LOG 002.2025.10.27

General Summary

Day 2

• Cai makes coffee, Madigan drives casually after the shadow that flew overhead.
• Cai tries to write an angry email to Danner after getting a message that Danner bailed on them the day after Cai folded himself into a shuttle.
• Cai's computer gets weird. Asks if he wants to make good on his threats in the email.
• Zed takes a look at it. Has her familiar, Ori, have a look at it. Ori eats it? Kind of?
• Whatever the shadow was went out past where we can take the RV. Park it, head out.
• Head out into the forest and mud.
• Notice some kind of creature hiding within the mud along a crag.
• Madigan and Kess hit it/grab it as it tries to escape. Knock it out. Madigan makes notes. Cai examines it. Determine it is some sort of elemental entity.
• Leave it and head on.
• Find another one. It mimics our actions. Cai makes a tonic, Zed drinks the first one, Cai makes a second one, Zed tosses it at the creature.
• Zed compliments the taste on it. Cai comments that medicine shouldn't taste like medicine. Kess and Zed ask what medicine tastes like. Cai is likely going to develop a twitch.
• Cai asks Kess and Zed about the moon. Zed heard it is artificial. Kess comments it turns red every now and then.
• Come around the crag to the valley.
• Compost-y smell coming from the west. Sweet/floral smell to the east.
• Hear sound of machinery to west.
• Teal/purpley red light to the east. Low rumble, bestial.

Jim's Recap

Last we met our Would Be Cryptid Explorers (Scientists? Enthusiasts?), we followed them through a winding 'river' section between the karsts, having no way otherwise to follow the large shape that had blotted out the sky back in town. The occasional glimpse of something blue and glowing up ahead (though always just around the bend) seemed indication enough that they were on the right path.

A brief encounter with what turned out to be a mud elemental left the party otherwise no worse for wear. Cai, the only one likely to have ever had a bank account or signed for anything, also now in possession of a clump of Something™ that was definitely not the adrenaline-poopie of said mud elemental.

The episode not doing much to delay the group, they pressed onward, hopping back and forth across what was little more than a creek here in the dry season. Eventually, the little canyon opened up onto a large valley, several miles wide (and about half-again as many kilometers). As diffuse light bounced around from the last rays of the setting sun somewhere back over the ocean, there was a large shuffle in the trees at one end of the valley, the now-familiar blue glow seen from a large shape somewhere beneath the trees.

The peaceful calm of the valley was upended however, as a massive cacophony awoke off to the leftern (yep) half of the valley, some sort of industry waking up complete with airhorns and rumbling engines, plumes of steam and smoke.

The rumble was mirrored by a tremor from the rightish edge of the valley, a spiraling rustle in the canopy indicating something massive moving even as the blue glow shifted to red.

With the activity several kilometers (and half again fewer miles) away in either direction, the group had a decision to make...