>>37267602

You have to grip the ground real hard with your feet, so you don't fall into the sky.

>>37267602
They've got this gigantic torch attached to the ceiling, which they've painted blue, it's really damn bright. Also there's all this green lichen stuff growing everywhere, and the air smells really weird. All the rocks are covered in earth, the buildings are poorly made, and their beards are woefully sub-par.

I'm glad to be back.

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>>37267833
I bet if we built a tall enough tower we could knock that light down and use it to power a forge.

>>37267602
Terrible, sire. Women are allowed power in court and society, shaming men for being men, and threatening those who dare not mutilate their genitals.

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>>37267833

>>37267602
Sire it was, frankly speaking, pretty damn gay.

>>37267833
what are their buildings made off? What do they eat? And most important, what are the surface-walkers drinking?

>>37267873
That sounds like a proper plan!

>>37267903
We better don't let any of these "Women" in our Tunnels...

>>37267602
Boring as fuck.

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>>37267873
Not on my watch, you son of an anvil. I'll break your language into a billion peaces.

>>37267930
Don't worry, M'lord. We'll keep these feminazis out, by our beards and by our helms.

>>37267924
Well, what could we expect from the Home of Blade-ears?

>>37267953
OY! Even if you have a nice beard ,you can't just walk in here and insult our anvils!

Guards! Get this angry bloke outside!

>>37267953
Aye M'ilord, please come with me angry floaty guy.

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>>37267930
Maybe men and women are Man's words for stalagmite crotch and cave crotch.

>>37268231
that sounds fucking stupid. I bet some Elves created those words!

>>37268231
Oh, not this mess again. I told you. It's the short-haired ones, the men, that are cavecrotches. The women are the ones who grow their hair long and braid it, and thus must be the stalagmitecrotches.

>>37267930
>what are their buildings made off?
Something called wode, apparently it's like stone that grows, but not as strong. Easy to cut through with an axe m'lord.
>What do they eat?
The moss that's growing everywhere 'pparently. Some of it even moves and is blank and white, makes a noise kinda like the mole rats but a lot louder.
>And most important, what are the surface-walkers drinking?
'pparently they named it after the torch that comes out at "nite", moonshine. Strong stuff, but not nearly as strong as ours.

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>>37268292
So we should kill elves for seeding falsehoods right?

>>37267602

"I feel like I'm going to fly up and never come down"

>>37268358
And yes, I know that idiot Hammersen says the short-hairs must be the stalagmitecrotches because some of them have beards. Have you SEEN what they call beards? It's like elves calling their tree-shavings 'buildings.'

>>37268358
ah, you mean the women ..the stalagmites..have longer beards? Like dwarven infants?

>>37268380
Wood? Those roots that sometimes grow out of the ceilings? How can you make a building out of that?

Moon?Wait a moment! They have TWO of those torches? Greedy Bastards! Maybe we could trade one for some proper Ale!

>>37268384
Or we just slay them until they hand one of the torch-things over!

>>37268434
Enough talk about surface-dwellers crotches! This is making me sick. Someone get me a Jug of Booze!

>>37267602
Awful.

>>37267602
Stay underground OP. Stay underground.

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>>37268569
Their "moon" didn't radiate heat like the other torch and appeared to be made of stone. We should probably survey it when we are knocking the other light down.

they don't seem to have many forges, so I don't know how the surface dwellers reproduce.

>>37268682
Glowing Stone you say? We could mine it!

>>37267602
Infested with giants.

>>37267602
Drunkards pissing in the streets sir

>>37268682
I think it's supposed to be a giant opal or something. Its pretty poorly cut. Lots of pock-marks. We could probably do a fairly good job of recutting it if we could just get at it.

