Forrester's SMAC/4e Campaign or PLANET: A SURVIVALIST'S GUIDE

[jeffwik]

Man has killed man from the beginning of time, and each new frontier has brought new ways and new places to die. Why should the future be different?

DAY ONE, morning. Yesterday's spore launcher attack only underscores the urgency of our mission. With Commander Zharroun incapacitated, Valley lacks the strong leadership which has been so crucial to our survival these past thirty years. Colonel Santiaggro's decision to order out a third expeditionary force could not have been an easy one, but with steeled resolve we bid our loved ones farewell and ventured north over the rolling hills towards the rumored colony led by the great general Yang. The hills show more of the fungal life that only in pathces covers the plains to the east of Valley, but Zarakhov's sending indicated Yang's camp was to the north (or so I am told). It is slow going as we venture forward.

I cannot shake a certain sense of dread; from the first expedition, twenty-nine years ago, only twenty percent of the scout teams returned to Valley, and none returned from the second expedition. Who knows what terrors we might face?

DAY ONE, noonish. While pressing through the fungal wilderness, we encountered our first group of hostiles. Apparently once humanoid, these wretches had swathed themselves in crude clothing made from pressed fungal stalks, and fallen under the sway of a massive growth, a large boil of the xenofungus I dub the mindstealer, for as we engaged it and its minions the monster stole our enemies and used our own spells and techniques against us! Fortunately the mindstealer seemed more vulnerable to my psychic spells than most creatures. Along with its power to magically extract our memories and magic, which it used sparingly, the mindstealer exhibited the power to swipe at melee combatants with its gigantic maw (why a fungus has a maw I don't know).

More worrisome perhaps were the thing's poor minions. While I have never seen any of Toril-That-Was's native humanoid lifeforms other than humans, dragonborn, and bugbears, I have studied the anatomical diagrams left behind by our departed savants, and I can confidently state these were no dwarves, elves, halflings, tieflings, eldadrin, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, or shadar-kai. Their bodies were pink and hairless, with a surprising lack of differentiation -- I saw five of these mutons, and they might have been identical quintuplets. Further, they resisted my psychic assaults. Each was nearly seven feet tall, built heavier than a typical human but leaner than a typical bugbear. Though their bodies were clearly humanoid, much of their organs and innards appeared to have been replaced by fungal constructions, centered on a highly magical pearlescent orb lodged in the base of the muton's brain. We collected these pearls -- and a slightly larger, bowl-shaped object deep inside the mindstealer's innards. Though most of the mutons went down easily, I saw them rise again, knitting themselves together from the very stuff of Planet, and attack again. It was simple enough to lodge an axe in these zombies' brains, but I can only hope this property is not shared by more dangerous examples of the fungal life.

It's disturbing to imagine these wretched creatures, and this dangerous fungoid monster, so close to Valley. Have the forces of Planet established a perimeter hemming us in, one we're just now penetrating?

DAY ONE, afternoon. In the distance, while pressing through the fungal wilderness, we espied a group of three mutons accompanied by two quadrupedal entities I could not even attempt to recognize at that distance -- smaller than a bugbear, as large as an unusually small human perhaps. We gave them a wide birth, remembering Zharroun's instructions.

I wonder: are these humanoids native to this Planet, or are they interlopers like us? Something in me leans towards the latter hypothesis, but I have no reason to be certain. In a visceral way I despise them.

DAY ONE, evening. By all the dead gods of Toril-That-Was, I cannot fathom this.

We have stumbled upon an artificial structure the likes of which I have never seen. In the center of a deep bowl-like depression in the landscape, perhaps two hundred feet deep, we have found a stone obelisk easily one hundred and fifty feet high, perhaps fifty feet square at its base. The exterior is alternately smooth and covered with fine carvings which seem to depict examples of the native life -- fungal stalks and such. The fungus covering the ground of the crater is unusually tough and fine; Rhogash had difficulty ripping off a hunk. About a third of the way up, each of the four faces of the obelisk shows a shallow indentation which appears to be a different type of stone than the single huge block of the rest of the obelisk. There appear no other entrances. Throg is going to attempt to climb the obelisk

(Later) After several minutes of attempt, the slick stone of the obelisk seems to prove too much for Throg -- but a door has opened up on one side, perhaps as a result of his handling of the monolith? We examined that wall before and saw no door, but truly now there is a passage. Within, however, there is only another wall: mortared stones, lighter and of a different type than the monolith itself, wholly blocking what may be a passage leading inward.

(Later still) Throg has smashed down the wall with his great maul, and we can see inside. Within the monolith there is a single large chamber, reaching upwards as far as my light-magic can illume, with only a shallow depression less than ten feet in diameter marking the inside. We investigated, but as soon as we stepped onto the depression crossbows popped out of alcoves high up in the walls and began spitting bolts towards us -- apparently traps are not the lost technology we in Valley have assumed? Throg was wounded by the bolts, and we feared the worst, but it was only a flesh wound. He'll sleep well tonight. Grog and I examined the bolts we pulled from him -- they are made from fungal stalks, hardened in some manner foreign to me.

(Later still) By throwing rocks onto the depression, Grog was able to induce something new to happen: the depression began to sink into the floor. It is a sort of elevator-platform. We leapt onto the platform and lay among the rocks, trying to avoid the hail of bolts which spewed from the hidden crossbows above and succeeding only partially.

Beneath the monolith we discovered a hidden chamber featuring a strange "altar" in the form of a translucent pipe of xenofungal mass, through whick a red-black bile flowed out onto the floor and then out of the chamber through a concealed drain, making a puddle. The puddle was protected by an odd clear membrane which we did not disturb (fearing the worst). Before we investigated further, we were set upon by a pair of shadar-kai -- the first refugees from Toril-That-Was we have yet encountered!

The meeting did not go well. The shadar-kai accused us of blasphemy (though surely none of the dead gods of Toril-That-Was care what we say or think in this thrice-cursed Planet) and asserted we would not long live after defiling the "blood of Planet." We fought, and we did indeed nearly die, but at last one of the shadar-kai "Planet cultists" was dead and the other captured. The captured cultist proved a mad fanatic, unwilling to explain anything or answer any of our questions, even under threat of death. Finally, sickened by his ranting, Ragosh bashed his brains in and we confiscated their gear, which was in many ways superior to our own (for instance, much of it is magical, and actual magic, not the strange faded magic of the supposed magic-items from Toril-That-Was which we have for use as tradegoods). You own nothing you cannot defend, by force as necessary.

