yutzen

(Another lore document rescued, though this time also an experiment in revealing it through in-universe documents.)

There is a hole at the bottom of the world. Of every world. Not everyone finds it, for few are desperate enough to find it, and fewer still even know it’s there. But it’s always the same hole, and it leads were all holes lead: Deeper still.

While given Subterraneum citizens are often acquainted with the particular Exit that defines (or at least resides within) their nation, often they just know an Exit is a passage of sorts leading somewhere else. And at the most basic level, they would be correct: An Exit is a passage to another place - though calling what lies on the other side a different realm would be far more accurate, often very different and almost always terribly hostile.
Among the more learned of the caverns' citizens, it's believed every last living creature (or at least an overwhelming majority) has its origins in one of the many Exits in the Subterraneum, including every last sentient species. Everyone down here has ancestors they can trace back to a place found on the other side of one of these interrealm openings. Not all Exits have provided recognizable creatures, and of course, there are always more Exits to be found, but at the very least each of the nations' species has an origin in one.
And this is where their name comes from. Among the academic sorts, an Exit is called such because it let their ancestors escape a world that was no longer inhabitable for them, finding refuge in these strange caverns. And among the more cynical, it's merely an ironic name: Sure, you can leave the Subterraneum, an Exit is right there, so long as you don't mind trying to survive a place that's even worse than this underground hellhole.
But beyond that, the average citizen doesn't know even close to the whole story. Some territories even try to hide details about their corresponding Exit from their own population, for reasons known only to them. But from those that are known and talked about, from the many fragments spoken and written about them, perhaps there is enough to put together something coherent.
Below lies a small compilation of known Exits - by no means all, but perhaps the most important - with some data to establish their location, and who they're most important to. Dates will be provided by Nixian Age (NA) calendar for the sake of simplicity, being one of the few dates our nations can agree on. And of course, I will call the Tower by the name it deserves, rather than the one they demand. Beyond that, better to let the experts say their piece.

Rhundish, "Where the Light Was Snuffed"

Location: Lightless East (clearer location unavailable), Easternmost border of the Ishiss Magocracy (Ifchi territories)

If only we had known how a wish can be twisted…

Our world was a luminous place. Quite uneven, with cliffsides and mountains running with rivers, and great canyons that streams had carved open over the years. Rivers, lakes, and oceans alike dominated much of the landscape. We were the ones that hid in caves and riverbeds from the sun while it was out. It scorched our skin, and it scorched our eyes, even back then we simply could not close them to the light. We thrived where we could, and survived where we couldn’t. Of course, there were those that thrived in the sun, in those long, long days, and yet weren’t driven off by the dark either. More than once were we run out of our own refuges by them… And, of course, this did not seem fair to us.

A cabal formed, deep in the shadows that sheltered us. Our ancestors were tired of being harried, of running from the light and those they saw as its ‘subjects’ of sorts… Subjects of a sun. Resentment does strange things to someone’s thinking, doesn’t it? Nevertheless, this cabal was steeped in the darkness, and soon they began harnessing it, back in times when we all harnessed water, and few could reach beyond it. We had the potential, but not the refinement or the wherewithal, right until the Lightless Brotherhood came to be.

They started as protectors, fighting back against the light’s intrusion, but aims deteriorated, just like everything else… The Brotherhood was tired of merely preserving what we had, and finding even then they couldn’t always hold fast. We were all tired of hiding, but they tired the quickest of all. They wanted a victory. But when the very nature of the land stands against you, when you’re fighting a fact of existence in a world like ours, you can’t win… Not without help.

And so, they asked for it. No one fully remembers how they managed to reach out far enough to be heard, night after night, but one day, they were heard, by something that promised the end of light. And soon after, on the last day… Right where the sun should’ve been, the Snuffing Sun rose instead. That great black eye in the sky that even the starlight couldn’t get past. Night fell, and dawn never came again…

Trying to escape the poisonous darkness became our priority, as the light-dwellers turned by it tried to hunt us down for daring to do so much as light our gills. Once again, we had to take refuge in the dark, the untainted dark that was merely an absense of light that we’d be forced to illuminate. We crawled and dug, further and further, looking for anything that could keep us going one more day. Even just more buffer space to light a torch in, and keep the eye’s baleful stare at bay… And now, here we are.

Rhundish is one of the least visited Exits of all, and with good reason. There is plenty that still leaks out of what’s left of our realm, making the Lightless East what it is. We know very little of what remains there… And perhaps it’s best we do not know. Even if we could one day reclaim it with the greater and stronger luminosities we’ve found here, I’m not convinced we should.

--Sunlit Archmage Arrami Qirimil. Taken from "Advanced Light and Luminosity" classes taught by the archmage at Ishiss Central Academy, 239 NA

Shumorich, "the Drowned Realm"

Location: Uncharted heights above Lake Migrushatuth (Northern Crystalline Lakes), Southern Ishiss Magocracy (Ifchi territories, contested with Candlelit Hive)

In spite of being one of the more important water sources in the realm, Shumorich remains an enigma. There appears to be a seamless transition from the realm’s stone to the Subterraneum’s own, one we have not yet reached, leaving only the slow deluge that filters through the rock and into the ceiling. Much of the cavern system is irrigated, when not outright flooded, just by the waters that manage to pass through this apparent barrier. It is only by triangulating the flows and seepage that we’ve determined this is indeed one Exit, rather than several with similar characteristics, or a body of water from a theorized True Surface. But beyond that, we know little.

