Erythraros
02-?:XVI.1214 We have been trekking across the frozen reaches of the north for weeks now, our ship having become trapped in the ice little over two months ago. We tried to break it out, but all we did was waste our time and our food. With no chance to turn back, we were forced inland, and have found nothing. Perhaps it would have been better if we had turned back, chance or no. The hope of home may have sustained us long enough, if only just. Now we are sinking deeper into despair. If the cold does not claim us, I will likely meet my end at the hands of my crew. A decision so disastrous invites mutiny, and I will not blame them.
02?-?:XVI.1214 We saw lights in the distance when we awoke this morning, bright enough that in the moment after I opened my eyed I thought the Aurora Tower was marking the change of the year. The men were shouting, waving arms and Glimglass to try and grab attention. No one returned our calls, but one by one the lights traveled north and disappeared. No sooner had I put my logbook away when, just now, the men became beset by panic. One man started shouting about how we had less men than when we had gone to sleep. A quick rollcall proved the man correct. At first I thought the idea impossible, there was no way that anyone or anything came into the camp while the men were standing guard. The idea only started to make sense when we realized that most of the ones missing were those very same guards. A few others had disappeared from their bedrolls as well. The men were to afraid to even pack up their gear. Now we only have six of the ships marines left, and each is growing more wild-eyed with each passing day. The lights themselves had the appearance of torches, carried by people, but in our attempts to follow them we have found no tracks or any trace at all of someone traveling this way before us. It is still as if we are cutting trails through the snow. I grow afeared that we are either all going mad, or now we must content with Wisps or particularly malicious Faeries. Even then, no Faerie I had ever seen was so powerful as to make half a dozen men disappear into thin air. The possibility of being faced with some other kind of Manifestation, one not yet recorded, is one that does me no good to consider, but yet I must. I have distributed weapons to all of the men, even though they did no good to the guards and our powder is likely too cold to fire.
The lights have returned, or rather one large light in the darkness. It sits as a big orange globe, staring at us expectantly. Under normal circumstance, I would be ecstatic, and the men; exultant. We all remember the orange shade of the lights we saw, seemingly bearing our people away to some unknown fate. If I were a hopeful man, I would say that perhaps we might find our people, hale and hearty, wherever that light may be. I'm far too cold to be hopeful. I realize though, that our only option is to risk the light. Our food supplies has dwindled to but a few cans, and one cannot eat glass once that runs out. One thing the Humans have over us, I suppose, that last resort... Gods, please do not let this be our end, and let us find some kind of salvation.
-Last entries of the Logbook of the Candlelight, found outside the gates of Erythraros by the XVI.1236 expedition.
Infrastructure
There are many impressive mechanical marvels built into the city, considering the degree of technology they seemed to be making use of. Whoever 'they' are who constructed the city.
The most prominent of which, and certainly the most impressive, is the steam vents that weave their way throughout. Through an impressively automated process involving the use of gravity to feed the vast snowbanks the pile up around the cities walls into incredibly active underground hot springs. This, plus a process that is not fully understood, inflames the hot springs, and they produce a volume a steam capable of heating the whole of the city.
I try not to fall into superstition, but I cannot help but feel that the logbook speaks for itself. Something is not right about Erythraros, and I have yet to find someone who can dissuade me of that fact. I know that I will not be able to avoid it forever, but I will hold out as long as I can.
RUINED SETTLEMENT
Unknown
Founding Date
Unknown
Type
Megalopolis
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