Along with two suits of magical leather armor, two pairs of funguswalker boots, and two amulets of neural amplification we recovered two small bags of Planetpearls -- perhaps the cultists use these for currency? -- as well as their strange shadar-kai "spiked chain" weapon and a magical greatsword. We also found a ritual book, containing two rituals I have never seen before "item-weave" and "Planet-bond." On Toril-That-Was, magical items took their strength from some sort of magical telluric energy network called "the Weave," or so I am told -- could this ritual contain the secret to restoring our defunct magical relics? More study is needed.

DAY ONE, night. After our battle with the cultists, we discovered a tunnel leading a short distance from the "blood of Planet" room to a dead-end we could not open or penetrate. Leaving the monolith to camp for the night, we discovered that though we had rested for only a little while within it, we felt as invigorated as if we had rested for an extended period, with sleep and everything. I myself am certain I could cast Phantom Chasm again if need be; could this be the "holiness" the cultists had spoken of?

Thus revitalized I have had a revelation: I can use the largest Planetpearl, the deformed and bowl-shaped one, as a focus for my magic. I will need to affix it to my implement for it to work properly, but...

Tomorrow, we should reach Yang's camp. I cannot begin to guess what or who we will find there. At this point I would not be shocked by anything.

 

[jeffwik]

DAY TWO, darkest predawn night. As we feel fully invigorated after only an hour's rest in the shadow of the monolith, we have decided to press on towards the supposed location of Yang's camp. First, however, is the issue of what to do with the two shadar-kai corpses. Given the hostility between us and these foes, we feel little desire to honor their spirits with a formal burial -- far from it, in fact. Our greater concern is that these villains' compatriots, these Planet cultists, will find their comrades slain and their holy site defiled, and track down Valley.

We have removed all traces of our presence from the monolith save two: the crossbow-traps we had to deactivate to enable us to clean our other traces, and the stone-and-mortared wall barricading the monolith's doorway, which Throg smashed, and which we lack the resources to repair. With luck any search party will only examine the chamber beneath the monolith, the sanctum with the blood of Planet; if they do not venture up into the monolith then they would have to notice the trap is off to realize that there was misadventure here. I tell myself this is unlikely, but in my heart I fear that there is no way we can truly remove all traces of our defilement.

The corpses I burned, using my scorching burst magic, and the charred remains we buried in Planet beneath a layer of xenofungus, a ways from the monolith itself -- even if cultist searchers do scour this place, they will not be certain that their fellows died and died here. Or so I tell myself.

DAY TWO, predawn. We continue on foot through the night. In the starlight, the fungal stalks seem to sway of their own accord -- at times I think I can see them growing, moving, extending towards us as we hike over the hills. I start at shadows -- twice we have panicked, and I cast and re-cast a light cantrip, hoping to catch some enemy in the dark. At times the ground rumbles beneath us, and we are sore afraid, but there is nothing we can do.

As I write this: far to the north, faint in the distance, I hear something go >pop!< Many somethings, in fact -- the sounds of distant explosions, perhaps some foreign weather event or battle between Yang's people and the fungus? Throg and Rhogash claimed to hear nothing, though Grog agreed he could hear the strange distant thunderclaps. Rhogash lit a sunrod, one of only four we brought on our expedition, and I think he was irritated either at me or himself or both for wasting it on what proved to be nothing, or at least, nothing we could immediately affect. The red sun will rise soon, and with luck this night will have passed without further incident.

DAY TWO, gloaming. Alas, I spoke too soon, for even now we sit, recuperating from an ambush. Fortunately none of us were seriously wounded, but nevertheless the event has us all rattled. As we trod across a field of fungus (the stalks springing back where we stepped on them, released tiny clouds of earthy-smelling spores which clings to our pants and boots) hands suddenly rose from the dark, and hauled us down while lifting themselves up. It was a half-dozen poor souls we presume must have strayed from Yang's camp, for they were the burly jackal-men called "sibeccai" which rumor places as a sizable fraction of his followers. Sibeccai are far more burly than the anatomical drawings I have seen led me to expect, or perhaps it is some strange effect of the fungus which infested their organ systems (centered, as we saw yesterday, in a mother-of-pearl deposit at the base of the skull). For indeed they were in the thrall of whatever evil intelligence controls the bizarre fungal monsters that have assaulted us, and coordinated their ambush with yet another species.

These worm-spitters were large spheroid masses of tubelike growth, coated with a slime mold: thoroughly disgusting. They belched forth slimy missiles composed of a layer of resin hardened around a payload of a swarm of the dreadful mindworms -- similiar to those which attacked Valley before the outset of our expedition, but more mobile. The only blessing when faced with such aberrations is the knowledge that it seems fully half of these mindworm payloads are not viable and expire immediately upon bursting open. The other half, sadly, does remain a viable boil, which attacks without remorse.

We retrieved the Planetpearls from the poor sibeccai and the worm-spitters (the two from the spitters were odd rod-shaped things), and debated salvaging their armor (they fought unarmed, but we found a number of battle-axes in the fungus) but decided the appropriate action was to bear their bodies back to Yang's camp. In Valley we take care of our own; surely Yang's people are the same, and once we explain about the ambush and the fungus which robbed these good men of their reason, our gesture will be appreciated.

DAY TWO, midmorning. After hours of arduous labor dragging the six huge bodies home to their families and community (we ended up making a sort of sled from their armor and some oddments; I have a new appreciation for the considerable brute strength of Throg, Grog, and Rhogash) we have arrived at what must surely be Yang's camp. Though camp is perhaps the wrong word: we have followed a trail up the side of a tall hill (one free of the fungus) and found a pair of heavy steel doors set into the cliffside. Rhogash, whom we agreed should speak for our group, knocked on the doors, and they have opened.

Within, a contingent of massive sibeccai serving as guards are led by a single dragonborn, who seemed distracted as he asked who we were and what we wanted. He told us he would send for "Advisor Shion," and we were to wait outside. Then he closed the door on us.

DAY TWO, noonish. We continue to wait for word from within. I imagine our arrival has caused some excitement; perhaps Yang and this Shion are debating with their comrades how best to greet us. Although, having paced outside for at least an hour, I begin to wonder whether there might be some more sinister reason for this delay. In particular I note the massive size of those sibeccai guards. The people of Valley are hard-working, and while I am a savant, and one of the puniest race to boot (humans being smaller than dragonborn or bugbears) I nevertheless can recognize the signs of a hard-working laborer. What we saw (Rhogash, Throg, and Grog all agree with me) on those sibeccai was nothing of that sort. They were larger even than the poor souls whose bodies we recovered (which bodies, I note, Yang's people still have not accepted from us); surely such a swelling of musculature can only be unnatural.

