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Exquemelin's Notes
May 23, 2026 at 08:19 PM
Corrected wikilink existence flags
Exquemelin's Notes are a seven-piece Legendary collectible set scattered through abandoned camps, caves, and coastal ruins. Each note is a page torn from the diary of Alexandre Exquemelin, a traveling chronicler who moves quietly across the archipelago recording pirate history while evading the crews he writes about.
Every page ends with the same signature: a mention of burying surplus gear "beneath the tree marked with a red cloth," hinting that Exquemelin maintains a private network of caches. The text is attributed in-game as "from the diary of Alexandre Exquemelin, traveler."
As a collectible set, the pages belong to the same readable-lore layer as other journals and fragments scattered across the islands. They turn up most often at Traveller's Camps, the small abandoned shelters dotted around the archipelago, which is why the set reads like a record left behind by someone always one step ahead of the crews he writes about.
Image | Page | Subject |
|---|---|---|
| A Hat Worth Boarding For | Benjamin Hornigold's famous raid on a Spanish galleon, where he disguised his sloop as a merchant. |
| The origin story of Israel "Basilica" Hands, from a Bristol merchant family to Teach's lieutenant. | |
| A legend of a Spanish carrack captain who bargained with Davy Jones and tried to cheat the deadline. | |
| A survivor's account of ten treasure hunters destroyed by the animate wood guardians of the Swamp ruins. | |
| Exquemelin's own bad day: wolves tear off one boot, an oversized goat chases him through a cornfield into a collapsed ruin, and he loses the other. | |
| An innkeeper's tale of a Spanish first mate who tricked Thomas Richards's boarding party with broken glass on deck. | |
| A Tortuga rumor about Henry Every, the Fancy's captain, boarding a Mughal treasure ship and vanishing with the princess. |
All seven pages share the same Legendary rarity and a stack size of 20, so a full set occupies a single inventory slot. Because each page is its own entry, the journal counts as complete only once every one of the seven titles has been picked up.
The pages carry no combat or crafting use. Their value is split between two choices: keep them as a reading collection, or sell the duplicates to a vendor for a Piastre return that is generous for a item with no other function.
Duplicates are common once you have explored several islands. Many players hold one copy of each title for the codex and offload the rest during trade runs through Tortuga.
The notes double as the game's in-universe history book. Almost every pirate referenced (Hornigold, Teach, Hands, Every, Richards) is a real historical figure reinterpreted through the Windrose setting.
The repeated "red cloth beneath a tree" line is a recurring signal. Players who spot it in the world can dig or search for one of Exquemelin's personal caches.
Each page is stackable to 20 and is Legendary rarity, so they are worth a respectable Piastre sum if sold rather than kept.
Several titles foreshadow threats and people you meet in play. Disturbed Peace describes the animate wood guardians of the swamp ruins, and Relative Cost recounts a boarding gone wrong for Thomas Richards, a name that returns as a hostile captain in the world.
Looted from tents, crates, and shelves in caves, ruins, and inns across the main archipelago islands.
Dropped by roaming neutral travelers and the occasional ambushed bandit.
Cannot be crafted or bought from vendors; the set is collection-only.
Each page is written in the first person from the diary of Alexandre Exquemelin, and the entries range from sober history to self-mocking misadventure. A Hat Worth Boarding For and Twist of Fancy retell celebrated raids; Lost Boots is a comic account of the chronicler's own bad day with wolves and a goat. Read together they sketch the wider pirate world of Windrose from the outside, the way a traveler hears stories in taverns rather than living them.
The red cloth beneath a tree line that closes most pages is the set's one piece of actionable lore. It hints that Exquemelin keeps buried caches marked the same way, so a tree flagged with red cloth in the world is worth searching.
