This is the journal in which
Melodia Silvereyes' recorded the events of her expedition to explore the
Underways, and is likely to be the title of her next book, if she survives to return to the surface.
Excerpts
Day 1: Setting out
This morning we left the city of
Silverstone. Our guide led us down through the mines and brought us to a tunnel. Even without the support columns, it'd be immediately apparent to me that this was not a natural formation. The tunnel is large, straight and level, passing as far as light will carry in both directions. Even the dwarven tunnels that brought us here, impressive though they are, pale in comparison. One wonders what manner of being has the power to make such tracks.
The arches may hold some clue. They are regularly spaced, slightly less than 16'10⅜" separating each (a measurement that I made several times as we traveled and has not once varied), and are fashioned of a stone that, I am told, no known tool can chip. I have some ideas that might destroy it through magical means, but it would be unwise to do too much damage to them - our guide said that tunnels so large should not be possible without considerably more reinforcement than what seems apparent. I can sense no magic about them, though they be decorated in elaborate carvings and runes. This suggests that this strange unchippable stone is simply strong enough that more support is not needed - if so, they must be under incredible strain.
We have set up camp not far from a mural in the stonework. The figures are of varying heights, but are so stylized that is difficult to tell what manner of folk they might depict, beyond the fact that they are bipedal. I wonder what purpose these murals serve - do they have a religious significance, depict something from their creator's history? Are they milestones, somehow indicating how far along the road one has traveled? Or are they simply decorations to break up the monotony of the stone walls?
Day 3: A city underground
Finally we have come to out apparent destination! Shortly after we set out on our third day (I call it this for we have slept twice since leaving Silverstone - there is no sun down here to mark the passage of time clearly), the tunnel opened out into a vast cavern that houses the ruins of a long forgotten city. I say ruins, but it's a curious mix - some buildings are mere piles of worked stone that mark where they once stood, while others are seemingly intact, aside from an absence of a roof. I wonder if they ever had one - with no weather down here, the concept of a roof seems almost unnecessary. It seems that all of these buildings have at least two floors, so there was privacy to be found even if one's neighbour could look out a window down into one's top floor. For now I will call this city
Understone, though perhaps I will devise a more evocative name while editing.
We've seen plenty of signs of creatures living among the ruins, but no matter how we try, we can barely catch a glimpse of them. Lizards of some kind, about the size of a pig, maybe a bit smaller. They're very skittish, which makes me think they're herbivores, but there can't be any plants down here. I wonder what they eat? There's smaller things as well, from the signs they leave behind, but they seem to be even better at hiding - we've not even caught a glimpse of one yet.
Day 4: A Curious Device
We found another road - every bit as straight as the one we took to get here, but much more lavishly decorated. Might explore what warrants such decoration once we finish searching the city. We found the remnants most curious
device - several large metal cups with long tubes that are cool like metal but flexible like rope. Next to them is a helmet with an array of sockets over the ears that seem the right shape for the tubes to fit in.
Other than that, it's been a quiet day - lots of rubble, lots of empty buildings save for leavings of the city's resident vermin. Seems like whatever this civilization is, it's so old that everything's fallen to dust. It's frustrating - would that I could have explored the ruins centuries ago, or even met with these people, I'm sure it would have made for a fascinating story. But I'm already starting to wonder if there's nothing here to find.
Day 10: Moving on from Understone
We decided to head out through the more natural tunnel we found 3 days ago - we've seen several of the clearly artificial tunnels leaving the city in various directions (all more decorated than the one we took - I wonder if our tunnel was more recent construction?), but only the one cave tunnel, which we figured might be significant. And...the day did not disappoint!
In the tunnel we found a set of stone gates, made of the same supposedly indestructible material as we've seen throughout...but staved in and torn apart. Something wanted into the city...something I hope we never meet. The gate was much thicker than we've seen elsewhere, and much more crude. Everywhere else, there's been thin walls, delicate stone work, and patterned carvings. Here though, it's large and blocky construction, rough hewn. I wonder if it was built in an emergency of some kind? If so, it clearly didn't work...
Here, too, we found some kind of tool that Hester thinks was used to make this unique stone. They've had the most luck so far in interpreting the magical inscriptions we've seen down here. They say the tool was designed to create an area of extreme heat and pressure in a space in front of it, and thinks that this would cause certain types of rock to transform into something different - much, much stronger than natural stone. They've taken to calling it a
Rock Fuser, though they're still working on figuring out how to empower it. I'm not sure they should be messing with it - it would probably be wiser to wait until we can bring it home.