DAY TWO, night. Just twenty hours ago I wrote that nothing I saw of Yang's camp could shock me after that eldritch monolith. I now know that was a lie, for I have seen Yang's paradise. I have seen hell. They call their... He calls his settlement Mountain, but I name it the Hive. The walls have ears; I fear to write more now. Soon.

 

[jeffwik]

DAY THREE, dawn. We are out of the Hive, with the sun on our faces. I would thank the dead gods, but they had and have nothing to do with this place. I can hardly begin to recapitulate the experiences of yesterday afternoon and evening, but I must commit it to palimpsest or Yang's crimes might pass from memory.

The gate was ordered open, eventually, by a robed male dragonborn in early middle age, old enough he was surely born on Toril-That-Was. This man introduced himself as Advisor Shion, and greeted us and invited us into Yang's settlement (which he called either Mountain or the Mountain). That is not entirely accurate: he greeted Rhogash and myself, but ignored Throg and Grog as if they were our pets.

We traveled into the settlement I have dubbed the Hive, for reasons which will soon be apparent. The corridor was high-ceilinged and wide -- easily ten feet high and ten broad. It's obvious this is to facilitate movement by the hulking brutish sibeccai guards, and the nearly-as-hulking sibeccai workers. We were taken on a brief tour of part of the Hive, to impress us with Yang's power. The most memorable locations I recall were a barracks where Shion claimed 4500 sibeccai workers slept in three shifts of 1500 each, which given the size of the space and the tight packing of the tiny spare beds I can well believe, and a vast open cavern where hundreds and hundreds of sibeccai laborers mined out ore.

Every sibeccai we saw had the same dull, glassy expression. Every laborer was clearly focused on his task (we saw, now that I think about it, no female sibeccai, and no children; presumably they are penned up deeper within the Hive and made to perform different sorts of labor). Every guard stood impassive and blank, not laughing, not joking, not conversing with his fellows. In the pit mine, I saw one laborer's pick slip from his hands and pierce his bare foot, and he did not cry out or flinch, but merely picked the tool back up again and resumed his labor, ignoring his own welling blood.

These sibeccai too were dressed alike, in leather breeches, while the guards wore heavy scale armor. I did not see any evidence of animal husbandry, though later we learned Yang keeps a herd of goats high up above the Hive. The breeches were not goatskin, however, I can assure you.

We tried to communicate with the folk of the Hive, but Shion kept answering for them (which seemed to be what they expected, as they looked to him for answers to questions such as "what is your name?"). Most of Shion's answers, and indeed his words at this stage, consisted of praise for Yang. This praise quickly passed the point of embarrassment and became absurdly flowery and effusive; more than once Yang was referred to as a god. At several points, Shion stepped away from us to speak to a sibeccai messenger, but only briefly; we were never left unescorted or unsupervised.

I wanted to ask after the cafeterias, but our tour was interrupted when Shion took us to a conference room and plied us with delicacies. We sat at a wooden table, in wooden chairs (sized for dragonborn, so we all fit easily). Shion offered us meat, bread, cheese, and wine (something which I had never actually seen, up to this point). Rhogash and I, fearing poison, declined, but Throg and Grog ate heartily. Once we were ensconced, Shion impressed upon us several points, which I can but summarize here.

1. Yang has expected us for years now; he remembers his early communication with Zharroun. Though he does not know the location of Valley, he has anticipated us appearing and petitioning to join his great society, and we are welcome to do so.
2. The many benefits of accepting Yang's leadership include the alchemical cocktail developed by Yang's ally the savant Zakharov, which grants tremendous physical strength and spiritual tranquility.
3. We are to be thanked for recovering the bodies of the Hive patrol that succumbed to the mindworms. (I recall actually that I am conflating the earliest words Shion spoke with our dialogue during the tour, but it makes little difference.)
4. That patrol was the only patrol ever lost by the Hive; they harvest many Planetpearls all the time. (LIE!)
5. Approximately fifty thousand people live in the Hive. (LIE!)
6. Of course the Hive's genius savants can sure Zharroun's illness.

Shion asked us the precise location of Valley; Rhogash (who spoke for us) placed us at a very different part of the map (though still southerly) relative to the Hive than Valley's actual location, and well away from the monolith.

Eventually the tour continued, or was supposed to continue, with a visit to the Hive's "tree grove." As we traveled down a corridor towards this supposed grove, however, a series of three sibeccai ran down Shion in the hallway and passed him palimpsest reports; apparently there were crises that only Shion could handle. Shion left us alone in a corridor with a sibeccai messenger -- Sibeccai Jax (apparently "sibeccai" is in the Hive a job title as well as the name of a sapient species), who had a message for Shion about "Drone Dolapar." Jax seemed somewhat less drugged than the sibeccai we had seen elsewhere; he was aware enough to be fearful of speaking to us.

We were unable to visit the "grove," though we heard screaming coming from that direction. Shion soon reappeared and escorted us to the presence of Yang himself.

My hand and spirit alike are too tired to properly describe this encounter now. More later.

Day Three, night. So much has happened in so little time. I feel I must backtrack, to make sense of that which has already happened. As I already wrote, after the dreadful encounter with Yang's corrupted troops, we cached some Planetpearls, then returned to the Hive -- Mountain, its inhabitant names it, but I deny him the authority of naming -- and there we were met, eventually, by Shion. After a delay Shion took us back to Xijin's laboratory, where the Planetpearls we'd agreed to retrieve were accepted by a gleeful Xijin. She claimed that some hours delay would be necessary before she could give us the potions of "cure" for Zharroun; it was during this interaction that Rhogash said the codephrase Vladimir had specified.

So we were stuck in the Hive for an indeterminate time, which ended up being the rest of the afternoon and on to sunset. Shion couldn't spend the whole time minding us, of course (I imagine making 12% of all the decisions for thousands of people is a demanding job) but before we were locked in a "guest chamber" we managed to impress Shion with our humble eagerness to admire their tree farm. Shion was receptive to the idea of showcasing one of the Hive's many strengths over Valley, and led us up and in, until we reached a secluded box-canyon or valley (we did not explore it thoroughly) high up on the mountain which covered Yang's paradise. There we saw a great many trees -- two kinds of conifers -- tended by a group of glassy-eyed ritualists, who were (Shion claimed) using magic to encourage the trees to grow faster. While we pestered Shion with questions, Throg exhibited great cunning in stealing not just one, but two pinecones: a treasure beyond rubies, smuggled out of the very lion's den.

