Down in the Depths

Alin rubs the back of their neck "I think we got very lucky with this one, my special abilities are meant for taking out living creatures and don’t usually have effect on animated stone."

"Be thankful they did, Alin. Some part of it was alive... and I'm glad that part is dead," Ghillie said. "A mist-making ring, eh? Seems like you'd create the mist around you then run like hell from whatever's trying to kill you."

"It could be useful in my normal line of work, but I see your point in our current situation. It could be like octopus ink obscuring a retreat"

Gunnar comes back from taking a piss in the side tunnel. "What!? I missed all the fun! I never thought there'd be a downside to the Everflowing Tankard, but now I know better. Ah well, looks like you folks handled the situation just fine."

"Alin deserves the credit. They sliced the giant statue's mind apart. A feat worthy of even a dwarven blade."

"Gives new meaning to 'sharp witted' eh Alin?" He slaps Alin on the back in a congratulatory manner.

Alin takes the slap on the back with a exaggerated wince, more as a reaction to the pun than from the rough dwarven hand. If I ever meet my children, I will tell them tales of how this ring was won.

"Oh, you're a parent, Alin?" Gunnar says with a bit of surprise. Gunnar wasn't young anymore by Dwarven standards, and after the war ended his mother had been pestering him about starting a family. That was half the reason he was on Xen'drik.

"Yes….a mother and a father." Alin smiles whistfully "The little ankle biters are being raised in a community away from human society, where they can wear their own skin and not be persecuted. Shall we move on?"

Could we move on please?

"It's good that your young can grow without having the norms of others forced upon them, Alin. That may happen later but the young should be free," Ghillie said with a smile. "But now... Let's continue to search this place and see what else fails to kill us."

Gunnar is also intrigued by Alin's story, but acquiesces to Kevin's eagerness. "Lead the way, battle smith!"

You all begin descending, the sludge is slippery, but taking care, you are able to descend the ladder safely. It goes down...down...down...until you get to a place so dark that you can barely see the light from whence you came.

You find a solid floor, and after feeling around along the walls, you make your way out of the sludge, after traveling about 100 yards along a long, squarish tunnel.

Krinn remarks, "I have no knowledge of this specific place. Interesting. Documenting and mapping now."

After some traveling in the dim light of Gunnar's darkvision, you make your way to a very large cavern (probably 500 square feet), and Krinn says, "Wow! I recognize this now! This is the planar observatory!

"Gunnar, place me over there!"

Gunnar sees a spherical imprint in the wall that Krinn would fit into, and he places the docent into it. Once placed there, the entire cavern lights up, and just like you saw in that room that you met Krinn, you see a much larger-scale version of the moons of Eberron orbiting the planet. Eberron itself is about 15 feet in diameter, and the moons are of varying sizes, but seem to be between 6 feet and 10 feet in diameter each. Each moon has a elliptical line that passes through the center of the moon, which shows the path of orbit for each moon.



There is a 13th sphere, which seems like an empty void, but it still orbits like the other moons.

And then there is a strange object in the far distance, in the far corner of this cavern, with a trajectory line that does not follow the path of an orbit around Eberron. It seems to head in the direction of the farthest moon, Vult (associated with the plane of Shavarath).

Krinn says, "That strange object is headed in the direction of Vult. It is set on a collision-course with Vult, and should impact it in about 10 days.

"What is that thing?"

Kevin gives Gunnar a look and then he himself releases Krinn from his mount in battlecat and places him on the stand.

As a soldier working with the warforged and advanced war machines, Kevin has an intuitive sense of weight, speed and trajectories. Is that a piece of the missing moon?

"Some plants and fungi only grow depending on certain moons. I've begun cataloguing them and their lunar interactions at Morgrave University when I'm not tending the poison garden. One of their uranologists has been helping me better understand various cosmic bodies and their orbits."

Gunnar shrugs at Kevin and doesn't interfere with the artificer handling Krinn. If they built an observatory below ground then he was out of his depth because none of that made sense to him.

The little ball sure does make a pretty light show, he reflects as the cavern begins to glow and reveal its luminous secrets.

Gunnar thinks about the heavens and anything his clan elders might have tried to teach him about it. If they had, he remembers none of it. Probably not enough fighting to spark his interest.

"Anything of significance that appears where is should not or as it should not, is surly the work of the Traveller" Alin rests their hand briefly on the holy symbol under their tunic.