At the end of this passage we came to an immense natural cavern. Or...it must be natural! Even with what I've seen down here, I can't imagine anyone building something on this scale. And it's full of life - giant mushrooms stand like strange trees, making a forest that dominates most of the cavern, glowing in a subdued rainbow of hues. Our best guess has the cavern maybe 2 miles wide along the narrowest point, and 5 miles long perpendicular to that. A torrent of water flows down the south side, roaring down into a pool of water that glows a dull orange. At least...I think it's the south side - we're having enough trouble with our compass that we've started leaving indicators of our passage so we can retrace our steps if we have to. Too much iron in the rock to get a good reading. I think I'll call this
Bethel Cavern, for the waterfall is every bit as impressive as the
Bethel Falls up on the surface. Who could have expected such beauty down here?
Immediately in front of us as we emerged, we found a monolith of black glass, which we're calling the
Understone Monolith, as it should be an easy indicator of our way back to the city. At first we thought it was just a giant block of obsidian, but on closer inspection, we found runes no more than an inch high, made of some kind of stone or metal and embedded within the glass. They are far more complex than anything else we've come across, and by Hester's calculations, they're quite a significant work of High Magic, comparable in power to the
Anchors that make civilized life possible on the surface.
While we examined the Monolith, we suddenly saw a
Great Lacerta coming toward us. They'd proved elusive all our time in Understone, but we finally got a good look at one. It was slightly shorter than an adult pig, but much longer, with patterned grey and brown scales. Seeing us, it turned away from the tunnel and started climbing up the wall, claws and tail finding a grip on what seemed a vertical wall. Then we saw what was chasing it: a
Lingorm of rather prodigous size. Clearly a very old and well fed specmin, but we've all beaten Lingorms before, and this one had no new tricks. From the look of things, I think the Great Lacertas and the other herbivores come out here to eat mushrooms, and retreat into Understone to sleep. We listened out for other activity. Everything down here is much quieter than we're used to on the surface - the predators don't roar and the prey don't call out warnings to each other - but the silence was regularly punctuated by scuffles and quiet desperate sounds.
Day 13: We shouldn't have come here...
We should have been content to explore Understone, taken our findings, and headed back. Three of my friends have died in this cavern, we're surrounded by mushrooms, and we have no idea where the monolith is. I'm the only one on watch and I'm exhausted. The damned compasses have been spinning like tops for the last two days. You'd think the waterfall would be a good landmark, but every time we try to use it to get ourselves pointed back toward the ruins, we wind up walking towards it. Today we actually reached the shores of that damned glowing pool. Something lives in there - tentacles reached out and grabbed Naivara and Erevan and dragged them under before we could do anything. Several more came up, and we had to retreat. Gods...they were two of my best friends...
Back in Understone
I don't know how long we were wandering out there ...weeks? Months? Longer?... but we finally found the Monolith. We're out of supplies - took to hunting the Lacertas - they seem much more sluggish out there.... I think I've finally figured it out. Whenever we thought of escaping the cavern, we became confused, our reactions dulled. But when on watch, when fighting, or hunting, we performed as normal. The air is thick with spores in there...does something in them react to fear? Clouding the very idea of escape? That's....horrific. But it fits - when we scared the Lacertas, they fled in a straight line - fast but easy prey. Only if they made it to the cavern walls or came to a clearing did they start reacting with their normal agility, dodging, taking paths that their pursuers would find difficult. But it explains why the predators stay out there. Most of the things we saw could get into Understone without issue.
2 Days after reaching Understone
We set up traps along the tunnel out of Understone and caught a couple of Lacertas - enough food to see us safely back to Silverstone. Thankfully, we found a spring of clean water in the city that still flows - we'd been relying on Erevan's skill with water magic to conjure drinking water, but....
Tonight we camp at the entrance to the we arrived from. At least...I think it's the same damned tunnel; they all look the same!
14 Days after reaching Understone
Keeping this short as I'm low on ink. Finally found the right tunnel, after several attempts...but there's something very wrong. We could get up as far as major mining tunnels, but every path back to Silverstone appears to have caved in. Something terrible has happened topside. Divination isn't my strong suit, but I know a few methods, and all came back with the same reading. One word: war. How bad does a war have to be that the dwarves caved in their entire mine? And it has to have been deliberate - the Silverstone dwarves may not have had the stoneworking tools that the people down in Understone had, but they know their stonework, and there's no way they'd let so many tunnels fail. We're heading back to Understone for now...hopefully the Lacertas and the spring down there can sustain us until the dwarves open their mine again...we'll trek back up every couple of weeks to check.
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