Phantasmal Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
phantasmods) wrote2016-09-06 11:57 pm
phantasmods) wrote2016-09-06 11:57 pm
DUNGEON INFO: TELOVIA MINES
AREA GENERAL
Buried in the mountains seen beyond Incendia, the Telovia Mines are quite a bit further out than the other Fissures that have been explored so far. If you didn't already know where they are, it would be rather difficult to find them... Fortunately, it's easy enough to follow the directions of the androids to get to the right place, even if you come later on.
Once you arrive, it's apparent that while there was once a bustle of activity here... Nothing is really in great condition. Unlike the Fissure at Incendia, nothing's kept the mines from growing thick with decay and rust in the last century. It's easy to see the signs of neglect, both in the town outside and in the tunnels dug into the mountainside.
That is, if you can see at all.
Fissure Effect: Those entering this Fissure will find that they've lost some degree of mundane ability. It might be a sense - either one of the Big Five or a more esoteric sense such as balance or temperature. It might be the ability to speak, or recognize people's faces and voices. The important thing is that it's an ability that is not magical or supernatural in any way and is instead something that is so mundane that the person losing it doesn't even think about it until it's gone. (As always, dungeon effects are opt-in.)
Resource: Earth Crystals
Frequency: Small ones common, large ones uncommon to rare
Type: Energy/magical resource
Environment: Any, but more frequent in the mines themselves
As veterans have no doubt come to expect, the Fissure is full of a variety of crystallized magic. The most common are aspected to the element of earth, and range from sunshine orange to golden yellow in color depending on their size - the larger ones tending further towards the orange spectrum. They're unusually heavy and dense for their size, or at least they feel that way - actually putting them on a scale will reveal them to have the same weight as other crystals of similar size.
MINER'S TOWN
Around the entrance to the mines proper, the hulls of decayed buildings cluster in a sort of town. The aesthetic is similar to Incendia's - more glass and metal than wood, or perhaps it's just that most of the wood that would have been left behind is rotted away. The town has similar inlays of magical lines of power, but unlike those in Incendia, virtually all of these are broken and nonfunctional... As are the roads and occasional sidewalks they lie upon.
Mother nature has certainly done her best to reclaim the area, and it's been a resounding success. Saplings and ferns explode out of every visible patch of soil; songbirds (and larger birds) rest in the corners of half-collapsed roofs. Still, there are some interesting things to notice, if you take the time to dig into the ruins.
The first is that much of the 'town' is devoted to housing, and housing only - there's a grand total of two convenience stores, one coffeeshop (from the shape of the fallen sign, it's Robin's Coffee again), and one larger grocery. Dig deep enough, and the disparity between that and the amount of housing - most of it bachelor-esque, but there's a decent amount of space for families - is explained; a glyph that a keen eye would notice matches one of those in Incendia's teleportation port. It's smashed into chunks and obviously nonfunctional, and the area immediately surrounding it is full of wildflowers - white lilies, forget-me-nots, and an unfamiliar flower that blooms as clusters of double-layered daisy-like blooms at the top of tall, thin stems. (Should one ask the androids, or have read a book on flower meanings specific to this world, it's called 'Perria,' and the pink variety means 'leaving behind fond memories.' The red, on the other hand, means 'loss of family.')
Hazard: Grief Weeds
Danger level: Low
Type: Fissure Effect
Environment: The area surrounding the teleportation port and about two blocks in any direction
Activity: When approached
These vines can easily be mistaken for morning glories by the unfamiliar; their vines, however, are just too dark, almost black as they climb across the ground, and the shockingly white flowers never seem to bloom, day or night. It's very easy to miss the vines in the places where they crawl across the ground among other plants, but they're pretty obvious on the cracked pavement and climbing the remaining walls of the nearby buildings.
Step on one or pause to examine the flowers - any kind of touch - will reveal the nature of the plants, as you get slammed by a sudden wall of grief. All the grief characters have already experienced in their lives will hit them at once; only the very most fortunate, who have never lost anything, can safely touch the plants without having this reaction.
Critter: Reclaimers
Danger level: Moderate Plus
Type: Fissure creature
Environment: Any outside; rare encounter
Behaviour: Slurpy
These large creatures might at first be mistaken for small hill of dirt and vegetation (which, indeed, is what they become once the area is stabilized). Come close or watch for a while, though, and they'll start to move - anteater-like creatures with the bounty of nature on their backs, come to take back the remains of the town. Small hill, or very large creature, as they're a solid ten feet tall and sometimes twenty feet in length, discounting the growth of any saplings and the like on their backs.
