundred people are said to have died or vanished trying to find out what became of them, and the fate of Colonel Fawcett has become one of the greatest mysteries in the whole history of exploration. A Soldier Turned Explorer Fawcett was, by any measure, an extraordinary man. A trained army officer and surveyor, he had spent years in South Am...