The Ifchi of all creatures would know of a place that feeds entire lakes and rivers just with the water that seeps out through the stone walls, and yet that is precisely the problem: It is far too much for us or anyone to actually look there. It is almost certain the water pressures involved are ones that would make digging under the Southern Sea seem paltry, if we ever made the breach. Even the deepest echoes cannot reach deeply enough to paint us a decent picture. And so, we have been cautious, and let the question hang until we have a means to answer it.

Such inaccessibility, of course, leaves other questions hanging. As an Exit, such a passage is supposed to allow entrance from elsewhere entirely into the Subterraneum, an escape to those desperate for it. And yet, we see no such thing in this case. We’ve only observed solid rock, utterly untouched by excavation, or artifice for that matter. Its very existence would strongly imply there was once someone on the other side, yet the leakage from this theoretical realm has formed bodies of water that’ve been there thousands of years before any of us. This leaves an additional question of who was supposed to enter the Subterraneum here. Is this an Exit that was laid out, yet never found, doomed to rot like those it awaited? Or was it found and used, so long ago that it’s been plugged shut, and its users are long gone, far before any of our times? We know, after all, Exits never truly close, so we cannot discard either possibility.

There is, however, a third theory: That the Exit was laid out in advance, and those that could find it are yet digging their way here, if they have even started. We simply have no current way to confirm the idea, but we cannot debunk it either. The main argument against it, of course, is the ‘age’ of the Exit, seeing entire geographical processes have come and gone thanks to its presence. For such a thing to happen, there would either need to be a massive temporal discrepancy between Shumorich and the Subterraneum, or a manner of ‘foresight’ on the part of the phenomena that open Exits in the first place… And, perhaps unfortunately, we have seen evidence for both such possibilities, albeit in much lesser form. And so, we cannot discard this idea either.

The only way to truly have an answer will be to one day breach into Shumorich, and see for ourselves. But that day will only come when we are certain we won’t poke a hole in the realm that’ll sweep us all away and drown the caverns themselves in the process.

--Dowser Mirru Qilish. Excerpt from his book "Advanced Dowsing Techniques for Waterlogged Terrain", first edition, (self-)published in 210 NA

Ilcazón, "The Last Castle"

Location: Stygian Spires (clear location unavailable), Southwestern Kingdom of Ferigoz (Ferigozi territories)

This place is not the first sanctuary we tried to find. Back when our first home burned, and I say that because that’s the only word that’s survived to this day, many saw it coming. And one in particular, the Castle’s Lord, saw it fit to make a refuge for himself and those he deemed worthy to ride out the apocalypse in luxury. A self-constructing, self-furnishing and self-expanding castle of his own design, embedded in a realm all to itself with nothing but a singular entrance in what was once our world. He had the greatest minds and claws he could contract on its creation, drained so much of what little we had left to ensure it could last forever… but he ran out of one thing no one can buy or leverage for: Time.

The burning pressed on him, and in the end, our ancestors caught on, in their mad search for a place to hide or flee into. And on the day his material manor was breached, he and the others fled into Ilcazón, only to find out two things: One, there was no way to shut off the entrance. And two, it was one way only, with no exit.

With his guards easily turning against the rest of his entourage, that particular rebellion was over quickly. The Lord was deposed and beheaded, his name struck from our history, while we kept the tale of his folly, of the good he did for the worst of reasons. But they were all still stuck there, in an overburdened refuge that kept stretching itself thin in reaction to the influx of more and more people, trying to accommodate them all. It frayed at the edges, with halls and tunnels that passed through the void, with nothing outside the windows, not even fake gardens like the central halls did. Soon, we were scrounging the place for sustenance, burning furniture for cooking, raiding the pantries like ants when the clock said it was time to restock, stretching the place thinner and thinner as we delved deeper and deeper for more to tear down and repurpose. And all the while, paintings and statues of the Lord seemingly taunted us, even after death. They are ever more taunting nowadays, with how much we’ve been changed, while his visage remains the same year after year… nevertheless, looking for cellars with the supplies we needed in our times of need, we found an earthy wall. A truly natural wall, at odds with the rest of the manor. And carving through that wall, eager as we were for anything that wasn’t this constructed mockery, we reached the Subterraneum.

I am indeed aware this means we found our way here in the depths of a world within a world. Perhaps it simply counted as another layer of depth, to the rules of this place; perhaps it made it easier, rather than harder, to open the way. All I know is… the world above the Castle, our world, we’ve yet to find it again. Perhaps we never will. But I hope one of us does, one day, when those still left in the old world find the same need our ancestors did… At least, if any remain by now.

--Librarian Imaldu of Tajarrosa. Excerpt from speech given to the Guild of Historians in Frazeral, 233 NA

The Urul Peaks

Location: Ironbound Keep, Capital of the Urul Peak Clans (Bannerbound territories), North of the Great Dust Gyre.

SEVEN CLANS, SEVEN BANNERS, SEVEN PEAKS! That is the refrain everyone knows, and I apologize for the volume but we all know I had to. There are, in fact, seven peaks out there, in this ill-called Exit. But there is a lot I feel I need to clarify today, for the public and even for some among ourselves, because in this ever-shifting cavern and with our even more ever-shifting populus, we need some anchors. I’ll let the facts be those anchors.