Anything man-made is potentially up for grabs, caught by a sticky tongue and slurped up into the creature's mouth. There's a surprising amount of force to the tongue, easily enough to yank things out of the hands or off the bodies of the unprepared. And once your item's been swallowed... Well, you're not super likely to get it back unless you can cut the critter open, are you? Even then, your reclaimed item might be partially dissolved by the strong magic and acid instead the reclaimer's gut.
Acid that, if forced to defend themselves, these creatures can also spit a fair distance, and do so with some decent amount of force and distance. Indeed, if you stay out of their range, you might see them practicing this tactic on pavement or the remains of the buildings, before slurping up the acidic soup that results.
SORTING AND SURVEYING ZONE
Spanning the area immediately around the mine entrance and the first couple hundred feet within are a maze of tracks, abandoned carts, and spilled piles of crystals and stones. The latter, you can tell, were at one time contained in bins to be sorted - but of course, most of the bins have rotted away, leaving the crystals glittering in the sunlight. While the earth crystals that naturally occur in the Fissure are still the most common, it's obvious that the mines collected several other types as well.
Other than the piles of crystals, it's primarily the minecart tracks that are interesting. They're worked with the same sort of magical power lines as the streets, and while the tracks outside the mine entrance are rusted to the point of being unusable, the carts and tracks further inside will still roll. Push them around a bit to grease up the wheels, and you might even be able to take a nice, easy ride further into the mines...
Provided that the tracks further in aren't broken, of course.
Hazard: Unsorted Crystals
Danger level: Moderate
Type: Magical reaction
Environment: Sorting and Surveying; sometimes deeper into the mines
Activity: Any time.
For the most part, luckily, the crystals aren't particularly reactive. However, sometimes in the unsorted bins of them, the chaotic mix of energies sparks and, if disturbed in the wrong way, reacts explosively. The resulting reaction isn't of a particular element, but a chaotic mix, and varies in intensity based on the size of the pile.
It's possible, if one is careful, to sort the piles without causing such violent results - but to do so for all the crystals in the survey zone, nevermind the ones further within the mine overflowing the mine carts, would be the work of months, perhaps years. Nobody's got time for that.
MAIN TUNNELS
The deeper you go, the less well-finished the tunnels of the mines are, and the more often you see veins of magical crystals lighting the path. This is a good thing, since there's no other source of light within the mines - you'll have to bring your own, or rely on other senses. While the remains of lanterns can be seen hanging overhead, they've long since gone out, their magical sources of energy depleted. Occasionally there's an elevator shaft or two leading to deeper layers of tunnels, for those willing to take the risk - it might be for the best to not trust any elevators you find back here to work, however. (Unless another PC has made use of them, all elevators are at the primary/entrance level of the tunnels.)
Cart tracks also follow along the larger tunnels, up to a certain point, but eventually the tunnels narrow from arteries to vessels, and along these smaller paths - often only large enough for one person at a time, and rarely larger than the space it takes for two people to walk side by side - there's very little in the way of guidance. Here and there is a dead lantern and a support beam in various degrees of disrepair, but for the most part it's just you and the crystals, the magic making the air tingle against your skin.
And every now and again, you'll find a place where those support beams have failed - most of them relatively minor, the larger stones supported by each other, but some of them... Less so. Fortunately for you, most of the cave-ins can be squeezed past, and for those that can't, the tunnels have any number of redundancies designed in for exactly this reason. But you'll still have to find your way back around, and sometimes that's a very, very long trek...
Critter: Mine Mites
Danger level: None to moderate
Type: Magical creature
Environment: Any underground in the mines
Behaviour: Mighty.
These mites - which look mostly like pill bugs in stony shells - aren't especially aggressive. They mostly want to munch crystals, primarily earth crystals, and scuttle along in search of such on the walls and floor of the mines. If you leave them alone, they'll leave you alone. The smaller ones are about the length of a forearm; the largest are five or six feet from one end to the other.
If, on the other hand, you think All Bugs Must Die, the mites will roll up into balls like their much smaller counterparts, and you'll find that their armored shells are, in fact, as stony as they appear, rendering them nearly invulnerable to physical damage and as heavy as stone as well. And when they start to roll as a form of counter-attack... You'd better be quick on your feet to get out of the way.