We were then politely imprisoned, supposedly until the potions were brewed. After some hours of delay, Shion claimed us, and gave us six small vials for Zharroun (as well as a sample of the drugs Yang uses on his soldiers, though I did not learn this until Rhogash mentioned it later), and escorted us to the Hive's main gates. He was intercepted by another messenger, however, who pulled him away from us just as we were leaving -- presumably with the news that Vladimir had escaped Yang's paradise. We would have left anyway, but the guards politely refused to permit us to pass without Shion's approval, and we decided against testing our strength against theirs.

While we waited, Throg farted -- I mention this because he and Grog both think farting is the wittiest action imaginable. But the guards did not acknowledge the act, nor their howls of laughter; they were motionless and blank-eyed.

Eventually, no thanks to the dead gods, Shion reappeared and booted us out (after asking us, apropos of nothing, if we'd interacted with Vladimir or knew of his activities, which of course we denied), and as we tread down the mountainside in the dusk, Vladimir and his associate Cadre emerged from their hiding place and joined us.

They had stories to tell, which brevity forbids my repeating here -- perhaps later. But we agreed to entrust them with our greatest secret, the location of Valley, and to help them escape the Hive.

To that end, we had to kill the patrol of Hive soldiers who saw us -- if we had fled, they might have reported our location and Vlad and Cadre's presence with us. Further they would not listen to reason, doubtless, given their drugged state. Under Yang's command they were little more than animals; our attacking them was surely justified under the circumstances, much as it pains me to initiate violence against a thinking being... on this thrice-cursed Planet, surely all sapients should stick together... but I digress. By attempting to parley, we were able to close the distance to the patrol, who might otherwise have lobbed javelins at us as we approached. Cadre revealed his magical prowess, granted allegedly through astrology, and soon enough there were a half-dozen dead sibeccai where once there had been living beings.

Shortly thereafter -- before the combat was ended, really -- we witnessed a bizarre occurrence. Planet shook, and split asunder, and a great column of twisted fungal matter thrust out the gap in a distressingly phallic matter. This fungal tower spat forth a great many mindworm hatchlings -- the pods that rupture and burst into swarms -- which peppered the surrounding area, including us; we fled, and made for the monolith, where even now we rest.

The monolith was as we left it. We showed it to Cadre and Vladimir, it and the cavern beneath containing the blood of Planet. Afterwards we took advantage of Cadre's teleportation-magic to arm the crossbow traps and escape unharmed, which makes it slightly less probable that the shadar-kai Planet cultists will discover our defilement of their holy space.

Soon we will begin the trek back to Valley -- there will be so much to tell Zharroun...

 

[jeffwik]

Day Four, shortly after midnight. Soon we will begin the trek overland back to Valley from the shadow of this monolith. This is as good a time as any -- while my writing-hand is invigorated from whatever energies here suffuse us -- to relate for posterity the tales of Vladimir and Cadre.

THE TALE OF VLADIMIR

The human Vladimir was born in a human-dominated settlement weeks of travel east of the Hive, called "the University" or "New Hope." This settlement sounds like a veritable paradise, as its ruler, the wizard Zhakarov, foresaw the destruction of Toril-that-Was and discovered or invented the magical Gates which permitted us all to flee that doomed world with its dead gods for Planet. Zhakarov's evacuation plan was not the hurried ramshackle mess of our parents and Zharroun's group, however; he transported thousands of people, hundreds of tons of supplies, livestock, staple foods, and hundreds or even thousands of books. The portal technology he used is, however, not functional on Planet for unknown reasons.

Once ensconced on Planet, Zhakarov built himself a little empire, dedicated presumably to learning (hence its "University" name). According to Vladimir -- hardly the least biased of sources -- New Hope's population is somewhere above ten thousand. (But Vladimir also claims that the Hive's population is at least ten thousand, while what we saw suggests that is closer to the maximum possible figure, and thinks the truer number is closer to thirty thousand, which is obviously bunk.) Despite its large population, New Hope supposedly lacks the security forces and defensibility of Mountain; it is large enough that not everyone knows one another personally, and would be far easier to infiltrate than Valley or Mountain.

Vladimir himself was born on and grew up in New Hope; he is our contemporary, though he seems decades older due to the ravages of Yang's drugs. When he was healthier and living in New Hope, two years ago, he courted Zhakarov's daughter, Irina. Zhakarov, who now styles himself the "premiere" of New Hope and provost of the University, disapproved of this union, and assigned Vladimir to what he had thought would be a temporary assignment as ritual liaison to the Hive. Vladimir accepted the posting, thinking it would be an opportunity to ingratiate himself with Zhakarov, but as the weeks stretched to months, then years, Vladimir realized that he had been disposed of, and began casting for a means of escape.

He was easily able to brew a counteragent for the initiative-dulling drugs Yang's people slipped into his food, though the side effects ravaged his already-weak body, turning him into the sickly specimen we're now escorting back to Valley. Indeed, the faculty of the University appear to be the supreme magical and alchemical researchers on Planet: they have allegedly concocted a magical/alchemical aerosol fungicide, they have developed techniques for crafting magic items out of Planetpearls (though the shadar-kai Planet cultists apparently independently developed the same techniques), and so on.

When we arrived at the Hive, he saw his chance, and made his escape. Now his primary goal is to be reunited with Irma, Zhakarov's daughter, whom he loves and who he claims loves him as well (despite two years of absence). I worry for his sanity, should he return to New Hope and find her happily wed to another man; his vision of her seems to have been the main thing keeping him from depression or suicide in the bowels of Yang's Hive, however detached from reality that vision became.

Though Vlad is a noncombatant, he possesses much useful ritual knowledge, including the ritual to make trees grow faster and the rituals for crafting magical items from Planetpearls.

THE TALE OF CADRE

Cadre's tale is simpler, for he is a native of the Hive. Cadre is a tiefling, I should specify -- though we saw only dragonborn and sibeccai within the Hive, apparently there is a small tiefling population as well, deep under Mountain. The simple version of the story is that he can Vladimir became friends, and when Vladimir began taking his self-brewed antidotes to Yang's drugs, he started feeding them to Cadre as well, and soon enough Cadre was a fully-conscious participant in the hell that is Yang's utopia. He remained in this position for something like eighteen months before we came to the Hive and they escaped (Cadre's magical teleportation proved invaluable in the escape; apparently Yang's policies are such that they do not account for his slave-citizen drones teleporting away), and I think the experience filled him with a kind of madness, for while he never speaks of (for instance) rescuing his family from the Hive, he eagerly discusses at length his collectivist theories and how Yang has polluted the "revolution" which is the Hive. I worry he may be politically unreliable.

