Journal #16 - The Deep Blue

I fell.
 
In a moment, I felt a change and began to softly glide down - Korrigash had slowed our fall magically. The floor…well, ceiling, trap-hole, whatever… shut once more above us. Darkness, and then glowing beneath us. Winding, icy mirror like Glowstone death trap of jagged spikes on the ground. We landed perfectly safe beneath them. Upwards of twenty tunnels came out in every direction, and many corpses were strewn about. Without feather fall, we would surely be dead upon the spikes. So, this was The Deep Blue.
 
On the floor finally, I looked around at the bodies while the others fanned out. I tried to tell if the bodies had been touched since they fell here. Bodies don’t appear to have been looted, but animals have fed on them. I am confused why they gave us the writs only to destroy it… I wondered if the writs were evidence. Power struggle coming up, investigations may find what the Wall Captain was up to – the one who escorted us here. He perhaps wanted to get rid of these for his own protection – why not burn them though? The only way it made sense was if he planned to return to our bodies later, to take and redeem the payments. If he could get here, surely we could get out. And yet, none of these other bodies had been looted. I couldn’t parse it, and focused on the present instead.
 
There were clearly large animals about. There was one tunnel clearly made by dwarves - the others were all burroughs of some boring creatures. We headed off presumably in the direction of civilization. Somewhere beyond us was a shriek, skittering noises, and a metallic-scaled insect launched itself at Korrigash. It didn’t get there, as it was pinned to the wall by an arrow shot out of the darkness. Over my shoulder I saw a squirrel come up onto Domino’s shoulder; another snapped into form as Lug emerged from his wild shape. And out of the darkness stepped a stranger, the archer, who went by Andarius. He was apparently an old companion from before my time with Nothric.
 
Lug told us that after he went to investigate Tybeerian’s death and found he couldn’t prevent it, and left us in ALdandun, he was visited by Andarius’ squirrel. They’ve been tracking us down ever since. It isn’t exactly clear how they came to be down in the Deep Blue before we fell down here, but I bit my tongue.
 
The caves seemed very lived in, and not by humanoids. We needed to get through as quickly and quietly as possible .That isn’t exactly what happened though. We came through to an old dwarven workshop, with enemies both natural and dwarf-made – traps both magical and physical. A mimic, a roper, a basilisk, too many spiders to count, and an old hag whose age was beyond knowing. We explored and fought for survival. The hag turned out to be connected to Domino’s spider-patron, somehow.
 
We stumbled upon a chest with many locks we could not open - Korrigash is still lugging it behind him. An enchanted suit of armor forced itself on Ghiravont who is now wearing it. And within a cruel electrical cage, an earth elemental was imprisoned. Orlando and I found a command stone for it while Lug examined it, and we managed to free it. It now follows him around like a servant.
 
Ultimately, we made our way through. We were sorely tired, but had resupplied fairly well from the pickings available. In the final room of this area, we found a doorway - a potential exit. Written in dwarvish, “the way out is the way in…and you are in.” As we looked at the writing, Ghiravont was examining a pile of silver in the corner, and from it sprouted an interdimensional octopus.
 
At first, I thought this was some cruel cousin of a mimic.But it turned out to be civilized, and was some sort of specialist merchant. We examined some wares, but most were unfortunately out of my price range. I did trade my javelin of lightning and the unreliable circlet of blasting for a random offering – which ended up being a powerful healing potion.
 
Ultimately, the creature known as Morkoth’s Magical Emporium returned into his portal. We opened the doorway puzzling out the phrase… “The way in is the way out.” The door opened, and we walked down the steps past the gate.