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THEY'VE GOT A GIANT FUCKING TORCH CONSTANTLY BURNING IN THE SKY OF ITS OWN FREE WILL
IT FUCKING COMES AND GOES WHEN IT WANTS AND THE SURFACERS SLEEP WHEN IT'S OFF
THEY LITERALLY SCHEDULE THEIR ENTIRE DAY OFF OF THIS GIANT BALL OF FIRE HANGING IN THE SKY

Too bright, not enough walls. Good mushrooms though.

>>37267602
bit rude tbh

I know enough about it to know that I don't like it.

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The alcohol doesn't taste like rock dust and musty shit.

>>37273431
So worse that ours...right?

>>37274792
If the Deep One didn't want dusty, musty beer then he would not have made it so.

>>37267602
A powerful light, brighter than a thousand torches, shines from above; it is so powerfully bright and hot that we were blinded for nearly an hour; several of us were seriously burned by exposure to it. It is like a vast ball of white-hot gold, and should only be viewed through smoked welder's glass. It appears to move slowly across the domed ceiling they call the "sky", rising from below one end and slowly moving overhead until it sinks below the opposite end in about forty-two great gross of heartbeats. Afterwards, a more mild darkness follows, lit by many small points of light that we suspect are distant torches and a large, dim, cool light they call the "mune." It appears to be a large, pockmarked circle of opal or milkstone, dimly glowing.

Although the dome of the ceiling must meet ground at some point, none of the surface dwellers know where that may be; travelers have gone for many thousand lengths without its base seeming to draw any nearer.

A kind of moss - brightly and vibrantly green - carpets the earth, and in some places forms several large structures not unlike tower-cap mushrooms with branching stalks and green, feathery caps. The material from which they are made is similar to tower-cap flesh but much more flexible, and grows in much larger pieces suitable for large construction projects. If I may speculate, I believe the brown stripe-stone we often find forming pillars in coal deposits is actually the exalted form of this material; it is very similar in the color, striped grain and ringlike cross-section, and exudes a sticky liquid akin to wet, molten amber. It is from this material that they build their dwellings, along with bricks of fired clay.

Unlike a proper dwarf-home, surface dwellers prefer to live in separate dwellings of one to five or so people each, these dwellings being relatively small structures that extend upwards from the floor rather than downwards. They form communities by clustering these structures together.

>>37275104
I don't quite get it. They've got this great big pit where they keep their giant torch half the time... and then they move it to some other pit prior to it moving across the ceiling?

Why?

>>37275104
The dome-sky has no clear support columns and is so terribly high and vast that it turns our stomach to look upwards and see such a seemingly-precarious structure over our heads. Nonetheless, even during the most devastating of earthquakes, no surface-dweller has ever observed it cracking or falling; although the "sdars" that dot its surface during the dark period are vary rarely seen to fall off.

During the bright time it is a deep, deep blue that is matched only by the finest of turquoise, and absolutely flawless; it seems to be shot through by milkveins or blemishes, but they shift over time; we believe these are actually great billows of mist or vapor, perhaps boiled off of water-puddles by the son's terrible heat. The stone of the sky may be iridescent or opalescent; when illuminated from an askew angle during the lowest points of the son's cycle (the path is so regular we suspect it may be mounted on some form of track), it lights up in bright amber and citrine, and shades to amethyst, dark sapphire, and eventually obsidian as the son's light is extinguished. Without the comforting heat of warm stone nearby during the dark time, and without its coolness during the light time, temperature varies wildly from night to day; apparently sometimes water is even observed to freeze during some points on the son's path. (There is apparently a larger cycle, measuring more than two and a half gross of light-dark cycles, during which the sun follows slightly different tracks and temperature varies.)

Although we did not observe this, apparently the mist above sometimes gathers in thick, dark layers when it is colder and vast quantities of water pour from the sky. This refills the water-pools and soaks into the ground.

The surface-dwellers imbibe mainly weaker brews formed from the various varieties of tuber and moss that grow on the surface; they seem only to have mastered alcohol, however, without any of the subtler and stronger components of dwarven drink.

