September 2007 Entry: The Glass Journal

[Amonite]

### Winner ###


DAY EIGHTEEN

Day 21, Plane of Weeping

It has been a most productive day! I spent the morning mapping the third level down from the surface of Shale-Table, just as I had for the two levels before it. Some of the walls bore scorch marks - recent, and at the south side of the level I discovered traces of blood on some of the walls. I abandoned my sketch of the layout, for the moment, and followed these to their source. The trail of growing blood led to a body, a bandit by my estimate, who had been stabbed several times. The dead man reeked, but I searched his corpse and uncovered a knife half buried in his side. My father's knife. I entered the room just beyond him, where bloody dried handprints littered the floor between smudge marks. It appeared someone had been wounded and crawled towards the center of the room. The room itself was filled with strange equipment and stranger pods, most empty. (I later found two dead bodies in damaged capsules in the room). I went to the pod the blood led too, and inside was a body. It was encrusted with dried blood, but the features below I would know anywhere. Father. I did not open the pod, but examined it. To all appearances it was some sort of stasis chamber, whether from magic or science I do not know. Probably science, guessing from the coils and wires and glowing panels in the room. It took me an hour to get back to the surface and retrieve my healing equipment and supplies from the skimmer (thankfully untouched) and return. Opening the pod was tricky, but I managed, and found his pulse stable if weak. I set to work washing the blood away and tending minor injuries, though could do little for the deeper wounds. I am not a healing mage, after all. Father stirred but never woke, and I surmise that he had been in a knife fight with the dead man outside. And where there is one bandit, there may be more. With the help of a few runes, I managed to levitate my father out of the pod and keep him light enough to carry to the surface where I placed him in the rest chamber near the front of the skimmer. What happened to the rest of his team, or those he fought, I do not know. I ran back through Shale Table searching, but found nothing but strangeness. It is eight levels deep, and full of so many things that I have no reference from which to describe. I saw no one. Returning to the Skimmer and my father, I have turned back towards Copperhead. Healing my father and finding out what happened takes precedence over my explorations, but one thing is certain. We shall both return to this place, my father and I, and seek out all its secrets.

Together.



note: ah. deadlines! There was so much more I wanted to do *sniff*

[ravells]

Brilliant!

[Amonite]

Stay tuned for the epilogue, lol - which may or may not be in before the deadline And depends on my scanner being nice ^.^

[ravells]

I hope so! Amonite, your entry has been a tour de force. I can't imagine how much work you have put into it. Thank you so much for letting us share the journey - it's been great fun!

Ravs

[RPMiller]

Amonite, would you be able to do me a huge favor? Can you take all the raw images (not the ones of the journal) and put them into a zip and post them for me?

I'm working on a special treat.

[RPMiller]

Here is why I'm asking Amonite. Download this attachment, change its name to book.jar, double click it to launch it and then grab one of the corners and "turn the page".

This comes with a special thank you to Trevor at http://www.rptools.net. He is the developer of MapTool and just one of the many reasons we should all be using it. He didn't develop the original book java app, but he modified it to make it easier to modify. Thanks Trevor!

[ravells]

Rob! That's Brilliant!!!! It makes the entire journal come to life!

[Amonite]

Unfortunately, my computer is not letting me use the program (although I am not very technically savvy) - about all it will let me do i extract the files and look at the pictures. But if it is something that turns the pages of the journal, then that is awesome!!!! I originally wanted to compile them all into some program that would let me animate the journal, but I no longer have flash and my other animation software would not let me do anything like that

Still, very cool! I will try and get it to work again on my computer later ^.^

[RPMiller]

Make sure you change the extension to .jar very important. Also, make sure that you are running the latest version of Java since that is what it uses to work. It will be well worth it. I would post the .jar itself, but .jar is not a valid extension here.

[RPMiller]

Rob! That's Brilliant!!!! It makes the entire journal come to life!

Thanks! If I had the original pictures and journal notes, I would make it a full fledged journal, but alas Amonite hasn't uploaded them.