However for now he seems at least as trustworthy as Vlad, and as he is of tougher stock Cadre is unweakened by the antidotes he's taken; his astrological magic has proven itself in battle against Yang's drone-soldiers already.

But now Grog is hefting Vladimir upon his back; it is time for us to leave the monolith and trek back to Valley. I confess I worry somewhat that in our absence the mindworms -- which, after all, attacked Valley just four days ago -- will have mounted another assault and overrun the colony.

Day Four, night. I am tired in my bones, and a heaviness lies in my chest. Though this is not an end to our struggle for survival, I cannot but think this is the end of a beginning: Zharroun, commander of Valley, has passed from this thrice-cursed Planet.
But I am ahead of my story. Returning to Valley from the monolith, we met and fought a terrible mindworm, a beast which stole into our hearts and tried to hurl Throg upon us like an arrow loosed from the bow, but it mattered not. We slew the things, if living they could ever have been called, for they were not meat and bone but mushroom and mold, and our hearts grew heavy as we strode closer to Valley. We buried the stone --

-- I have not mentioned the stone before. Alas, I am a poor chronicler. I cannot even blame the melancholy in my gut, for I should have described it this morning, before we learned the sad facts of what has happened in Valley in our absence. It was pressed into our hands as we left the Hive. The stone is a smoky glass sphere; I do not know if it a relic of Toril-that-Was but I do not think so. Yang possesses its twin, and I believe he and Zhakarov share another similar pair, Vladimir intimated. The purpose of the stone is long-distance communication; they are magic items. For fear that Yang could spy on us through the item without our knowledge or permission, we did not take it with us back to Valley, but cached it in a particular spot -- we buried it in the hills near the monolith, at the lowest spot we could see one hour's walk from the monolith towards Valley. In this way we should be able to find it again, eventually...

We buried the stone, then continued on, then saw a black column of smoke, long and tall like a signal fire, coming out of Valley. Fearing the worst, we rushed on, and were met by my crechemates Bernard and Frances, whom Santiaggro had assigned to watch the border. They greeted us, but were in a state of considerable excitation, which the sight of Vlad and Cadre only exacerbated. It was difficult at first for them to communicate what it was that had happened, so there was confusion -- I think we may have been placed under arrest at some point. Soon enough, however, it was sorted out, and we proceeded to the center of the village.

There, Santiaggro was just finishing her eulogy of Zharroun; we returned too late to save him, if indeed Xijin's foul potions would have eased his condition. As the body was committed to the pyre, all assembled wept, myself included; it was a solemn moment.

Later, we met with Santiaggro, who seems to have become the de facto ruler of Valley, to the surprise of none of us. We filled her in on our experiences, and Vlad too told his story. She was moved, I think it is safe to say, by the thrilling and valiant tale of Vlad's and Cadre's escape, and welcomed them to Valley. She was also moved, I have no doubt, but in a somewhat different way, by our description of the horrors of the Hive -- the glassy-eyed laborers, the drugged soldiers, Yang's explicit assertion he does not recognize our right of self-rule. The news that a hostile army of alchemically drugged supersoldiers occupies a powerful mountain fastness, just two days' march to the north cannot be called good news, under any circumstan

 

[jeffwik]

Day Seven, evening. By the dead gods, I just realized I have not updated this record in days.

The night we returned home I fell asleep at my desk, to the disappointment of F------ my paramour, stylus in hand -- for I was, as I wrote at the time, exhausted. I slept until the late morning, and in the afternoon met again with Vladimir, Rhogash, Santiaggro, Cadre, Grog, Throg, and Kato (who seems to be Santiaggro's secretary or personal scribe, now) for a fuller debriefing. We recreated the layout of the Hive, as well as we knew it -- Cadre's knowledge was here invaluable -- and speculated and planned how best to deal with this obvious military threat. Vlad's knowledge of New Hope, the University, was likewise prised from him, pinned to the wall, and probed with scalpels (metaphorically speaking). Last night we enjoyed a great celebration, music and liquor and the like, and then today back at it.

Eventually we came to a sort of conclusion, with the following points:

1) Yang's utopia represents a clear and present danger to the security of Valley. It is vital that we immediately begin a military buildup to prepare for this threat. Frankly my people are not fools; we have my entire life been faintly aware that someday we would be forced to fight for our security -- after all, you own nothing you cannot defend. However, we must step up our preparedness. Santiaggro proposes pulling all the colony's children out of their current homes and into a central creche, not unlike the way I was raised, and ensuring that all the young people receive fully military training. The perimeter needs be properly fortified and defended; Frances and the others on full-time guard duty should be instructed in what to expect when mindworms attack as well -- after all, only a week ago a force of mindworms attempted to storm Valley.

2) As the group with the most hands-on experience outside Valley, we -- meaning Grog, Throg, Rhogash, Cadre and myself -- are best-suited to this training. We are also best-suited to many other tasks, so we shall attempt to instruct a single unit -- I believe the sisters Balk, Belig, Bilik, and their brother Byuchyuch, fine goblinoids all -- in fungal survival before heading out (see below).

3) Our -- and yet again I record for posterity that Throg deserves the lion's credit -- theft of the pinecones, and Vladimir's ritual, make possible a redoubling of our efforts at tending a proper tree farm. A ready supply of lumber, for construction, paper, bows and arrows (not to mention luxury goods)... it has the potential to transform life in Valley. This must therefore be a priority.

4) Vladimir is a tremendously valuable resource. As a ritualist, he provides Valley with knowledge our savants have sorely missed, including rituals for the creation of magic weapons and other magic items, and for manipulating the properties of magic weapons and other magic items as well. He has already proved his worth by recovering the magical potency from the weapons we retrieved from the shadar-kai Planet cultists, and is even now working in our ritual laboratory to create new magic weapons and other magic items from the Planetpearls we've accumulated. Vladimir is deeply devoted to the image of his former paramour, Irina, Zhakarov's daughter, and insists she must be essentially her father's prisoner and that she should be rescued, preferably by him, and taken to the safety of Valley. While we cannot begin to probe Irina's heart, having never met her, we all agree we owe Vladimir at least a good-faith attempt.

5) Furthermore all we know of New Hope and the University and their leader Zhakarov comes either indirectly from Yang and Shion, or two years' out of date from Vladimir. Vlad's hometown could, when Yang acts on his vendetta against Valley, prove a valuable ally... if the man who so callously sold Vladimir into slavery -- and who apparently turns a blind eye to the monster Yang -- can possibly be reasoned with.