Hazard: Animate Tools
Danger level: Low
Type: Object; Fissure Effect
Environment: Anywhere in the mines, but typically near carts
Activity: Any time.
The miners might be gone, but their tools remain - and so, apparently, does the work. Even largely rusted away and damaged, the pickaxes, sorting trays, and other objects of work in the mines do their best to continue, going through the same motions they once did. And while plenty of them are no longer any good at it, too tired and rusted to be of use, the crystals overfilling the mine carts to the point of sometimes making them disappear entirely attest to the fact that the tools were once very good at their jobs.
As long as they remain undisturbed, the tools won't disturb you (aside from the endless amount of noise they make in their routines, and the possibility of causing a cave-in, and so on). However, if you try to get them to stop, or even just wind up in their way, they're likely to chase you off a good distance before returning to work. If you'd rather fight a rusty pickaxe than run from it, they're also not that hard to destroy. And when the area is stabilized, they fall to the ground and remain there at last.
Hazard: Cave-in
Danger level: Moderate to high
Type: Cave-in
Environment: Mine tunnels
Activity: It's a cave-in.
After so long undisturbed, it's only natural for some of the mine tunnels to be... Well, less than stable. There's evidence of a number of small cave-ins around the tunnels, especially in the regions where pickaxes work blindly at the walls (the tools are, after all, not smart enough to figure out how not to cause cave-ins), or where former support beams have given way. Any loud sound or other disturbance could potentially bring things crashing down.
Fortunately, at least, it seems like most of the mine was designed around the idea that there would be cave-ins, eventually. There are very few dead-ends in the mines, and most of the ones that do exist are shallow and recently-dug (at least relatively). The majority of tunnels do, eventually, loop around (unless the other end is also caved in, in which case you might have to go digging or start using the network to beg someone to dig you out).
But in the process of following those tunnels around, it's easy enough to get lost...
SUBFISSURE EFFECT: FLIP-FLOP
The eastern part of the mines comes with its own secondary distortion - one that will be immediately visible (to those of you who still have vision). After all, it's caused not only the colors of the area, but the sources of light to invert - like someone's flipped the monitor settings, such that black appears white, red appears green, and the darkest, shadowy corners are the most brightly lit.
Those paying careful attention to sound - or those who have no choice but to do so - will find that it is reversed much more straightforwardly - left and right, up and down, back and front. this grows all the more disorienting for the fact that the visual effect is not reversed in the same way - so if you look in the direction of the sound you hear on your left, you're looking perfectly away from whatever made the noise...
Critter?: Shadow-lights
Danger level: Not dangerous, but creepy
Type: Fissure creature(?)
Environment: The eastern mine Subfissure
Behaviour: Misbehaving
Those who keep an eye on their shadows (or, rather, their lights?) within the inverted Fissure will notice that they seem to have taken on something of a life of their own. The longer one is within the Subfissure, the more their shadow will start to act out - the lighter white outline at first mimicking their actions in a way that feels almost mocking, but increasingly they'll do the opposite of whatever a character is doing. Lend a hand to help someone? The play of your shadows will be one of you slapping the other's hand away. Take a drink out of your waterbottle? Your shadow turns theirs over and pours it out on the ground.
The effect is entirely harmless, but there's still the unsettling question of what would happen if your shadow was more solid...
THE BRILLIANT CAVERN
It's easy to see, smell, and hear this cavern before you arrive in it; from within erupts the light of day, the sound of water and rustling leaves, and the smell of blooming flowers. Indeed, it's easy to initially mistake the entrance of the medium-sized cavern - perhaps fifty feet across in any direction and thirty feet high at its peak - as an exit, a way entirely out of the mines. Those with a decent sense of direction, though, will realize that it's far too deep in the mountainside for that to be remotely possible.
And, indeed, that's not the case; investigation of the cavern will reveal that it's entirely self-contained. Yet the crystals in the walls here are in an abnormally energized state; fresh air flows from wind crystals, soil surrounds earth crystals in place of the usual stone, and most importantly, water flows from a cluster of bright blue crystals on one wall and light shines from fragments embedded everywhere, strong as sunlight. The result is what's functionally a greenhouse, buried deep within the mine tunnels.