What do we know? That there’s seven mountains, partially buried under a thick layer of snow and ice back in what was once our realm. By now, I believe they’re all that stand, though I can’t assure that. We also know that the Seven Clans, as they stand, which came from the land that once surrounded each, as well as the mountain itself, obviously. Seven nations that survived, I cannot assure anyone else did, but it’s safe to assume they didn’t. And seven peoples that made it to the Subterraneum, more or less all at once – together enough to become more or less one biologically once its depths did what they do.

But there is another fact you might not know, which is shameful, because it will help you understand several things from this point forwards. Some of you might have already asked: ‘How is one clan not dominant over the others? Surely the clan that owned the actual peak with the actual passage would have an advantage from the start, rolling forwards? After all, there is only one Exit, no?’ And therein the thing: That’s a factual mistake. It isn’t one passage, one Exit, if I get the definition right. There are seven.

Seven Exits, to seven peaks, in one realm. Seven groups of survivors that had the exact same idea in one world, and with almost entirely the same result: They arrived here, practically in the same place. The actual Exits are close enough that it is entirely possible to arrive at the wrong peak if you don’t navigate them right, close enough together to pass themselves as one. Yet still separate enough for groups using different ones to miss each other until arriving into the cavern itself – though that one may be a spatial mismatch.

And here’s another thing, one our predecessors had to know: The peaks themselves are not even in the same mountain range. By our measurements they are thousands of miles apart, in different landmasses altogether. Yet they all lead to the same rough region, pouring all seven ex-nations together into one. How this happened is pure speculation, obviously. Maybe it’s simply how Exits work, the metaphysical distances translate to actual distances. Or maybe, just maybe, something saw it fit to pour out seven different peoples, all fleeing a world freezing for reasons we cannot even remember, seeking warmth in the guts of their mountains, yet altogether different… Into just the one.

Seven clans, seven banners, of what was once seven nations in a world that died. Do you get it now? We don’t even know why it died anymore. We’ve become something else, so detached that we’ve forgotten how we even looked once, and we’ll continue to change. Even more than everyone else, down to our very insides. But we all need our anchors, something to remember what we were, and that is what we have.

--Clan Representative Volfan Passkey, of Clan Zau. Taken from high-level diplomatic exchanges with newly-formed Nixian Republics, 19 NA (leaked on 189 NA)

Skybound Ruins

Location: Sunken Wilds (Northern Mycon's Valley), Northern Pact of Krawgry (Korve side)

The old tales of our old home… I’m afraid they’re not quite as interesting as yours. But let me paint you the picture nonetheless.

The stories, they don’t go especially far. There are myths, of course, of us blooming from the cold body of what should’ve been our creator, of us Korves being meant to sweep dead worlds clean so they may grow anew, and so on. But I know you brought me here for the facts, or what’s closest to them. And as far as our stories go, and what meager writings remain from the era… is that we awakened to a world that was already long ruined.

Towers of grey and blue, glass and stone scattered all over, with their very bones – for lack of a better word, mind you – so utterly rotten it took us decades upon decades to figure out what they were once made of. Those towers once had other things, there’s always scraps and traces of what we can only assume was someone leaving behind greater things, once. Very, very long ago, when they still stood.

Those who made them were very thorough in making our world their own, before we came to be. Miles, and miles, and miles of land were covered in stone and glass, and old, rotten metals too, among other things – not all of which lasted beyond traces it took your help to identify. But even the very ground beneath us was choked on the stuff, any and all dirt that might grow anything smothered beneath it. It’s one way to kill a world, though one can only wonder if they meant it or not. All we really know is that it worked.

What happens when something dies? It leaves a corpse, this should be obvious. And that entire place is a corpse. And what happens to corpses? They rot, that should also be obvious. But what’s less obvious is what kind of thing can rot a corpse so huge? An entire realm, even? That answer’s still unclear, but somewhere in it, we come to pass. From the looks of it, the evidence we’ve picked up on, we weren’t always like this. Tall, fungal and awake to begin with. It’s hard to figure out which of those came first, and which ones came later, though it would stand to reason our minds were the last thing to improve. The one thing we can be truly certain of, is that it took a long, long time.

How long, you might ask? Long enough that even knowing it was those same predecessors that carved the path here and opened the Exit, you all have no idea who they are! We didn’t open it, we found it open! All the usual commonalities weren’t there for our entrance. We didn’t dig, we explored what was there. We weren’t desperate, we were simply doing what we always did, breaking down what was left for ourselves. We simply… walked in here. And here we are, to find out predecessors died off all over again.

Shame, really, this place has treated us well. With its life, its changes, and its particular fungi, it feels like we’ve reached heights we couldn’t even think of.

--Ambassador Ir Chir Grawakty. Excerpt from the talks that led to the establishing of the Pact of Krawgry, 722 years before the Nixian Age.

The Niyon Expanse

Location: Sporedunes (Southern Mycon's Valley, bordering the Gyre), Southern Pact of Krawgry (Cheli side)

No, the place does not ‘thrive’ without us! It’s simply not dead like all of yours seem to be. But it lost us. They threw away what we were, and they don’t get to regret it now that we’re this!

Right, right. Let’s take it from the beginning. From the beginning we remember, because up there, they will never tell you. No one up there will ever admit that once they shared the land with us, that we shared the shadows with them before they burned them away.

