Spire Expedition Report:
Depths exploration expedition;
purpose, studying runic symbols deep within the floors. Scope, Floors 1-3
Participants: Roal Scuttle, Oro Worten, Ezekiel Kaunt, Nora hawthorn, Anlow Rosen
Events:
Floor 1 Report:
Highly advanced Botanical Region, a self-sustaining magically produced forest ecosystem. Investigations find new creatures are created and spawned out of view, hidden ports within the forest erupt “raw” mana. Life here seems to be born by the floors manipulation of raw mana. The flora and fauna here seem to have adapted to travelers passing through, most life seems to have either found a way to coexist with our interference or repel against it. The entrance to this floor descends into a dimly lit and very humid room before opening up to a large forest with an artificially made celestial cycle. The air is damp within this region, with a heavy scent of earth and a evershifting breeze. Despite our efforts to locate the source of “wind” the floor seems to stretch near indefinitely with exits or entrances to lower floors appearing every 15 miles, there seems to be no limit to the floor none that we have discovered so far. At night strange bioluminescent fungi and flora provide light, alongside fire flies, upon investigation these plant and creatures seem to glow for biological reasons rather than magical. The wildlife varies, from traditional forest creatures to some mutated or created by mana. Some local rumors claim cases of watchers hiding admist the trees when navigating alone. There have been no recorded cases of humanoid Imatators so far within the first floor. Overall this floor is quite habitable with some residents going so far as to construct villages within it.
Floor 2 Report
Hostile Tundra region, developed around ice-aligned creatures and phenomena. An area that embodies the idea of “Extreme” cold. The change is sudden and drastic, descending from the forest stairs we quickly found ourselves in an unforgiving snowy expanse, the stairs had even vanished from behind us. Geographical invesitagtions found several safe resting areas nearby entrances, caves with enough insulation for warm blooded creatures to survive. The entire floor seems to be built within an unseen ventilation chamber, viscous tundra winds blow in from everchanging directions without any rhyme or reason. Flora and fauna seem to have developed around the cold, with most plans being magical in some way either based around fire or ice, most animal life have heavy coats or flame properties to counteract the cold. Preliminary investigations found the ground contained an abnormally high concentration of iron, tungsten, and titanium, beneath the snow seemst to be a layer of impoverished soil then beneath a layer of crushed stone and ore. Though no formal mining operations have been conducted, its safe to theorize the presence of rich metal deposits all throughout the floor. While exploring the floor Nora startled by a wolf released a bolt of flame, to our surprise the snow impacted by the bolt of fire showed no signs of melting. Upon further investigation the snow within the floor does not seem to melt to heat, nor melt at all as far as we are concerned. This leads us to believe the snow here is either magically produced or made of another material that isnt water, something heavier we believe. Much like the first floor this floor seems to expand infinitely, though our mage keeps stopping us at random intervals claiming “a bad feeling” as proper reasoning. Staircases within this floor seem much harder to come by, im unsure if its due to the blizzard conditions blocking my view or if the stairways become less frequent the further down you go. As we arrived at our final stair case before entering the third floor a few discoveries were made, staircases seem to appear every 25-30 miles and the further in one travels the more frequent hallucinations become. We are unsure if these hallucinations have a magical cause or simply the cold causing ones mind to decay. When passing through the staircase to the third floor we noticed one of our companions had gone missing despite having been with us a moment before, this sent Nora and my men into a panic, with this we had returned to the previous floor and found no trace of them other than some black ooze substance. Human Imitators are unable to travel between floors, when they shapeshift often a black goo is left behind it seems somewhere along the way Anlow our ranger was replaced by a Mimic of sorts. What a horrible way to go, out in the cold all alone.
Floor 3 Report
Despite our loses we continued further into the spire, entering the caverns. We walked down the stairs and entered an empty expanse, the air was heavy here stale. Despite the frost of the tundra above the caverns were reasonably warm. The air smells of sulfur, suggesting gas vents nearby, a miners haven. Initial investigations show signs of deep mining operations or expeditions occurring down here. Giant drills deep below rope bridges, broken minecart rails leading to god knows where. This floor contains the first sign of prior intelligent life either inhabiting or exploring the dungeon. Eventually we happened upon a man made structure, one with reinforced steel walls, though it took some work we managed to wedge our way in. Inside the structure was an abandoned research lab, containing documents and procedures in a language we cannot understand, even with magic. It seems whatever inhabited this spire held its deepest research laboratories here, labs dedicated to studying the world beneath Lumen, the very earth itself. There were even signs of crystal extraction, ground crystalline dust coating ancient machinery much larger than our own. It seems whatever forces were here prior sought to tap into the very life blood of Lumen itself drilling deep below the surface in search for nodes of mana crystal. Investigations throughout the flood returned fruitful, with large crystal formations and rare ore veins found throughout the caverns. Despite prior infastructure being installed within the floor the caves are still very prone to collapse our entire group was nearly swallowed after Oro leaned against a wooden support. Overtime crystalline growths of various sizes began emerging out from nearby walls, pulsing with a faint, chaotic energy. Some of these crystals were sentient, moving and shifting chaoticly, slowly altering the layout of the caverns. Due to them ground seems to be uneven, a mix of loose shale and sharp rock. In the distance, the low rumble of shifting stone can be heard, presumably from our crystalline friends. With the third floor explored we began to return to the surface, unaware of how much time passed. One final note, our investigations of the third floor found evidence of further floors, only god knows how deep this spire goes.
Results:
Casualties: Anlow Rosen, replaced by an Imitator.
Findings: Ancient documents, large machinery schematics, evidence of deeper floors, evidence suggesting hostile creatures presence past the first floor.