Savin's Ledger
At times, I am inclined to believe in a thing that lesser intellects call luck.
At times.
We had made our way to the Trench in order to look for possible routes across. In order to maintain the agreement with the North Haven Azure dragon that we had struck earlier, we needed to attempt to retrieve her cache of eggs from the hobgoblins who had stolen them and taken them into their Dwarven stronghold.
While performing this search, a child from the nearby town fell through the covered top of an old granary of the destroyed and abandoned Dwarven hold of Steirholm. After rescuing the child, we uncovered a large store or grain, much of it still well preserved (See Gothak Sortan's Treatise on Botanical decay for the intricacies of long term grain storage).
This granary offered us a backdoor into Steirhold and possibly a way to get closer to the bridges that cross the Trench. An interesting bit of trivia only except for Gregoir's Diary. Found amongst the treasure hunter's belongings, Gregoir's Diary seems to offer us a guide through the complexities of the hold. At the very least it was promising enough for us to take the chance that some degree of geographic correlation could be found.
Because the diary mentioned being stuck by a large body of water, we returned to town in order to seek a solution. I was forced to speak again to that Thaumological half-wit Marcus.
While Marcus remains trapped in a pre-Thamaic thought pattern, he has spent longer immersed in the new arcane realities of our world. This has allowed him to adapt some spellforms that I haven't had the opportunity to yet study. If only his notations weren't so Hetnian. The inefficiencies of his structures are astounding. A simple water walking form which would previously have taken mere seconds to cast, required orders of magnitude more time! Additionally, his overwrought forms required the consumption of an inordinate amount of highly prepared components. I am convinced that this does not reflect the change in the magical world but is, rather, simply Marcus' own inadequacies coming through. I am certain that, given adequate time, I will be able to adjust Marcus' forms to regain the lost alacrity and efficiency of material.
In any event, we made our way back to the entrance and entered the hold. This led us to the large underground lake that Gregoir's Diary had mentioned. While we were approaching from another direction, we could begin to see similarities to the Diary's descriptions. I set about casting the ritual to allow us to traverse the aquatic body (see above for the issues I had with Marcus' poorly wrought spellform)
Partway through the cavern, we came to a side set of doors the Gregoir's Diary indicate may lead to the Grotius Cube. While not our primary mission, the Cube seems to great of a prize not to investigate. The timeline with our Dragon ally is lax enough to allow for this.
While investigating the door, we encountered a large number of undead (I believe that would be classified as Zombies though their exact behaviour and physiological makeup differed from those I have studied). It appears that these zombies (the term will serve until a more accurate classification can be done) are mostly human. Strange that in a Dwarven hold.
We were able to open the doors to the deeper hold and drain the water (and the majority of the undead).
While we have no indication as to the Cube's true abilities, it is (or was) a greater artefact. I am curious to see what effect (if any) the rearrangement of the spellforms has had upon an artefact. In theory, it should be unaffected if the shift has been constrained to spellforms alone. If however, there has been a greater rearrangement, it is hard to predict what the effect will be. I am eager to have an opportunity to further my studies into our new magical landscape. Hopefully, the Cube will restore some of my woefully diminished magical abilities.
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