We were closer to the mountains and the underground from the start, this is true. But they were refuges to everyone! To us, and to the Yorrivy. Those would be “they”, yes. Bigger than we were, and still bigger even now, and they always had sharper claws, and a curved beak that could snip a neck. And these big, round eyes that gaze right through you, too, that can’t miss a thing – if you think we have good eyesight, they have us beat. Duller colors than we ever did, though, all browns and blacks, and never as light on their wings as we were. Faster, too, they were made for open sky. They owned the open sky, like we owned the caverns.

This was the arrangement at the start, at least. We were all just trying to survive after all, and after that, just thriving where we did best. But as it turns out, some were a little better at thriving. The cliffsides and plains, the mountains and the valleys, all that was under an actual sky rather than a ceiling, the Yorrivy claimed before we could. But that was only natural. It might even be fair! We were pushed into the corners of the world, sure, and into the darkness in general, but we found a good living there. As we did here, the Subterraneum has seen as much. We don’t need much!

But, turns out we couldn’t have that. There were just too many of them, and soon enough they started pushing right into our corners too. And they didn’t have enough light, either, because as they ran on ahead they came up with lighting far before we did! They liked it, loved it, so much so that when they started encroaching into the places we had claimed and we had made livable, they brought them along, and pushed everything we had away. With lights that ruined our gardens even then. Ours, but never theirs. And they kept going, with more of them, and ever brighter lights, until the caverns were all we had left!

And then they pushed just a little further still. Until we had to make our own. Until we had to put these to digging out new corners into the world because those that had been laid out for us were under searing towers of light, outside and inside. Until we found the hole in the world that led us right here, where we could finally find some reprieve while they turned the land to nothing more than light and perches.

...yes, they’re still there. No, they’re not welcome here. They better have a damn good apology for us all if they ever want to be. But they don’t get to forget us, either. We’re making sure of that.

--Ambassador Onn-Wirckem. Excerpt from the talks that led to the establishing of the Pact of Krawgry, 722 years before the Nixian Age.

Terranova, "the Land Unborn"

Location: The Glass (Central Great Dust Gyre), Eastern Nixia Republics (Troxi territories)

The place we came from is just one huge mystery. How we got there, who was involved, if anyone, where we got the name, and why… there. All questions, no answers. Yet there we were, stranded in the middle of a world that wasn’t even entirely born.

It was all just cold rock, you know? Cold and battered rocks, wind that carved them and the sky above us that never seemed to still. Just as it ever was, and same as it is to this day. Sure, there is water, there’s rivers and even lakes, as well as the rain that comes whenever a storm sweeps by, as they always do. But that’s it. You find nothing alive, no ferns on the rock, no moss, barely even stains upon the cliffs! Only the lakes show any promise, and at best you get this green slime. It’s nothing you can do anything with… Most importantly, it’s nothing you can actually eat. And it remains a lot like that, because so much of what lives here just dies under the sun, on those days where the skies are clear.

Irony of ironies that we hardly need water now that we have actual meals, isn’t it?

How did we even survive, you ask? We barely know, either. Clearly we had something to keep us alive, at least at first, because we made it this far. True, before we came down here, before we grew our feathers and got everything else this place grants its arrivals, we needed even less sustenance than we do now. We were ready for a desert, which is why we’ve made something of ourselves in the Great Dust Gyre. But this was excessive, even for us. There really was nothing…

...I’m getting sidetracked. What we do have are the bits and pieces our predecessors brought, some of them at least. We brought actual, forged metal down here, we had it since the apparent start! Yet not all of it was purpose-made tools. There were those, but there were also scraps. Pieces of a greater whole, beaten into more useful shapes. Some of them even have writing we’ve yet to decipher, and we’ve found a couple cases where one piece joined another, like a very old and weathered jigsaw puzzle. With that, and with those spoken tales too old to date, we can presume we had an actual structure to give us a start, wherever it is that we did start. And it stands to reason that, in desperation, we had to take it apart.

...the desperation. The tales tell plenty of that. And so many of the tools are just for digging! Shovels, ersatz picks, anything to carve the path down. To search for something, anything, because one group, our group, got the desperate idea there may something other than just more rock beneath everything. It’s easy to think we were just mad with hunger, but to last this long just digging, we may have been running out of whatever sustenance was in that old place, but not yet starved. And still we got that idea… Still we got so desperate to look downwards for more, of all directions. And just like all of you, we found this place. The Subterraneum.

...is this how it always is?

--Speaker Aqalexi. Taken from speech during the foundation and recognition of the Nixia Republics as a political entity, 0 NA.

Vharyduq, "the Barrens"

Location: Emberdeep (Southwest Great Dust Gyre), Eastern Burnt Hive (Shumhaq territories)

There is nothing there.

It is either very lucky, or the complete opposite of a coincidence, that the passage to this Exit keeps caving in so tightly. To even visit the Barrens, you must bring your own air, and lock it tightly to yourself, because out there, you have none. I’m not saying there’s poison in the air, or just no oxygen, I’m saying there is nothing one can breathe. Just nothingness that will suck what air you brought right out of your lungs.

