1110 — The Elevator-Pool

This entry spans the surface, the gardens, and the firmament.

Sometimes that which travels the stars falls to earth. When this happens, marks are left. Sometimes the marks are so vast that we miss them, dwell in them, take them as simply the shape of the world. This isn’t wrong, really, this is a way a world is shaped — but the how and why can be lost too easily.

This one is just small enough that it is easily noticeable.

The Surface: The Hole in The Lake

Sitting in a plateau between a ring of mountain peaks is a wide craterlike lake. It is pristine and clear, with a rocky bed, no plants or detritus muddying the waters. It is very shallow, as deep as 4 feet in some spots but usually somewhere between 1 and 2. The exception to this is in the dead center: a hole 30 feet across drops directly downwards under the water, farther than the light reaches.

Crab-Dogs frolic on the shore and shallows of the lake. They occasionally emerge from the hole in small swarms, though few descend back down. Replace all land animal random encounters with 2d4 Crab-Dogs. Stats for crab dogs can be found in the bestiary available on Johnston Metzger’s patreon.

There is a 1-in-4 chance that Flynn (he/him), a wizard, is here studying the lake and the crab-dogs. When present his wizardly supplies are stashed in 1012, to avoid crab-dog attention. He is funded by the Merchant-Industrialists, but is not loyal to their ideals, just their coins.

Flynn’s Magical Stash (as Magic Use 2 from &treasure)
600 coins.
200 coins trade goods — weaponry. Flynn uses arms that would be issued to militiamen to barter with travelers.
1 map — to another Magic User 2 hoard, this one locked up in the Valley Collaboration (0807)
4 magic items — Irosorin, hero-mead, The Water Bell, elemental rod (from &treasure)

If someone ventures a mile down the hole, they begin to see a bluish glow. At two miles, the glow suffuses the whole hole, revealing the walls to be perfectly smooth. Three miles down, they are deposited into the Gardens.

The Gardens: Pool From Another World

A pool of liquid, glowing gently with bluish light, sits in a huge shallow bowl-shaped impression in a black chamber. The material of the chamber is metallic with a matte finish, and shows no seams. Small channels run through it bringing the glowing liquid to other pools that dot the empty space. Crab-dogs frolic and play here, and their eggs can be found in the smaller ancillary pools, though not in the central one.

A huge tube hangs from the distant domed ceiling and into the central pool. The hole in the lake leads here: those descending it can exit into the pool and surface into breathable (though odd smelling) air. This tube can be commanded to transport objects within it up and down its length and into the sky above, by creating an elastic bubble around them that is moved by gases that it produces and controls. Commands come in the form of hand signals. Signage with examples of these can be found along the edges of various pools and on the walls of the underground structure, though the script explaining their precise function is not one from this planet and would take much time and effort to translate satisfactorily.

The Firmament: Cosmic Miasma

The range of this elevator extends skyward, but it is broken. A being rising in an elastic bubble will find it increasingly jittery and imprecise in its movements, and when it reaches the height of the low-hanging firmament, the bubble will veer towards the glass platforms and crash, hurled to 1111 barring being steered elsewhere, if not made to descend back below. The air here is poisonous, outside the safety of a bubble: the gases that are supposed to ascend to the heavens in a straight line are instead fountaining off in many directions, polluting the space between the glass platforms. Exposure to this without a filter will cause dizziness and 1d6 damage to the Health stat per day.

At night, when viewed from the firmament, wisps of blue light can be seen to dance like ghosts in the air here, sprayed on their upward path and fizzling out as they descend. Distinct from any aurora. They cannot be seen from the ground.