6) While we were in the Hive -- yet another small detail I did not bother to mention -- Shion mentioned in brief passing someone named Domai, and later Vlad explained that Domai is a sibeccai, one of Yang's drones who escaped the Hive years ago with something like five hundred of his people, and as far as anyone knows they're still living out there in the wastes somewhere. If we could make contact, our people and his would have much to offer one another -- it has been a long time in the wilderness for those "free drones," I think.

7) Santiaggro considered sending a group to the monolith, to secure it and attempt to hold it -- as an obviously valuable strategic resource -- against the shadar-kai Planet cultists. Rhogash spoke eloquently against this, and I concurred; the shadar-kai are unknown in strength, and our superior in equipment and (currently) training; against even a numerically superior foe a well-trained and well-equipped group can project force many times greater than the simple arithmetic of battle would indicate. Therefore it is unwise to provoke the Planet cultists, at least until we are better-prepared. The longer they are ignorant of our location and intentions, the better.

Tomorrow we will take Byuchyuch and his sisters out into the fungus for a training exercise, then -- armed with new and improved magic items from Vlad -- begin the difficult march west and north to the University, there to learn what we can, see New Hope firsthand, perhaps meet with Zhakarov, perhaps "rescue" his daughter. I worry that Irina does not return Vlad's affections -- absence makes the heart forgetful, as F------ has reminded me -- and this news will drive the poor man into a melancholia. His image of her seems, at times, to be the one thread which has kept him clinging to sanity in the hellish Hive.

Dark days are ahead, I have no doubt. This morning, I was walking in Valley with my comrades, and we encountered a sight I have never seen before -- Patrin, a dragonborn I confess I do not know well -- bound in stocks, welts from a whipping covering his body, and Frances's friend Erytulk standing guard over him. Apparently Patrin had been speaking against taking up arms in the defense of Valley, declaring himself a pacifist, and exhorting all he met to join him in rejecting the sins of Toril-that-Was. But man has killed man since the beginning of time, and each age has brought new ways and new places to die... why should the future be different? To make clear her displeasure with the Patrinite message, Santiaggro had him bound up in this fashion. Myself I would have exiled him from Valley; they who refuse to protect what is theirs truly have no claim to it. But alone in the wastes he would doubtless have perished in days, and Santiaggro is perhaps more compassionate than I.

 

[jeffwik]

DAY EIGHT, midafternoon. This morning we took Bilik and Belig as well as two dragonborn, Thuash and Tinath, out into the fungus for a training exercise (apparently Byuchyuch and Balk will be in another team, and I misheard the planning). I say we, meaning myself, Rhogash, Grog and Throg, and the immigrant Cadre. The training exercise was intended to teach the guards how to navigate in the fungus, how to spot and kill mindworms, and so on -- it did not go entirely as planned, however. I would say it went better.

We did not sight any living mindworm boils, but in patrolling the territory around Valley we soon discovered a number of dismembered boils, worms sliced open and the Planetpearl caviar within scooped out. Our suspicions were raised, then confirmed. We crested a hill perhaps a mile from Valley to see a curious sight, to wit: a group of five Planet Cultists performing some kind of strange and exotic ritual about a gyrating wormy fungal beast. The clear conclusion to draw was that these shadar-kai villains possessed the capacity to tame and command mindworms (which hardly contrasted with what we knew of them) and that, performing this rite so close to Valley, they were doubtless intending to bring the mindworms down upon us. It is therefore entirely reasonable that we ambushed them.

Truly it is fortunate we struck when we did; by interrupting the rite we apparently stopped the mindworm from fighting alongside the cultists. In point of fact it struck apparently randomly, more at us than at the cultists largely because by the time it joined the fight we were already the apparent victors... I have no interest in providing blow-by-blow accounts of the many battles we engage in, here on this thrice-cursed Planet, but I recall that it seemed that while the rite was still underway (and the cultists attempted to salvage the rite even after we had slain one of their number) the mindworm was held, and did not engage in the combat.

Soon enough however it was slain, along with all the cultists save one, whose escape we thwarted (thanks to a timely ray of frost on my part and the august javelins of distance we salvaged from Yang's guards). He -- the prisoner's name is Drahz -- we took captive, and dragged back to Valley for interrogation.

Kato and the others are still questioning him, even now, but I have grown weary of his bizarre religious rhetoric. Drahz claims that his people, the shadar-kai, are the favored ones of Planet, which they worship as divine. He spoke of a coming apotheosis, when the favored people will lead all the folk of Planet to godhood, or perhaps that the favored people will become gods suitable for worship by the rest of us; it wasn't entirely clear. The Planet-god they worship, apparently, is the fungus itself, which extends deep into the earth, below the sea, into the mountains, and bursts up into the sky. When we walk across the fungus, we walk across its skin, or its brain, or some other mad thing.

While I cannot deny that magic here seems to differ from what I have been taught about Toril-that-Was, leaping to the conclusion that it is all due to the psychic interference from a mind literally larger than anything we can imagine... that we live on the skin of an awakening God... that just seems, in a word, crazy.

 

[jeffwik]

DAY NINE, night. Today Vlad received another sending from Zhakarov, whom he lied to once more; he claimed to be hiding with Domai in the fungal wastes north of here. After securing permission from us and Santiaggro -- we impressed upon him the importance of secrecy with regards to the location of Valley -- he conducted his own sending, to Irina. I half-expected some kind of breakdown from him, then and there, as she was revealed to be something other than the unrealistic idealized angel whose image he clung to in Yang's Hive. But no, the contact went as well as could be expected, apparently (I cannot guess as to why she never attempted to contact him with a sending while he was in his exile). She saw through his lie about Domai immediately, which is itself suggestive, and did not (according to Vlad; I suppose I should specify that all our knowledge of these sendings comes through him, and it is not impossible he is simply mad) object at all to the proposal that we travel to New Hope to reconnoiter.

I have just returned from dinner with Rhogash's family, along with Throg and Cadre. Grog declined the invitation (courtesy forbids me from speculation as to any liaison between him and Santiaggro which conflicted). At the dinner all were pleasant, save Rhogash's young cousins Lola and Moge, his mother Sarhinna's sister's daughters, who with the boldness of teenagers began making outrageous accusations about Santiaggro, claiming that "everyone knows" she assassinated Zhaurron to seize power for herself! Rhogash took them aside and counseled them against making rash impolitic and wholly unsupported treasonous accusations, thankfully. However I fear that these rumors are spreading through Valley like cancer in the bloodstream, weakening our communal resolve. I should ask F------ to keep her ear to the ground.

