Skin Deep
by Tevish Szat
Status: Public


Expedition Journal: 1865.2.8.16
Left Portsmith today. We are now in uninhabited reaches, of which no complete survey has been made. It is unlikely we will find anything or anyone living past this point, so we’ll have to return to Portsmith inside a few Grand Cycles. Our party of seven consists of myself; Meala, who is a veteran spelunker; our mage Bederd; Hrefir the surveyor; Medornis, an expert engineer who’s with us in case we need to widen a tunnel, and two guards: Atelda and Fergaem.

Getting lost in uncharted caves is always a danger, and since this will be my first time going spelunking, I have to say it weighs heavily on my mind. I’m glad we have Meala as our cartographer. I trust her more than most, since they say she made her first expedition before even turning five annum. I guess it’s in the blood – her mother Lilela was a decently accomplished explorer before disappearing four annum ago.

Expedition Journal: 1865.2.8.19
Found a wellspring today in a small room. It would make a good satellite town for Portsmith. It’s good to know that we’ve done something worthwhile a mere three days into our trip.

Expedition Journal: 1865.2.8.22
I’ve felt strange ever since leaving Portsmith, and not, as Fergaem suggests, because I’m pining for some Portsmith doxy. I can’t help but feeling there’s something off about our path. I’ve looked over Meala’s maps, and they’re all perfectly in order with the readings but… I don’t know, I could swear we’ve been listing west more than that.

Expedition Journal: 1865.2.8.23
Déjà vu… I could have sworn we passed through this room yesterday. This is only getting stranger the farther we go on, but I’m still confident we can reverse our path. Bederd is becoming even more worried than I am. He’s taken to muttering to himself when he thinks no one’s listening. I’ve caught snatches, nonsense about something trying to invade his mind. You’d think a mage would be made of sterner stuff.

Expedition Journal: 1865.2.9.4
I’ve been talking with Meala a good deal to calm my nerves. It’s hard to believe we’re the same age, but academic studies in Ulal Eregar didn’t afford me much chance to experience the world before now. At least I’ve been able to share some tidbits of geology in exchange for all the fascinating, and sometimes useful things she’s told me – Homarid Philosophy, for instance.

I wish now that I’d taken the opportunity to study directly from the Homarids themselves. I was always interested in things that were far away and didn’t pay all too much attention to nearby subjects unless they were obviously useful.

If Meala is to be believed, the Homarids feel that the world is alive, and we’re under it’s shell. I guess that’s something like saying we’re skin deep. I don’t know, it sounds unpleasantly parasitic to me.

Expedition Journal: 1865.2.9.6
Bederd is dead.

We reached a necrosynth wellspring last cycle, with growing fungus – a rarity this far from civilization, and made camp. Most of us were woken up by the sounds of a struggle, only to see Bederd fighting with Meala, or more accurately animating necrosynth to strangle her.

When he saw us, he started shrieking about Meala leading us wrong… to, and I believe this is what he said “Something terrible down below” He wouldn’t admit a minute’s sense, and every objection or plea to settle down and talk the matter over like a reasonable human being was met with further violence until… Fergaem put an arrow between his eyes. Unfortunately, we’ve got no good way to deal with the body, so we’re having Hrefir and Atelda haul him back to the crypts of Portsmith. He deserves that much, even if he did go mad… but I can’t say I like that we’re nearly to half our number because of it.

Meala doesn’t seem any worse for the wear, though if we find open water it’ll probably be used to wash off after we’ve topped off our stores. I guess when you go out this far often, you sort of take being covered in necrosynth in stride.

Expedition Journal: 1865.2.9.7
Medornis seems more shaken than I would have expected… or maybe I’m just cold. In either case, I should talk with him before he gets any worse. We can’t afford to lose anyone else to madness.

Expedition Journal: 1865.2.9.9
Open water. I have to say I’m relieved, even if it’s just a shallow pool… we were all starting to smell something rank, and that’s something the small springs we’ve found without Bederd to conjure fresh water can’t solve.

Expedition Journal: 1865.2.9.10
Some of what Medornis has been saying must be getting to me. I didn’t want to record it at first, but he keeps talking about a whispering, and I remember Bederd saying something similar. Medornis is more lucid about it, though… He says it’s like there’s something just out of sight, just past hearing. All he’s sure of is that it feels like it hates him.

The reason I’m committing it to the record is that I’ve been feeling like something hates me, too.

Expedition Journal: 1865.2.9.15
I think everyone feels it. Meala mentioned the dread to me too, and Fergaem… well, I think it’s just his way to make a joke out of everything, with everyone else as the punch line.

I keep thinking back to what Meala said about Homarids, and the depths of the world. Are we really crawling under the skin of a living thing? Does the world not want us here?

It was our kind that did so much damage in the Thirteen Days War. If the world is alive, how much pain did we cause it? And now we crawl skin deep and going deeper. If the Homarids are onto something, maybe we should just turn back.

Even if we should, though, it’s not really an option. We have our mission, our duty. Scout the deep, far places of the underground, and only return when we must. It will be a while yet.

Expedition Journal: 1865.2.9.21
Lost Medornis today. Poor bastard guzzled Necrosynth, so we left the body behind. Hopefully, when he gets back up he’ll be in his right mind and hunt out some more. We really should turn back now, the three of us, but as much as I feel that distant hatred, I also feel like there’s something at the end of this, and I have to see it.

Expedition Journal: 1865.2.9.23
I think the hatred Meala and I feel isn’t from the world, I think it’s from Fergaem. In Portsmith, he joked about taking Meala and Atelda as conquests. Thought it was just another of his terrible jokes in terrible taste, but the more we go on, the more I think his pride might actually be stung by harmless talks about rock and philosophy.

Expedition Journal: 1865.3.1.1
Depths take Fergaem! Depths take him! I see his eyes, and what’s behind them. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was him the whole time, driving Bederd mad and feeding Medornis Necrosynth. It must have been him. From now on, I’m preparing all my meals myself.

Expedition Journal: 1865.3.1.3
Fergaem has run ahead, breaking our company. I hope he gets lost. Didn’t take any supplies, either.

Expedition Journal: 1865.3.1.5
I have looked a god in the eye… the staring, empty eye larger than my entire body, staring back blind and accusing from the incorrupt corpse of something that should never have had life.

It wasn’t Fergaem, who we found dying of dehydration beneath a psuedopod, and it wasn’t the world beneath us… it was another parasite buried skin deep, a dead god from the Thirteen Days when gods and monsters ravaged the world above.

I don’t know how it came to be buried here, but somehow I know that, even though it is dead, as a god it does not sleep quietly, and yearns to return to a life of power and destruction. And… I want it to as well.

That’s why I’m still alive, even having seen the truth. In addition to Fergaem, who we dispatched, there was another body among the wreckage, at least a few annum old. The withered corpse I discovered still had the gear of an explorer on it, and at least one piece had her name. Lilela. This place wasn’t just the tomb of a god, it was the tomb of Meala’s mother.

She was the first to find the Dead God, but as Meala says she was weak, and went back without telling a soul. How Meala found it, I'll likely never know, but we shall not be the same. We will tell the Conclave of the God, and they shall bring it to light. Though it may destroy us, the Dead God will live again.