Expedition Journal - Day 5 Entry
We could not have foreseen yet the vastness of the cavernous maze that we have entered. The corridor through which we have been following the trail of the thing that once used to be our marine biologist was but a crack in the wall, wide enough for us to walk through in a line, with uneven floor and walls of basaltic rock. It was seemingly but one of the many shafts piercing the heart of the island, a feature quite common inside such land masses of volcanic origin, but unforeseen by explorers such as Vize and Schmidt, who have likely been to these parts of the Arctic. The fact that this cavern was free of ice and water implied that the complex - however likely descending under the sea level - never surfaced with any of its many shafts except at the very top, the once ice-corked crevasse through which we have entered.
We have had enough electric torches with enough power for many hours of walk, however, we have decided to save the batteries as much as we can and thus only three at a time have been lit. We were all curious how the creature we followed could see in this underground darkness - yet this has been once again the source of the debate mainly for our two remaining biologists. Meanwhile, the rest of us have been following the trail and eventually, we were forced to make a decision. The way in front of us split into two and now we could not find any trails of blood at the crossing. That meant we could either give up, continue blindly through one of the corridors or split. We were not too keen on either of these options, but we did not want to leave without the confirmation of our former crewmember's fate. Eventually, we decided to split and to walk just a short distance through both of the corridors to see if we can find any further trail in either of them. Our pilot would remain at the crossing and wait.
These have been the two ill-fated mistakes we have made. The first one we realised when an inhuman scream came from the crossing where we have left our pilot, and running back, we could not find anything more than his mutilated body lying on the icy stone floor in the cold light of our electric torches. There was no trace of the attacker anymore, yet we could be sure that even in the darkness nobody got past us.
The second mistake, as I see now clearly, was to continue in our foolish pursuit into the depths of that forbidding cavernous maze at all.
LIVING MEMBERS OF THE EXPEDITION:
Boromir88 - senior assistant to a professor of glaciology
Loslote - rich funder's spoiled daughter
Morsul - federal grants lawyer
Brinn - polar bear biologist
Nogrod - old palaeoecologist with is own theory of climate change
Macalaure - palaeomathematician
sally - the original initiator of the expedition
Thinlómien - whale expert
Nerwen - mechanic
Bes - room/store manager
Shasta - sled-dog handler
wilwa - crewmember
GONE:
Roa - survival guide - died on blood loss from Werewolf attack on Day 2 (left game, innocent)
Mnemosyne - field medic - shot by the survival guide on Day 2 (Werewolf)
Inziladun - meteorologist - killed by Werewolves on Night 3 (innocent)
tromkehra - cook/bartender - left aboard the ship on Day 3 (left game, innocent)
Nienna - navigator - shot on her way back to the ship on Day 3 (innocent)
Greenie - senior assitant to important scientists in the company, killed by Werewolf on Night 4 (innocent)
Pitchwife - marine biologist - unambiguously executed by the expedition on Day 4 (Werewolf)
Eomer of the Rohirrim - sea pilot - murdered in the icy darkness on Night 5 (innocent)
Day 5 starts. Night PMers stop, all people talk. You know how it goes.
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"Should the story say 'he ate bread,' the dramatic producer can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own." -On Fairy-Stories
Last edited by Legate of Amon Lanc; 12-07-2009 at 03:09 PM.
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