Once you take care of that little problem, however you make it work, you find the nothingness continues. There is no sky, just the stars day and night. There is no welcome, nothing is alive there. The most you get is sunlight and a landscape – and for the most part, it’s all just barren rock. Sure, there’s ores, but most of them you find so much easier here. It’s hard to think it may ever be worth it. And yet sometimes, if you go far out there enough, if you scour widely enough, you can find other things… Leftovers, for the most part. Crumbled structures, all of them crumbled and hollowed out of anything that looked like it might’ve been alive at any point, and now, slowly, ransacked of the rest…

One thing of note as we find those buildings that weren’t quite so damaged, they all looked like they could close tightly, once upon a time. Maybe they too had their own air, way back when. But they were all torn open to some degree, and the more we look the more it seems it happened at around the same time. By what, however, we have no idea.

Finding this Exit has been harrowing for the Hive, because by process of elimination it’s the most likely candidate for our origins, among the ones we know today. Most of them aren’t even wholly physical! And yet, when one looks upon Vharyduq, you have to ask: Where are the traces something like us ever lived here? At times, in fact, it’s closer to ‘where are the traces anything at all ever lived here?’, thanks to the sheer lack of remains. We know nothing rots in a place like that, by now, and yet there’s nothing! Not even bones!

The most damning part is the fact we have no tales or memories of such a place, written or spoken. Or, in fact, of any place before the Subterraneum. We were already splitting at the seams by then, one Hive becoming four, you don’t forget something like that… and you don’t forget where that split began: Right here, in our territory. All the more reason to believe we came from Vharyduq to begin with, that all of us did.

Somehow. We might’ve not even been awake before then, so whatever we used to be is gone now, without memory. Further gone than the dead themselves, because nothing and no one remembers what that was like… If we truly came from there, then all we can be sure of is that they could live in such a place, but not thrive. Not anymore, otherwise they wouldn’t have come here. Even something without a whole mind to call its own can feel desperate, can’t it…?

--Hive Speaker Ghyrrividiq. Taken from inter-hive communications, date unknown (leaked from Tower files during the Bellbound Pronouncement of 199 NA)

Rhyvady, "The Sea of Lights"

Location: Lake Rhymaryq shores (Crystalline Lakes), Eastern Candlelit Hive (Syhaq territories, contested with Ishiss Magocracy)

This is not the place we came from, not by far; nothing of true, earthly flesh could have come from such a realm. Even now, we cannot truly enter it – not in our entirety. The only journey one can undertake into the Sea of Lights is spiritual, leaving one’s material form behind at the very edge of the Exit itself… From the outside in, all one sees is a wall of light, a luminous barrier where one simply cannot push through. Yet with the right mindset, and with a hard enough push, one keeps going further in. And from there…

A spectacle unfolds before the senses, if one could call them so. A translation, perhaps, of what resonates against one’s very soul and is carried back to the mind, which is forced to interpret it? Or perhaps one carries every sense within, even as the flesh is left behind. But it’s all, for lack of a better word… utterly luminous. Still shapes of what seems like pure light, millions upon millions of dots of luminosity, stretching towards infinity in all directions, that try to dance, but cannot. Like a force from within pushing against an innate stillness, unable to overcome it, no matter the direction. You see the forms waver and shimmer as their dots struggle and fail to move… Anywhere at all, I believe. With very particular exceptions, no one has ever seen them uniformly pick a direction. The rest is all… nothingness, a background light that’s uniform in all directions, it seems, or more shapes in the distance. And no matter the distance, whether so close you almost think you can touch them, to so far away it would take lifetimes to reach them, you can always see them quiver.

Even now we hardly understand what most of these shapes are, even those that remain still in perpetuity. Interacting with them has proven difficult, when one’s capabilities within this realm are so different. Where even what you can do is a mystery. But some we understood. We know enough to be aware that some of the shapes left behind are… corpses, of a sort. Of what was once a scattered pantheon, so long forgotten even the ones who dreamed them to life have passed on, and the question of whether this was their paradise or just a refuge remains unanswered. Even in death, they remain luminous… And even as the ashes of ashes, even after eons of decay before and after the end, they retain… something to them. Even today, trying to look further into their being is dangerous, yet the more one can delve without being burned away, the more one can find about what was once their domains…

Much of this is but speculation, of course. And the rest is what one could call a witness account. For one remained alive after it all, emaciated and agonized, yet enduring. Our Lost Light… was the very last of them all. So far gone to have forgotten those that gave them life. But never completely gone… And now, never to be swept away by oblivion. For we remember the Light now.

--High Luminary Rhyvvy. Excerpt from Tri-yearly "Sermon to the Light and the Haven", 51 years before the Nixian Age.

Murrhuvyq, "Diamondhall"

Location: The Flarewoods (clearer location unavailable), suspected Northern Sundered Hive (Zivhaq) territories (Southeast Consortium in "official" mapping)

I am very aware how concerning you think this whole place is. And you should be. But never so concerned that you should just barge in without some context as to what it is, and this damned tunnel’s presence as a whole. And besides, it’s about time you heard us out for once, don’t you think? Even nowadays you don’t do that enough.

First things first: This isn’t our Exit. Whether the Burnts are right or not is a story for another day, but this isn’t it. In fact, we had no Exit, in this slice of territory that we actually managed to claim for ourselves. Or, at the very least, not any that we knew of, which is an admittedly important but most likely irrelevant distinction. It’s possible that there are blocked tunnels, or hidden corners, one of them holding an Exit that we never found – but with our thoroughness in checking, the chance such a place exists is low, and the chance anything has moved through a corner so hidden, ancestors or not, practically zero. As to Murrhuvyq, well, that Exit showed up well after we started writing things down. It made its presence damn clear.