>>37275351
This is getting farcical. There's no great torch or tall beardless people. There's just a bunch of liars in here. I've been topside and it's just like this place but the people aren't as smart.

>>37275469
See, this, at least, I can believe.

>>37275367
(However, a brew they called "adsinth", possibly borrowed from a dwarven tribe elsewhere, shows significant promise and may be worth introducing to our own brewers; although in its current state it would be suitable only for the weak and infirm, purposely diluted and half-brewed owing to the frailties of the surface-dweller body, it proves that some of the surface mosses are indeed suitable for true brewing and it may be adapted for real dwarven consumption.)

Water is also consumed, the heathens, although to a rather lesser degree and usually at least mixed with their weak brews.

Surface-dweller food is largely based on the flesh of surface mosses (which come in a wide and dizzying variety that would surprise even the most seasoned mycologer) and the various large beasts which graze upon them; fungi and mushrooms appear to be barely present at all.

>>37275351
The surface-dwellers appear to need an incredible quantity of light to see, which I suspect accounts for why their great son is so very, very bright; however, its great heat is such that were it to be constantly left up, it would almost certainly burn up the whole surface as surely as a magma flow. I suspect it must also be stoked and refueled on the ground.

Still, since none of the surface dwellers we interrogated had any knowledge of where the son actually came down or rose from, save that it was very, very far away to the "west" or "east" respectively, and they often claimed it was moved by their own strange gods. I suspect that its maintenance is done by tribes so distant that it has lapsed into myth at this particular location, or that the whole system was put in place by an ancient race of surface-dwellers, perhaps educated by the First Dwarves when the world was young and its workings have been long-since forgotten by the ignorant surface tribes of the present age.

>>37273431
>doesn't like dusty ale

DO YOU EVEN GO DEEP?

>>37275653
Were there no grooves upon ceiling which the son or mune traveled? And how do these sdars appear and disappear?

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The surfacers have the strangest ideas of warfare! Their axes are perhaps the least effective I have ever laid eyes upon; with a shaft only a hand-and-a-half long and a blade more than half a dwarf tall, thin as an elf cave-crotch's beard, and tempered as well as shale in a puddle of acid, it's a wonder they can ever kill anything! The leverage is decent, but you are sorely limited by the length of the grip, and you'd think they'd never have even heard of blood-clay!

They have elite combatants mounted upon large, four-legged beasts somewhat resembling tall tuskless boars, but that is the most dangerous warrior they bring to a fight (excepting of course elves and their wizard-shit). They fight in two dimensions; not once, in the entirety of history, have they ever thought to dig, blast, or burrow beneath their foes! This would explain why we have not encountered their kind until now...

Overall, the surface is shit, my king. Their is no ore we cannot find in abundance below, there is no magic we cannot draw from the gems and runes of our priests, and there are no creatures above to best a forgotten beast or demonic incursion.

I would recommend digging deeper, for the bitches.

>>37275653
One report from a topsider explained that the mune is lit at varying intenities, with only a portion of its face lit at intervals, and not appearing at all once every half and one score dark periods. Seeing it partially obscured I am inclined to believe the regular application of some shutter, but to what purpose I cannot fathom.

'sroight intresting, the philosaphies o'er der surface-folks. Since they ha'nt natural warls t'cut from, their 'omes n'markets are put in rather than cut out from wha's around.

If they fancy bigger dwellins, they go'n jus add more solid plant on th'side of their 'omes. Somma their noble-likes 'ave 'omes big as a mineshaft. Ornate'n'all too, loike issa message t'show off to their own lessers 'nall.

Right selfish, these'ns are. Got greed near like any Dwarf worth 'is beard.

>>37275731
None that either of us could make out; still, the son was so terribly bright that it is entirely possible we missed them against the glare (none of us thought to bring a smoked welding glass, which is the only thing I would even consider viewing the son through for any length of time), and the mune was dim enough it may not have illuminated the ceiling sufficiently. There may also be a mechanism in place to cover the groove for aesthetic reasons.

