2022.05.30, Nikonai Nikanios

Very exciting cartographical findings!! Report follows

Facts

 * Despite whatever may be going on in the dam, the waterfall west of the ziggurat village seems normal
 * Cassandra can pacify the “dogs” with her song. Very cool
 * The soil doesn’t have a lot of metal in it. I don’t know if that’s important information as I’m not a… uh… earthologist? But I’m documenting it nonetheless
 * The Hopworth Willow may be taking all the nutrients in its environment, leaving very little for the other trees. Is this normal, or is it an invasive species?
 * There is a weird groaning sound, like that of kin in pain. It seems that the tree itself is making these sounds, rather than the frog that lived inside it, as I initially thought
 * The sunken village is less sunken now
 * The giant herons can communicate after all!
 * There is an artificial hill covered in brambles, upriver from the sunken village. 200 meters down it houses an enormous, hollow metallic structure, possibly a prison? Inside there is a headless giant, constantly consumed by fires. It wrote something on its side of the prison, though we were unable to see inside.
 * After charting the stars again, we concluded that all of the stars move, albeit in vaguely consistent groups. There are no constellations from Arden Eld in this realm

Considerations

 * I spoke to the giant herons!! That was so cool
 * The herons negotiated with us, and let us pass through the village after we gave them a vial of the “water” coming from the Hopworth Willow. Maybe we can bring something to every expedition, to make sure we can explore with minimum issues?
 * If the Hopworth Willow truly is invasive, should we destroy it? We should, at the very least, study what we can get from it before we do that
 * We need to find a better way to communicate with the imprisoned giant. It doesn’t seem directly hostile to us, and we may learn a lot from it

[LIGHTHOUSE]
We input the coordinates to the ziggurat portal. Everything goes as usual. We head west until we reach the waterfall, which looks to be the same as ever. We should make another expedition into the dam to make sure it stays that way.

Reaching the lighthouse, we find a few “dogs” at its base. Cassandra sings to them, and they’re calm. Like, way too calm, like anesthetized or high on elfroot. Castille, Cassandra and I stayed with the dogs, meanwhile, Philharmandra, Rosemary and Lina went up the lighthouse to scout for the Willow. It’s directly to the northwest. I’ll have to update my maps. Before leaving, Castille raised some dirt cages from the ground to prevent the dogs from following us, which I thought was a little excessive. I left them some meat.

[HOPWORTH WILLOW]
This is the first time I’m seeing this tree. The area around it is dominated by these pale roots, the trees nearby look diseased and hungry. I wonder whether this tree is a natural part of the ecosystem, or if its imported from a different niche, grown to a ridiculous size because it lacks natural predators here.

Nevertheless. We arrive at the tree. Its as noisy as it was described before. There’s also a lot of rotten meat inside. I’m never getting used to that smell. Cassandra, as the only one who’s been here before, is giving tours of the place. While I’m outside trying not to faint, Lina and Philharmandra are inspecting the rotting flesh. Who knows what they’re hoping to find. Castille meanwhile bottles some of the strange brown-red water that seems to be springing from the tree. Rosemary thinks we’re being followed, and is keeping watch

[BIRD NEGOTIATION]
After this, we head north-northwest for the sunken village. Philharmandra helps us cross the river via levitation. About half a mile from the village, we notice it’s not as sunken as it once was (dam business) and there’s giant herons circling around it. Hoping for a peaceful solution to this, I wave at the herons, and one of them flies down and sits on the ruins of a house. The heron is a lot bigger than this house

Using my incredible mimicry skills and experience with charades, not to mention my knowledge of animal behavior, I enter a conversation with this heron. After seeing them lay traps for us, it was obvious that they were clever enough to coordinate together, so its not a very big leap to assume that we could communicate. It motioned to the bottle filled with water from the willow that Castille was carrying. She, along with the rest of the party, were trying to sneak away while I was chatting with the birds. A sacrifice I was unaware but willing to make. Despite that, Castille threw the bottle at the bird, who caught it and retreated, along with the rest of them, to one of the houses.

Knowing that birds usually don’t have the best sense of smell, the heron probably recognized the vial by sight. Did they know what was inside it, or, like so many birds of Arden Eld, just wanted to collect it because it was shiny? Understanding what they want could be the key to being able to explore undisturbed

[THE HILL THAT LOOKS STUPID]
After circling around the village, we continue north along the river, until we see the barrow that we’ve been seeing on the way to the dam, from the other side of the river, and also from the top of the dam itself. It has an entrance on its southeastern side, covered in savage looking bramble, that Cassandra was nice enough to clear. She did it by hand, too, which was rare. Very inspiring.

The structure is made of these large stacked rocks or bricks. Inside, it’s pitch black, with stairs leading about 200 meters down into a cramped room, with one of its walls being made of iron or some other metal. There is a circular… door? In the wall, but there’s no handles and its fitted too tightly. Castille tries to transmute the metal so we can go through, but its too thick.

Using thunder aspected aether, I try to get a feel for the dimensions of whatever metal structure is here. It’s big. Way bigger than the giant herons, which are already several times my size. It’s also hollow. We can see some markings on the wall, higher up. Castille gives Cassandra a boost and she inspects them. One of them is a circle, about the size of a fist, with a pattern that looks like a fingerprint. Looks like it was melted into the metal. At this point I was under the assumption that this is a fiery giant’s tomb. This was proven wrong when Cassandra knocked on the metal wall and received a response, in another bang on the wall. This one much louder, knocking us all off our feet.

Castille blasts a small, finger sized hole through the metal, and we can immediately feel a very hot air current, smell ash, and see cinders flying through the hole. We can hear rhythmic thumping through the wall. Rosemary looks through the hole with her weird mirror magic, and tells us what she sees. There’s a huge kin-like figure in this cavernous room. Looks emaciated. Part of its skin glows, like hot embers. Its proportions are slanted to one side. It drags something long and heavy, and its chained. It has a wound on its neck, and no head. It’s about 3 meters tall. There are piles of ash in the room. The walls are covered with markings of some sort.

Cassandra asks why it is imprisoned here. It walks to the wall that we share, and we can hear a sizzling sound. Rosemary sees its hand move along the wall. We think that it was writing something, but we couldn’t see. We also couldn’t have a conversation on account of its lack of head.

Philharmandra theorizes that its the same kind of being as the Flensed. An elemental giant, injured. Possibly related to the void entities. It’s definitely something to keep in mind.

With nothing else we can do here, we head out

[THE WAY BACK. RIVER, WORMS, AND STARS]
Once we’re out, Castille gets on top of the barrow and surveys the area. To the north, the valley. To the west, the edge of this landmass. It cuts through the hills, without any regard for its shape. She theorizes that this landmass was once on land. The river flows straight south. To the south-southeast, the sunken village, part of it fully submerged in the river.

We go south along the river, and when we reach the village I try to shepherd everyone through the lightning to get across. Everyone except Philharmandra, who just floats there. She gets there safely. We don’t. I kinda missed my mark. Whoops.

Just as we get out, we hear a squelch and a trapworm envelops Castille, again. Cassandra convinces it that it’s already dead, and I pocket the very intact corpse for research/dinner.

Once we’re back at the village and the portal, we make camp and chart the stars. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t match the chart I made at the dam, nor with the notes that Cassandra and I made in this same place. There’s no constellations I can recognize at all.

After some observation, we came to a conclusion. The stars move. A lot. They move in vaguely recognizable groups, and constellations undulate their way in the sky. Absolutely no star in the sky is still. It’s fascinating. While it makes star navigation difficult, I’m extremely interested in what this could mean for the High Wilderness