My name is Jozef Itr, I am the record keeper of the research and exploration team located in the settlement located the farthest towards east on the
Tree Layers. Going anywhere farther east is discouraged, as it leads only to The Edge, a giant ravine going down two layers, filled with nests of various beasts.
The recording you are reading right now has been created during our expedition to the Depot and activation of the first Tram Line.
Day 1 - Wanderer's arrival
It was a day like every day.
Since we were waiting for the arrival of newly ordered supplies, which would take another day or two, our exploration team didn't have anything to do at the moment.
Apparently, there was a commotion in town as someone said that the Wanderer would visit our settlement. I wanted to check it, but there were still some reports that had to be copied.
Just as I was finishing my work, someone knocked at our door and even before any of us could answer, a stranger came in.
To our surprise, it was the Wanderer himself, with his green coat and hat, just as all the rumors about him said. (He asked me to not include the description of his appearance in my record).
He wanted to hire us, but as Ruben, our
Crystal Collector, told him, we had to wait another few days for the supplies.
Wanderer surprised us the second time, by saying that he brought the supplies that we ordered from
The City of Middlepoint. Our youngest member, Yuri, went and checked it, and as our guest told us, they were just outside our office.
I have to explain that those supplies are normally stored in big crates, each weighing over a hundred kilograms. And they were just there!
Before any of us could really react, Wanderer started to walk around our office, looking at people and pointing at the few of them.
First, he approached Ruben and pointed at him, then, at Lewis, our electrician and scrap collector, Adam and Harold, the climbing specialists, Thoma, our cartographer, and finally me.
He chose the six of us, promising two times the pay he left at our desk (it was quite a sum) after the job is finished. He also promised that we would return in five days.
Ruben told us to unpack the crates. We were to be ready in three hours.
I wanted to protest, I am just a simple record-keeper, not fit for traveling long distances, but Wanderer told me to
Day 2 - Reaching the Edge, long climb
Last day we made really great progress, almost reaching the Edge. We still didn't know where Wanderer wanted to go after we would arrive there. When asked about this, he said there are two shafts leading to the bottom of the ravine, that would let us pass it without any problems.
Adam and Harold started to freak out, saying that the bottom is filled with various beasts and it would be a suicide to go there.
But he calmed them down, and a few moments later we were climbing down the first shaft.
There was an emergency where Thoma's hands slipped, he pulled me down, and because of our weight, we started to pull the others down. At one point the Wanderer was the only one holding the rest of us while holding to the ladder. We all could hear that he was singing some song (Was it
The Magic of the Song I heard so much about? I'll have to tell others if I survive this journey.) and slowly, he pulled us all back to the ladder.
At the bottom, he told us to follow him and don't say anything at all. We were running through the ruins of the city, while more than once something big went just by us. But all in all, nothing bad happened.
We managed to reach an enormous lake, with small lights dancing above it.
My legs and feet still hurt after all this climbing and running.
Day 3 - The Lake
Harold is dead.
Wanderer warned us that we'll be going on a small path between the stone wall and the shore of the lake. He said that no matter what, we can't look at the middle of the lake.
We were walking in a line, Harold was the last one, I was in front of him.
For some reason, Harold must have looked there cause he said to me: "Jozef, do you see that?".
That was the last time when I heard him. There wasn't even a sound. I could only see ripples on previously calm lake hitting the shore in front of us. The Wanderer must have noticed them too, cause he stopped for a second.
I half expected him to ignore it or get angry that one of us didn't listen to him. But as both the wall and the shore of the lake started to turn, being the last one in the line I caught a glimpse of his face.
He was crying.
Not that long after this, we finally left the lake behind us.
Wanderer told us the journey would last only six days. But half of that time already passed and we are going farther and farther. Will we really survive?
Day 4 - Complete darkness
We woke up in complete darkness.
Ruben tried to activate the Light Crystals but even when he said he did it, we couldn't see the results.
Wanderer told us that we were in the middle of
Anomaly.
He asked us one after another to make some sounds so he could approach us and tie the rope around our waists. Then, he took his quarterstaff and started to use it to check the ground before him.
Walking in the darkness was both terrifying and tiring. It was as if all that blackness was weighing down on my shoulders. Every cell of my body has hoped that we wouldn't have to return the same way.
After we finally escaped the Anomaly, we discovered that the path that should maybe take us an hour to cross took the entire day.
And that we reached our goal, the Depot. Finally!
Day 5 - The Depot
The first thing I remember about this place is the sounds. Sounds of thousands of legs crawling on the floor, sounds of insects in the air, in the ground, all around us.
The second thing was the awe we all felt when we saw how enormous is Depot.
Third were the walls. And how they seemed to move because of all of the things that crawled on them.
This time, Wanderer asked us to never stop moving. We could walk, run, swing or sway, just to never stand motionlessly.
The Depot looked like an old, giant and heavily modified train station. There were five staircases each leading to three higher "floors" consisting of platforms and the single rails suspended in the air. All in all, there were 20 rails, each marked with a different number. Every single rail lead both farther into Depot and outside, the direction we came from. Thoma said that he has seen a few of those rails in the past. I also remember some of the explorers talking about them in their reports.
While there, we managed to gather some Tram Passes, something Wanderer told us would be very useful in the future.
We had two tasks.
First, we had to reach the control room to summon the wagon of the Tram. That would be Lewis's job.
Then we would have to run to the wagon and activate it.
But like the rest of the events during this journey, something had to go wrong. Summoning the wagon stirred the beasts in their nests and now all of them started to swarm us.
Thankfully, Ruben overloading some of his Crystals and detonating them took out a large number from the first wave while distracting the rest.
We ran, with hundreds of legs and jaws chasing after us. Somehow we reached the Tram and as we boarded it, it started to move.
Ruben chucked another few Crystals for additional safety.
Day 6 - The return
Sometime later, it all calmed down. We were coming back home, traveling in that weird vehicle, the Tram. I've never seen anything move so fast, it was wonderful.
The stop that we got off on was on the side of the Edge close to our settlement. As the last of us left the cart, it closed its door and moved somewhere farther to the center of the Pit.
The rest of our way back home went on without any emergencies.
After paying us the promised sum and some more as a way to apologize for Harold's death, Wanderer took me to the side and told me to make as many copies of this travel journal and spread them as much as I could around The Pit. Then, he told to hide some of them in various places we would explore in the future.
I still don't know why he told me to do all of that.
Really well done! I love the art! Just a few specific comments: "More than once the attempts were made to clear the bottom of the Edge from monsters." A bit awkward, I think you may mean 'More than once, attempts were made to clear the bottom of the Edge of monsters" "but there were still some rapports that had to be copied." may mean reports? Not sure. Overall, there are places where the journal feels more like prose than a journal - especially Day 1, for example. If you have space for it, I might appreciate a little more description of the Depot. All in all, really well done!