What do we know of the place itself? Its history is something of a mystery to us, because the only thing that lives there – for a given value of live – is a proven liar. And that thing, the entity in question, is Diamondhall itself. There is a mind behind those crystalline growths you’ll see soon enough – the samples we have here are visibly duller because they’re not a part of it anymore. And it’s a mind in search of resources, carbon to be exact – which is why we called it that, and why it’s not a good place to be organic in without protection.

That’s an important detail. Nothing breathing came out of this place, long ago, pursued by a cataclysm of coal-eating crystal. All of that was gone before it got here. We’ve checked, too: Nothing left but empty caverns and structures, subsumed centuries ago. Caverns that might’ve been natural once, and geometric things that left us wondering, way back when, if this was a creation of the crystal or something covered up and consumed. We found more of those in our deepest looks above – we’re not going to apologize for wearing your constructs for this, they and you don’t get special treatment – standing under a blinding sky, once we emerged from those depths. We learned what a sky was, those days…

And on our deepest expedition yet, unsanctioned yet indispensable, with the very crystals seemingly acting out against us, we found something else – something Diamondhall tried to hide them from us. We found more than a few statues that looked just a little too lifelike.

No, there were no peoples escaping this cataclysm into the Subterraneum. The cataclysm itself is what came out of the place. It took us a while to realize that, embarrassingly long before we remembered the common thread in all those tales of yours. It ran out of what it needs. It started crawling deeper. It got desperate. And thus, it found this place – and for whatever reason, the place let it in.

--Expedition Leader Rrhavaduq. Tower communications, date unknown but presumed pre-131 NA due to territorial shifts (leaked from Tower files during the Bellbound Pronouncement of 199 NA)

The Highest Forum

Location: Northeastern Red Plateau (clearer location unavailable), suspected Bellbound Hive (Nirhaq) territories (Tower territory in "official" maps)

I am quite aware the territory this particular Exit is in remains under Tower control – barely I might add. But it is us that know it best. It’s us that have worked with it the most. And it’s us that they and their Vaults bring about to study what’s inside. Much as “inside” is something of a misnomer.

To clarify: We didn’t come from there. We’re not creatures of pure mind, we’re material, and if one could even call the Forum a place, it’s certainly not a material one. And that granite wall that forms the edge of the Exit had to be as utterly impenetrable back then as it is now – we’re not fully sure why it is that way, as an aside, but the space immediately beyond that either can’t support matter or isn’t actually a space, so there’s plenty to theorize with.

Anyhow, to elaborate: The Forum isn’t precisely something you enter. You’re always here, never moving on beyond it – no spiritual journey or whatever else, like the bees have with the Sea of Lights. No, everything stops right there, at that wall… Except for a few things, mainly energies. What lies on the other side has proven capable of budging the wall just enough to transmit kinetic energies, and on certain wavelengths there are very minor spikes and lows of radiation that can have no other source. And the important part isn’t the power involved, which is minimal – we often need specialized equipment or sharpened senses just to pick it up. It’s the patterns.

It’s why it’s us that get to work with this passage. What flows across this barrier is information, passed in those languages what’s left on the other side can use – and the linguistics involved were perhaps the most complex the Bellbound Hive’s had to tackle. We’ve got a fairly good idea of what these entities are, but for most of them we cannot confirm anything for the moment being, other than the fact they’re incorporeal and entirely sentient, though to what degree is still uncertain.

...and here comes the part for which I will ask you not to write anything down. Note how I said “most”. And take a moment to remember, for just a second, how Exits usually work. How they come to pass, what’s needed for them to open, as far as we know. What your species needed to be, and what they attempted, in order to get here? The entities in there had to be there too.

And it is such that we know that some of those beings are, in fact, closer to a language than a species. A language where the individual words and pronunciations are, in a way, alive. And that in this material realm, their perception becomes their location, so to speak – we’re still figuring that part out, they do not completely mesh even with our malleable physics, and those parasitized by them are never safe because of it. We know this because some such beings, which we call Burning Names, are very much loose in the Subterraneum this instant. Someone overheard them at the Exit, someone understood them enough, most likely one of ours, and we’re still tracking them down to this day.

--Archivist Vhurrodym. Interhive communications, date unknown but presumed pre-199 NA due to territorial shifts (deliberately leaked from Tower files in 203 NA, presumable reprisal)

Tirravzi, "Ashenwind"

Location: Stygian Maw, Western Hollow-lands. Central Consortium (Vezarym territories)

I’m afraid the time’s come to put the old tale to rest, no matter how close it may be to all of our hearts. The thought that we, and we alone, know what the True Surface is, that Tirravzi is the all-consuming, imprisoning layer that keeps the Subterraneum’s peoples bound where they are. I’ll explain why in a moment.

So, Tirravzi. The ash-choked expanse every Vez is told about in their youth. We all have a very clear image of it: The flaying winds, the searing heat, the black skies lit only by the thundering storms that cover it all, the bare, steaming volcanic rock, just about everything a Vezarym could do without. All of this was right above our old home in the caverns, where we once thrived, until the crawling ashen dunes, the smog and simple resource depletion drove us to starvation, and to depths alien to our ancestors. Depths that led right here, while the caves that were once our nation were, in the words of some, “consumed” by Tirravzi… It’s here that my point of contention lies. There was no “consumption” by the ashen expanses above: It was always the same place, dying from the outside in. It was all Tirravzi.