There is so much we do not know. For example: when we set out for the Hive Santiaggro gave us a few hoarded magical trinkets to trade to Yang, if he demanded payment for a cure for Zharroun. These relics of Toril-that-Was had faded in their potency and were simply normal weaponry; is this related to the similar fade in strength we see occurring with the magical items we have recovered from the Planet cult? Our limited experimentation suggests that with these items, potency fades with disuse; a weapon must be wielded or its strength diminishes -- rapidly in some cases. This makes outfitting more squads of Valley's citizens with magic weapons (and, I suppose, other gear) crafted from Planetpearls problematic, but not impossible.

 

[jeffwik]

DAY ELEVEN, morning. After an additional day of recuperation, we head back out into the unknown. Our planned course will take us west, into unexplored territory, then north to the colony of New Hope. The territory to the west is as hilly as the fungal wastes to the north, but without the fungus covering (though to hear Drahz the prisoner describe it, the fungus is still present, just buried beneath layers of mineral deposits and dirt... a theory we lack the resources and time to test). At some point we will swing north, and travel the rest of the distance to the University of Planet, and the colony of New Hope. This will permit us to travel as far from the Hive as possible, and likewise we will avoid the mindworms for at least part of the journey (I do not know whether the fungal covering extends, or breaches the surface, further out in this direction, only that it is not present in the immediate vicinity of Valley).

It seems we scarcely returned to the relatively safety of Valley before we must once more venture out into the wilderlands. Our previous expedition met with hardship, but great good luck also, and revelation upon revelation. What awaits us to the west?

DAY ELEVEN, midday. At least part of my question is answered. To the west there are packs of strange beasts I will now attempt to describe. They are bluish in color, distinctly moreso than the blue-brown dirt that covers the hills on this region of Planet, and they are about the mass of a human, though proportioned very differently: their six legs are slung low and their torso is close to the ground. They do not look insectoid, but are closer to lizards or mammals, though they correspond closely to neither. Their overall shape is not unlike that of the goats we herd in Valley, but larger and more muscular, plus of course the extra two legs. They have no heads, no eyes or ears, and no mouth that we could see, only a small nub where on a mammal there would be a head. Cutting one open, one finds no Planetpearls in evidence, but instead a hard lump of nerve tissue near the nub, at the base of the spine, which reacts faintly to psychic energy. I took one as a sample to study more carefully later. Also, close anatomical examination reveals a hidden mouth and gullet in the chest, which is almost invisible when closed. When the pack of them attacked us, they fought with long claws at the ends of their front two limbs, not with the mouth.

Given their odd number of limbs, I dub them sextellegers. They bear faint resemblance to the aberrant creatures called "displacer beasts" I was taught about, but I think this is only a superficial resemblance, and that the sextellegers are not refugees like us and the goats from Toril-that-Was. Can they be native Planet life? It seems strange that they could exist in the same ecosystem as the fungus, but perhaps the mindworms limit themselves to only a fraction of Planet's surface -- certainly there is little evidence of the fungus here, a scant ten klicks or so from Valley.

DAY ELEVEN, midafternoon. Another pack of sextellegers has fallen upon us. They travel in large groups, it seems, and swarm opponents when they can. This pack was led by a pair of much larger sextellegers, perhaps mature adults (in which case, I shudder to think, we have mainly fought juveniles only). It seems strange that these pack predators could exist without any prey species, but we have seen none so far; perhaps they subsist on something that hides when it smells folk approaching? I do not wonder, now, that the first expeditions decades ago into this region did not return; this land is at least as hostile as the fungal waste.

DAY ELEVEN, dusk. I stand on the banks of a river -- a river, a body of fast-moving freshwater leading down to the ocean; it is something I have never expected to see with my own eyes. Beyond the river, we can see a forest! A forest of trees such as we have never seen before: tall, straight-trunked trees without spreading branches, just with tufts of large broad leaves spaced evenly up the trunk. All of us are eager to investigate -- Cadre as much as any of us -- but we cannot cross the river here, and from this vantage point we can see all the way down to the place where it meets the ocean; there is nothing for us in that direction. Instead we shall turn north, up the river, and find a shallow place to ford it.

 

[jeffwik]

DAY TWELVE, morning?. I cannot move, so I am dictating this entry in my head, to transcribe it later if and when our captors free us.

DAY TWELVE, morning? (later). I passed out, I think. It is later than it was.

DAY TWELVE, time unknown. Our most recent crisis seems to have ended, with only one death; now is as good a time as any to chronicle the events of the day.

Yesterday evening, we proceeded to travel northwards along the bank of the river -- which in my utilitarian vernacular I name simply the River, marked by a capital letter -- but were soon set upon by another pack of the fast-moving sextellegers. They surrounded us and chewed us up. I for my part was almost useless, as the sextellegers seem to be resistant to my psychic magic. We fought valiantly, but before long Throg lay insensible on the ground, worried by the claws of a pair of the beasts, and Grog stood alone over Rhogash's bleeding body at the center of a swarm of a half-dozen of the foul beasts, with Cadre and myself skirting the edges of the fight and attempting to assist with magic.

I considered leaping into the River and floating downstream from known to unknown peril, leaving my comrades to die -- not a choice I relish! -- when a hunting party of close to two dozen of the humaniform creatures I had dubbed "mutons" crested a hill to the north. They drove off the sextellegers, and took us prisoner -- though Grog and I at least resisted their snares until we were beaten blue.

When I regained consciousness, earlier today (I believe it is one day later; Cadre confirms this, and he declined to resist the tyranny of the nets, perhaps fittingly given his birthplace in the Hive) we were all of us bound in a wet and dank earthy cave, lit by phosphorescent moss or fungus that streaked up the walls and across the ceiling. What we could see was a single chamber, perhaps forty feet in diameter and roughly that high, with a single passage up and out guarded by two of the Floxii -- though then I knew them as mutons.

The Floxii did not respond to our cries or statements, but we quickly learned we were not alone: another prisoner of the Floxii shared our cell, a female Planet cultist named Zakiya. Zakiya reluctantly agreed to share intelligence with us, and admitted that she had been part of a "farming" expedition of the shadar-kai cultists into this region, and that her group had fought and been defeated by the Floxii, with her alone escaped alive to tell us. She asserted that the Floxii were unintelligent, merely mimicking humanoid habits, pointing out that they do not seem to understand or speak the Common Tongue of Toril-that-Was. She further asserted that soon enough she would be receiving a sending from her comrades in the Planet cult, and that they would rescue her if only she could explain her rough location.

