2022.05.07, Nikonai Nikanios

Expedition into the High Wilderness to explore the wall of dark stone in the upper room of the northern dam, report by Nikonai Nikanios. Date of the expedition is May 7th

Brief

 * The leftmost tower of the dam lost its wheel. That’s probably our fault
 * We didn’t activate the robot security system at all
 * The dark stone wall can be crossed, just hold on to the rope and keep your eyes closed. It works both ways
 * In the void beyond the wall, the sable compass doesn’t work. We have marked one of the walls there as north
 * Space doesn’t work quite right in the other side. All we’ve found some far is some spatial inconsistencies, but there may be more troublesome effects deeper into it
 * There is a platform with a constellation in the other side. It’s unlike any constellations of Arden Eld, Cassandra, Emery and I are looking into the constellations of the High Wilderness
 * Emery had a weird vision again. Among his weird ramblings there was a number: 7878617. There is also the possible name of this other side, OBSERVACION POINT KARPHLAK
 * The golden cursive script looks vaguely like an archaic version of the scripts of Arden Eld, in the other side there is another script: angular and rectangular, etched into the stone by some unnatural means
 * There are demons in the other side. Possibly captured?
 * One of the captured demons escaped from us before we could kill it. Oops

Considerations

 * The other side definitely needs to be explored further, as do the unmapped rooms in the dam
 * If there are more captured demons in the other side, the escaped demon may free them
 * The void between the dam and the other side may be able to be explored further, or maybe we’ve seen all there is to see
 * Next time we cross over we should bring the Sable Chunk to compare the material

==Report=

[GETTING THERE]
The road was mostly uneventful. The river was wider, the sunken village sunken further. A trapworm sprung around Cassandra, Castille promptly boiled it. It was more to the north than we expected, they may have expanded their territory now that the river has grown. From there to the dam is about 6 miles, though we’ll have to do better measuring in the future.

The dam was mostly unchanged. About 100 meters high, leftmost tower was missing its wheel. Probably fell inside the tower after it exploded last time. Castille enchants us to walk on water and we go through the same old route, mapping our way through this time. [Map A]

On our way there, I stopped by the paintings to compare them with the drawing from the sunken village. They’re not that similar, as it turns out.

[INTO THE VOID]
We reached that upper level in the dam, the extremely long room. Cassandra led everyone into the black rock wall, I tied the traversal hook to some furniture and followed soon after. It was extremely disorienting. Castille, as the only person who’s been here before, took the lead and shepherded us to safety, to the other side.

On the other side, we appeared in the middle of a circular plinth, in the middle of an octagonal room. The traversal hook disappears in the air, but its still pulled taut to the furniture on the other side, Mortred and Worthy Friend made sure of that. We tried checking the sable compass, but it doesn’t seem to work on the other side. Everything around us was made of that same dark stone as the wall we came through. We labeled one of the walls as “north” nevertheless. The walls in every cardinal direction had some “seams” that work similarly enough to doors to just be doors, in my opinion. If you just push through them, the space there opens up to let you through. Space here doesn’t seem to follow the same rules it does elsewhere, but at the very least it was consistent on our visit. As in, passageways didn’t disappear or change directions when we came back through them. We’ve also mapped this section. [Map B]

Inscribed on the plinth we appeared on there’s a constellation that doesn’t match any constellations of Arden Eld, though it may match one of the High Wilderness. We’re working under the assumption that this “Other Side” has something to do with the portals. We should bring the Sable Chunk on the next expedition there to compare them. At this point Mortred picked me up (very strong) and carried me west to map the area, but the rope pulled me to the floor. Then she punched a nail REALLY hard into the floor, eventually it made its way inside. It didn’t make any cracks or anything. It also made a really weird noise. Maybe the area is alive? We tied the traversal hook to the nail and moved on.

On the room to the “west” there were four pillars reaching up to the ceiling, with a new and unknown script carved into it. I say carved but it looks too perfect to be a carving. Who knows. We walk “south” into the corner of the room, find a rectangular room. In each corner of this room there’s a plinth that reveals a projection of a cube above it when you touch them.

If you go “east” here, through a seam in the wall, you can arrive back at the octagonal room. You’ll notice that this should lead to the room directly “south” of it, but it leads into it. There’s no curving pathways and all the seams are in the “cardinal” directions, so the space here works weirdly.

Anyway. At this point Emery starts looking at the cube plinths and he has that look in his eye that tells you that he’s gonna do the thing. And boy does he do his thing. He said something about a great body of water stirring in the distance, three suspended eyes connected to a network of flesh without flesh, and wrote the following:

WILCOME VISITORES TO OBSERVACION POINT KARPHLAK PLESE ENIOY THY STAIE MEMMER THE ######## NOMBER 7878617 THANK YOU HAVEN ############################################## 

Importantly, “7878617” is a number that we could input into the control panel of the portal back in Mount Midwaye.

We go “west” into another rectangular room, this one filled with various transparent cylinders, probably made of glass, each filled with strange fleshy things. The flesh twitched as we moved. One of them was cracked, so we assumed it was a matter of time until one escaped. Mortred investigated one of them and got a real bad vibe, so we resolved to eliminate them ourselves.

They were strong. One of them tried to eat Worthy Friend. They summoned these smaller demons that they could devour to restore their vitality. One of them could disappear into void rifts, and when it was bloodied it disappeared into one of the rifts and we couldn’t find it anymore.

After taking care of that, we walked back the way we came, out of the dam and back to the portal. We camped there, making some progress in fortifying the area. After that was done, I helped Cassandra study the stars, to compare them with the constellation we found in that place.