Now that we’ve finally resumed incursions into the ashen lands, into the ruins we left behind, others beyond the Consortium have been able to take actual measurements with actually refined instruments. More than enough to let us know things simply don’t line up with the old interpretation. The ambient energies have proven too different, the spacial incongruities Exits are known for have been more or less pinpointed, and most damningly, the geology – down to the very movements of the earth – simply doesn’t match between sides. And recently, with those brave souls that have reached what we initially called Tirravzi finally able to bring back data of their own? The geological processes do line up, and the ambient energies are the exact same, once Subterraneum interference is accounted for. And with zero spatial phenomena to interfere there… Well, the conclusion is obvious, isn’t it?

In the end, we should’ve seen this coming. Exits don’t open directly to the surface anywhere. It’s a fundamental part of how Exits function. They have to be deep below, they have to be dug out, they are rock bottom, and the amount of tunneling to even get there is indicative of it. And I don’t see how Tirravzi could be an exception to that rule just because we started already underground. We may have been closer to begin with, but it still wasn’t the bottom. In fact, even the idea we were closer is debatable: The distances needed have never been established. Maybe our ancestors had to dig even further than they would’ve needed, with further death in the path, just because they started deeper, and thus skipped so many of the easiest layers without realizing.

In the end, we were never special – not particularly so. The Vezarym are, in the end, just the inheritors of another set of dying, desperate ancestors who sought sanctuary deep below, having run out of any other options, that thus ended up in this place where all such seekers go… Though, perhaps we are special in one thing: In every way imaginable, both historically and culturally, and probably even biologically, we had a remarkable head start.

--Sub-Minister Mizirr-Targiz. Excerpt from potential alliance talks with the Nixian Republics, 100 NA

Var Ortanum, "Downpour"

Location: White Canyon (Southern Talar's Snowdrifts), Southern Voska Empire (Toskar Territory)

Hah! We can hardly call that our world anymore, can we? Not after this long! Too much attachment, I say, when the Subterraneum’s got all we need and more… Still, if you want to hear of Var Ortanum, the place we left behind, then I’ll tell you the gist.

Barely anything’s left of how it was before it became the Downpour we all know. It wasn’t a cold land at least, from the old tales few of us even knew what snow was before we got here. The descriptions are muddled beyond that, other than constant mentions of green – we’re fairly sure they meant greenery, as in, plants that can only thrive under light. Still, muddled, and sometimes even contradictory.

Not a lot of detail’s left on how it started either; from what’s been gathered it wasn’t especially sudden, but it wasn’t forewarned either. Rains came and went, sometimes you had droughts, and sometimes the opposite, right until at some point the rain started and just never stopped. Even then it fluctuated, but it was never lighter than a constant drizzle – and that’s true even today. The more intriguing part of it though, is that the storms are different from place to place, also going by both ancient accounts and our own reports, with precipitation varying in both amount and form…

One thing we haven’t found yet is any evidence for some of the older tales. There is one recurring image of lightning storms so fierce they burned towns to the ground and turned the very earth to glass. Where constant strikes burned everything down, no matter how much rain poured on the flames. We’ve yet to find that. The boldest of our scouts in that place have heard distant rumbling of what might be thunder – emphasis on distant.

Now, on our ancestors’ escape from the Downpour, and our entrance into these caverns, that’s simpler… We’re going by our own records on the matter, noting that the feats of that time are ones we still can’t replicate, and that includes the lynchpin of our ancestors’ plan. For you see, they thought the Downpour would eventually end. That they just needed a place to hide and ride it out. But they also knew it would take a long time. So they decided to… put themselves on pause, from what we can gather. Using some manner of bodily control, and some manner of external aid – still haven’t figured out what – they would slow their very bodies down to such a crawl, they’d sleep for years on end with barely a twitch, and still wake up at the end, right as rain!

As you can deduce from our existence, it worked. But as you could also deduce from our appearance and the fact we are down here, not completely. As it turns out, their deep hideaway was just deep enough to be in the Subterraneum, right past the edge – you can imagine why. And… Maybe they miscalculated, or maybe something threw off their math in here, or woke them up early. But woke up they did… And they either couldn’t or wouldn’t go back to sleep. The accounts fall apart almost completely around that time, so it’s likely something woke them up, and wouldn’t let them do so.

And now that we’re Toskars, we still can’t go back to sleep. But why would we want to?

--Runesmith Vorrai. Diplomatic talks during formation of the Royal Accord with Kingdom of Ferigoz, presumed 900 years before Nixian Era at a minimum (leaked 215 years before Nixian era)

"Breach THREADBARE", Graywall Prison

Location: Tinrotted Plains (clearer location unavailable), presumed central Tower territories.

First of all, it is imperative that no one working under the Custody’s flag refers to the gate into the Graywall as an Exit. Technically, it is inaccurate, and more importantly we are actively striving for it not to become one; to call it such is admitting an unacceptable defeat.