The sdars simply grew increasingly bright as the light decreased; I admit I am quite unable to tell whether they were lit, one by one, as night fell or whether they were perpetually lit and we simply saw more and more of them as our eyes re-adjusted to proper levels of light and the son's light faded. I suspect the first; keeping the sdars constantly lit would be the epitome of waste. They disappear in the same way, gradually fading and then winking out.

>>37275823
That would explain some of the other reports; the mune has been variously described as a circle, a sphere, a "crescent" shape, or lopsided. We saw it as a very nearly perfect circle while we were there, but if there is a circular shutter sliding over it, or if it is a rotating ball with one-half of its surface unlit, both of those could explain these wildly varying reports. (Indeed, they were so inconsistent and at odds with another that before seeing it for myself, I assumed that the mune had not even existed and been solely a delusion, or perhaps a mistaken sighting of some luminous animal or cloud!)

It is worth noting, incidentally, that the mune and the son must travel either on the same track or parallel tracks; they both followed the same pathway from "east" to "west" and were occasionally both visible in the sky at the same time. I suspect this is a sign of poor maintenance of the mechanism.

>>37275823
SORCERY!!

Must be those damned elves again.

>>37275962
If this were the case, and they travel with poor synchronization and perhaps different timings, is it possible that they could actually collide?

>>37275983
This.

This is why us and our ancestors dwell in the sacred mountains.

>>37275983
A seemingly-respectable bearded fellow who claimed to be very, very old stated that very, very rarely, and long-intermittantly, they'll do just that.

His story was suspicious, however. One would expect the intense light of the son to amplify the innate mild transparencies of the mune- Truthfully, I imagined it must create quite a fanciful scene bathing the ground in a paler, more mild and shining light. But he claimed quite the opposite- says that when it happens, darkness covers the land, and only an eerie blood-red glow escapes around the son.

Said it usually is coincided by nefarious creatures and rituals, but the coot seemed senile, sire.

>>37275983
Given the ancient age of the world, I suspect if that such a collision could occur it would have done so eons ago. Perhaps one runs along the surface of the ceiling, whilst the other is suspended by a length of chain? I suspect the son to be the closest of the two on account of its heat. It would make retrieving it for refueling all the easier as well.

>>37276074
Possibly it is a safety mechanism of some kind - the fires of the son being shut off to allow the mune to safely pass without scorching? That would explain the darkness. I cannot explain the rimmed glow, but perhaps the old man was of poor eyesight, or unreliable, or perhaps the mune still manages to be heated substantially along its edge by the passage.

>>37276137
I suspect it is not refueled at all, but a vast disk or sphere of metal. (Hollow, probably, to save weight and material). Its arched path along the "sky" may be matched by a similar arc of tunnel dipping below the ground; we are well aware that the ground warms the deeper one goes and that molten rock of extreme warmth boils up from below; if the arc of the son dives as deeply as it rises above, the temperature at that point must be immense beyond all comprehensible reckoning; this would heat the son to its terrible white-heat, and it is this residual heat and glow that bathes the surface floor. In other words, it would be a mechanism for "pumping" warmth from the world's heart to its skin, dredging it up like a bucket-chain. Without it, that far from the world's beating heart, the surface would most certainly be frozen and dead.

>>37276261
So they have a giant hollow ball of metal impervious to even the greatest of heats, which travels along a monstrous track so long and far that no one knows where it begins or ends, which then travels through a tunnel dug through the deepest of fiery depths and maybe past hell itself, all as part of a strange and needlessly elaborate construction designed to do what a simple bonfire and some extra layers could do just as well and and at an infinitely small fraction of the cost?

Clearly, this "son" is of dwarven make.

>>37276484
All the more reason to knock it down to see which clan built it. They must have left their mark on it somewhere.