DAY 3
By day three your party will probably have accrued a decent selection of magical items, a good few trophies from a day’s monster hunting and a selection of memories that will haunt you all in the small hours for the rest of your lives, even as you all insist the trip has been ‘a right laugh’. At this point, it’s your choice as to whether you want to venture downwards again: in the levels beyond fifteen or so, you pass beyond the territory kept clear by casual visitors to Descensus, and shit starts getting seriously dark.[51] Unless you’ve got a mind – and a sword arm – made of iron, it’s probably best just to spend the day idling in town, and go home with some good stories.
The light from a patch of luminescent slime mould revealed a cramped chamber, lined with alcoves like the one in which I had woken after my ill-advised beer nap, and each marked with a time-corroded statue of a Dwarf. Everything was covered in worryingly thick cobwebs, and the air was damp and thick with the smell of rotten linen. This had ‘ancient tomb’ written all over it. Confirming my worst fear, I looked back into the alcove and – yes – there was the web-clogged skeleton I had clearly shoved out of the way to make room to sleep.
I didn’t want to look a second time, but I couldn’t resist noticing that the carcass wore a magnificent dwarronium ring on the brown bones of its left index finger. This posed a dilemma. The last thing I wanted to do, especially in my delicate state, was touch the thing again. But then, what fun is dungeoneering if you don’t take souvenirs?
Cringing, and fighting back a mouthful of sick, I reached gingerly for the skeleton’s hand, and began to uncurl the bony fingers. The dwarf had a grip like a vice even in death, however, so I had to get right back in the alcove and use both hands. I got tangled up in the horrible bones, and thought I was just doing a magnificently cack-handed job of looting, until I realised the skeleton was fighting back.
This was my first encounter with the Undead, and luckily for me it was as brief as it was unpleasant. By sheer good fortune, while flailing to keep the thing’s grasping hand from my face, I managed to snap off the finger bearing the ring, and thewhole body collapsed in a lifeless jumble. I retched again. Then, with shaking hands, I took the sword and pocketed the finger with its ring – after first making sure it wasn’t wriggling.
And that’s how I became Level Nine holidaymaker.
— FROM THE TRAVEL JOURNAL OF FLOYD WATT
3. SYRILLARR[52] AND ALETHIAR:(5 Days/For Ever)
High Adventure on the Elven Way
Few can resist the chance to glimpse the mysteries at the heart of the Elven exodus – but be warned: this trip can get frighteningly metaphysical.
DAYS 1–4
Starting at the ancient border town of T’lashun on Syrillar’s edge, you’ll set out on the old Elven Way, a straight road of seamless stone leading from Mathelvayle all the way to the old coastal capital of Alethiar. Take the trip at a sedate pace on muleback, or try your hand at the emerging extreme sport known as steppesurfing, in which a wind spirit is harnessed through basic aeromancy then ridden on a sail-equipped cart behind at bone-shaking speeds.[53] If you’re big on faded grandeur, camp for the night at one of the Elven Songbeacons. Carved into isolated outcrops of stone on the plain, these eerie statues of Elves experiencing acute torture once allowed their builders to speak across vast tracts of land in an instant. While the statues have been silent for more than a century now, it is said that if you climb to the antlered brow of one in the dead of night you can still hear faint sobs and mutterings from inside.
DAY 5
Finally, you’ll reach the towering white walls of Alethiar itself. There are a few other Elvish settlements along the coast, but there’s frankly little point in going all that way and not seeing the big one. What you experience there will vary, however: some travellers report the place to be freshly deserted, while others say it is long abandoned. Others still, myself included, saw something else entirely. Whatever you encounter there, one thing is vital to remember: do not accept any offer to cross the sea. While it may seem the most compelling proposition in the world at the time, it is not what it seems: the journey west is no pleasure cruise, but a metaphor for the passing of an age, and death itself. In short, a rubbish holiday. Or the holiday of a lifetime – but not in a good way. In any case, you have been warned.
INTRODUCING: DESCENSUS
This unique township, deep under the abandoned realm of Kranagar, has been embedded thoroughly in Mittelvelde’s physics-defying dungeon strata to the extent that it’s entirely out of reach of the surface, and only accessible by magical means. Above and below it, and in all directions, the Dungeon sprawls, full of weirdness and danger and wealth. With no sunlight to grow crops, the city’s economy is based on forage from the depths, so it’s a place of bone-and-hide tents