Second of all, some elaboration on why this little mistake is so common. With the way the Graywall is set up, pocketed into a space of its own, it’s terribly close to fulfulling one of the key conditions: That an Exit must lead outside. In fact, it’s very easy to mistakenly think it’s already fulfilled. But there are important distinctions to make, and the most important of all is that this is not another space, outside of the Subterraneum itself – it is a piece of the caverns’ own space, stretched into a much greater expanse and filled in with the virtually endless material that surrounds us to establish its confines. A delicate process, but entirely doable with the right tools. The fabric of space can be tailored like any other…

However, like any fabric, it can also rupture if it’s stretched too thin. Then it would lead outside. We must take utmost care at all times that this does not happen.

One of the troubles with such a thing is that the other conditions that must apply for an Exit to manifest are unfortunately quite applicable here. Depth requirements are unfortunately already fulfilled, seeing the entrance has already been excavated; all the physical work is long done. And more importantly, the desire for survival, the desperation, hoping against hope, all the roiling determination of seeking out something, anything that isn’t the certain death that encroaches… This is a prison. Populated by the most capable, the most resourceful, and the most gifted among those who see their fellows as little more than more material, of some kind or another. And their unfortunate creations, for that matter. It’s a condition so easily fulfilled we must always assume it’s in play.

Now, I know those not yet in the know are wondering why a definition that seems merely academical remains unfulfilled. Let me get to the heart of the matter. An Exit is more than just a definition. It is one of this place’s very concepts, as utterly defined and solid as the concepts of gravity and heat – though one hopes not nearly as universal. Worse still, as much as we can bend and even transgress such fundamental concepts in the Subterraneum, doing the same with the rules behind Exits is far more difficult. One might even be tempted to say there is an active resistance to such attempts, as if it were a building block of the realm itself… or, perhaps, a law being consciously enforced.

And so, we are forced to play along. We are forced to limit inmate selections, dampening all data-harvesting initiatives. We must tend constantly to the very fabric of space around the area, knowing just a singular tear might ruin our work. And we must endeavor, more than any other prison in existence, to keep a singular entrance to the complex, with standards that would consider even one tiny screw-hole too many to be unacceptable.

Because Exits, in ever subtle ways, always flow back here. And because Exits, fundamentally, cannot be closed. Not completely, and not ever.

--Deputy Warden Nifar Blackspark. Presumed briefing to Warden Corps. Date lost in decryption, presumed late Clan Age/early Pact Age due to naming conventions and context. Leaked during Third Gilded Raid by Consortium mercenaries 305 years before Nixian Age.

"Breach STYGIAN"

Location: Uncharted depths beneath Niqalix River sector (Northeastern edge of Hollow-lands), Tower territories (contested with Nixia Republics)

Raiding a Breach is always rough, ya know. Tower higher-ups are real keen on keeping things under wraps whenever they find another Exit they can keep to themselves, but they can’t keep everythin’ hidden. This one had been under wraps for a long while, so we guessed they got a lil’ complacent, and it was best to strike quick ‘n hard. No matter how much further it was from all the others, from most of the known caverns even, they had to be hiding somethin’ around there. The leaks we got only made it more temptin’, too: It wasn’t just pretty far off, it was old. Older than any other we folks of actual countries would know. They’d be bringing their best to that, so we’d have to do the same.

No one down here is a stranger to diggin’, but the excavation to get there was still the hardest part, in retrospect. Wasn’t just a matter of distance, plenty of that though, the stone got harder the deeper we went. I’m guessing that’s where the real pressures start kickin’ in, but I’m no geologist, couldn’t tell ya. We figured the Radiance would be pretty damn thick down there too, so we came prepared for that, just in case.

Well, when we finally made it there, things seemed underwhelming. At first. The damn thing was barely even guarded, nothing but some silicate constructs roamin’ the place that didn’t even try to stop us. There was plenty of instruments, measurers and stuff, we made bank on that at least, but no real defenses, no real teeth to it. And the actual Exit was more covered up than sealed. Just a thick slab of polymer on it that we just slid aside and nothin’ else. And what was right behind that?

Nothin’.

It took a moment to figure out it was more than just a perfectly black wall. Or less, rather. A wall is somethin’ that exists, it’s in the way of you getting’ somewhere. But it took an actual look at the stuff we snatched from the Vaults to realize that wasn’t the problem here. No, there was no wall, and in fact, there was no somewhere either, or so the equipment said. Soon as Imlu tried to stick a hand in there thinking she’d get it back anyhow… nope. Not even a feeling of somethin’ there, just the very tips of her fingers stoppin’ cold right then and there. And that was it.

Not a total bust for sure, I’ve showed you the equipment already. Came with some intriguin’ data too… See, when you try to measure on somethin’ that ain’t there, you get some real madness in the results, and piecin’ it together was a mess of its own. But the clocks ‘n stuff from the Quartz Vault was the most bafflin’. We were getting’ actual results, rather than what you’d expect from tryin’ to check the time in Nowhere. Or maybe we did get exactly that… ‘cause the Clocks? Spun forth a bunch and didn’t move anymore. The Parallel Timers? Our side damn near burned out, other froze in place. Worst of all, the Synchronic Hourglass? Voided itself on the lords-damned spot, all the sand slammin’ down at the bottom so hard it broke.

Time wasn’t just stopped in there. It was over.

--Raider Nikramat (presumed pseudonym), Frostbound Initiative agent. Date unknown, presumably very recent. Excerpt delivered personally to me during the last month (250 NA, for posterity's sake)

Beyond this, I personally know of no other. I will provide further editions of this file as I obtain further information. May these pointers serve you well.

Rock Bottom: The Subterraneum and its Known Exits