The Floxii impassively ignored our words, though they reacted badly when Throg broke free of his bonds and tried to force his way out of the cell. They spewed up more of the soft sticky flexible net, and all but buried him in it. Meanwhile we shared with Zakiya what little we knew, and questioned her more about her group's "farming" activities, but the true nature of the situation did not become clear until later, when a Floxi -- I assume an elder or leader of theirs -- stormed into our cell and jabbered inexplicably at me.

We realized right quick that the elder was holding the sextelleger brain or organ, which the day before I had cut out of the beast, and was enraged by my possession of it. Zakiya seemed nonplussed, and we got out of her that the Floxii -- again, we still called them mutons at this point -- the Floxii possess similar organs, and that the shadar-kai hunt the Floxii for these organs, which they use in alchemical preparations.

The real situation became clear: we were not prisoners of mindless unintelligent apes, as Zakiya would have us believe, but rather we were under arrest for the suspected murder of Floxii! The elder jabbered at us, and we heard the phrase "shadar-kai," which we took pains to distance ourselves from. The elder seemed dubious, however, and set some giant spiders on us.

I write that in a blase tone, as if I were often fighting giant spiders while bound hand and foot, but no, it was not a simple matter. Rhogash and Throg were injected by the spider with, as near as we can figure out, some kind of slow-acting poison which is likely to be spider-eggs. I was able to burn off our bonds, which was helpful, but still fighting unarmed and unarmored is far from the ideal tactical situation.

Eventually everything was sorted out, thanks -- as near as I can tell -- to a few sendings between Vlad back in Valley, and Cadre and Rhogash. Vlad was in contact with Irina, who has learned some amount of the Floxii language -- for example, we learned indirectly from her that they call themselves Floxii. After we repeated a phrase in their tongue which she relayed to us through Vlad, the Floxii brought to us a large, spherical Planetpearl, which shone with yellow light and from which Irina's voice spoke -- this surely was a communicator of the same type Yang tried to press into our hands back at the Hive.

Also, Santiaggro and the others seem to have gotten a bit more intelligence out of Drahz the prisoner: we are instructed that to the west (beyond the forest, I expect) there is a location called "the Living Ocean." I shudder to imagine what this might be -- a single massive jelly monster, the size of a sea? A city of angry hostile merfolk? On its north side, or north shore, or to the north of it, there is some sort of ancient artifact, an ogre's weapon or a weapon for fighting ogres or a weapon guarded by ogres. The intelligence from Drahz was, it seems, vague.

With Irina's help, we were able to convince the Floxii that we were not the villains the University and the Planet Cult are. Apparently like the shadar-kai, the colonists of New Hope have been hunting Floxii for their brainstems and calling them animal, too. Irina has defected or hidden among the Floxii or something along those lines -- she has a camp southwest of New Hope, which is our new destination. Once the Floxii understood that Zakiya and we were not together, and the Irina was willing to vouch for us but not her, and that she had been in sending contact with her comrades, they slew her.

I cannot say I think that was a poor choice. She was quite unwilling to listen to reason, and refused to accept the evidence in front of her to admit that no, the Floxii are not insensate beasts but rather as intelligent as a bugbear certainly... even after it was undeniable that her people had been murdering sentient creatures and using their brainstems to fuel their dark rites, she insisted that the Floxii have no native right to exist, that because those whom the Planet Cult murdered could not defend their lives, they had no right to it. Thus the unethical core of the cult is revealed; they are the thieves, of life and property, which all wideawake men must defend against. No matter who you are, I was taught as a child, there will always be someone -- a taxman, a mugger, a murderer, a usurer -- who thinks himself your master, who thinks he has the right to take what is yours. From my cold dead hands as we say in Valley! From my cold dead hands you shall take my property, after I have fought and resisted your aggression to the last! How dare the University rob the Floxii in this way, just as the Planet Cult robs them of their lives and us of our safety! I am filled with self-righteous indignation, as F------ often says is my wont.

I have performed the ritual of comprehend languages, which allows me to understand the strange bar-bar speech of the Floxii, and allows for crude communication as I pantomime to them. They tell us that beyond the River is the forest we saw, and that in the northwest of the forest -- which is also the most direct route to Irina's camp, from what we can gather -- are a type of beast they call the Hard-ya-hara, or something similar; it is a large leaping thing which dwells in the trees. If Rhogash and Throg consume the brain of one of these creatures, the eggs or poison inside them should be neutralized.

We warned the Floxii about the sendings between Zakiya and the Planet Cult, prior to her execution (a fitting end to a quasicannibal!) and they assured us that they could conceal the entrance to their caves with some illusion, though whether it was magic or more proasic trickery I have no idea. Certainly the Floxii possess technology we do not, in controlling the growth of the extrusions of fungus in their cave -- brightening and dimming chambers at will, calling down walls of fungal growth which recede on command, like doors... I wonder: is, as the Planet Cultists claim, the fungus the Floxii manipulate is the same species (or organism!) as that which spills across the landscape in the fungal wastes between Valley and the Hive?

The Floxii have fed us a gruel of some grayish substance -- it's not tasty, but it is filling. Tomorrow we leave them, and head out across the River into the forest. We all of us are filled with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. On the one hand, so far this part of the surface of Planet has proven just as hostile as the fungal wastes; had the Floxii not come across us and taken us captive back to their caves, we would have died out there, clawed to death by a dozen dozen sextellegers. And surely the knowledge that we were imprisoned and at the mercy of what we had reason to assume a hostile force -- for did they not beat Grog and I into unconsciousness when we failed to show a sufficiently servile demeanor? -- does not fill us with confidence. On the other hand, none of us have seen a forest with anything like the awesome majesty of what we sighted beyond the River...

 

[jeffwik]

DAY THIRTEEN, midday. So tired. So much to report. We are collapsed under the canopy of trees, but my description of the biology of the forest will have to wait for another time, for we are all exhausted beyond reason... we were trekking across the forest floor when a group of giant spiders, like the ones the Floxii set on us, and others. Perhaps I should dub this region the Country of Spiders, for surely they are the most fiendish of the beasts we have encountered here. I do not know if they too emigrated from Toril-that-Was, as giant spiders or small spiders that grew under the twin suns of Planet, but they are horrible. I feel we again came very close to death, and all or almost all the healing potions we took from Valley are gone now.

Each day I wake reaching further into myself, to draw upon still more and more deeply hidden reserves of strength. The time we spent recuperating in Valley -- just two days ago -- now seems a distant memory. Will we die out here, alone and unmourned on the surface of Planet? Or shall these laborious struggles eventually climax, and recede, and leave us in some kind of peace? Is any peace possible?