What's perhaps most interesting, however, is that the plants here are clearly not native to the area, when compared to those outside their mines. Indeed, characters may well find plants from their own worlds here, the seeds deposited by the whims of the Fissures. And unchecked and undisturbed for a century within the magical influence, they've grown intensely and wildly, some of them quite mutated - in particular, plants that characters are used to seeing as very small might be very large, while trees they are used to seeing very large might be very small, their growth among the stalagmites and stalactites stunted by the small space of the cavern.
Critter: Leaf-storm
Danger level: Moderate
Type: Magical effect(?)
Environment: The Brilliant Cavern
Behaviour: Whirlwind
These rare creatures - if they can even be called such - take the form of a tornado of relatively fresh leaves around a central wind-aspected crystal. Something about the way they clash with the elemental lean of the rest of the Fissure keeps them contained in this cavern, but they are still whirlwinds, if relatively minor ones rarely topping three feet across.
However, there is a definitely air of intelligence to them, rather than just mindless wandering. For the most part, they're curious about you, the strange new creatures that have arrived in their domain, and their curiosity takes the form of swirling all over you in a twist of wind, leaves, and tiny crystals. They aren't intending to be aggressive, but it's easy to misread something that has no normal means of communication.
If attacked, they let out a screech of wind, summoning several others of their kind to help defend them. And then you're dealing with a ten-foot whirlwind of leaves, crystals, and thorns, which isn't an experience I'd recommend.
DEEP SHAFT
Near to the back of the mines, easily missed by those who aren't paying attention, is one elevator shaft that does not possess an elevator inside at the ground floor. A curious thing, and if you're willing to try climbing into the shaft, you'll find that it goes down, down, down... Leading to what is, almost certainly, the deepest part of the mine.
The crystals in the stones here are much less depleted than the ones above - there are large cracks in the stone where networks and formations of crystals have split the surrounding rock apart, making the whole area glow and glitter. The air hangs magically potent and tingles on the skin.
Buried in the mountains seen beyond Incendia, the Telovia Mines are quite a bit further out than the other Fissures that have been explored so far. If you didn't already know where they are, it would be rather difficult to find them... Fortunately, it's easy enough to follow the directions of the androids to get to the right place, even if you come later on.
Once you arrive, it's apparent that while there was once a bustle of activity here... Nothing is really in great condition. Unlike the Fissure at Incendia, nothing's kept the mines from growing thick with decay and rust in the last century. It's easy to see the signs of neglect, both in the town outside and in the tunnels dug into the mountainside.
That is, if you can see at all.
Fissure Effect: Those entering this Fissure will find that they've lost some degree of mundane ability. It might be a sense - either one of the Big Five or a more esoteric sense such as balance or temperature. It might be the ability to speak, or recognize people's faces and voices. The important thing is that it's an ability that is not magical or supernatural in any way and is instead something that is so mundane that the person losing it doesn't even think about it until it's gone. (As always, dungeon effects are opt-in.)
Resource: Earth Crystals
Frequency: Small ones common, large ones uncommon to rare
Type: Energy/magical resource
Environment: Any, but more frequent in the mines themselves
As veterans have no doubt come to expect, the Fissure is full of a variety of crystallized magic. The most common are aspected to the element of earth, and range from sunshine orange to golden yellow in color depending on their size - the larger ones tending further towards the orange spectrum. They're unusually heavy and dense for their size, or at least they feel that way - actually putting them on a scale will reveal them to have the same weight as other crystals of similar size.
MINER'S TOWN
Around the entrance to the mines proper, the hulls of decayed buildings cluster in a sort of town. The aesthetic is similar to Incendia's - more glass and metal than wood, or perhaps it's just that most of the wood that would have been left behind is rotted away. The town has similar inlays of magical lines of power, but unlike those in Incendia, virtually all of these are broken and nonfunctional... As are the roads and occasional sidewalks they lie upon.
Mother nature has certainly done her best to reclaim the area, and it's been a resounding success. Saplings and ferns explode out of every visible patch of soil; songbirds (and larger birds) rest in the corners of half-collapsed roofs. Still, there are some interesting things to notice, if you take the time to dig into the ruins.
The first is that much of the 'town' is devoted to housing, and housing only - there's a grand total of two convenience stores, one coffeeshop (from the shape of the fallen sign, it's Robin's Coffee again), and one larger grocery. Dig deep enough, and the disparity between that and the amount of housing - most of it bachelor-esque, but there's a decent amount of space for families - is explained; a glyph that a keen eye would notice matches one of those in Incendia's teleportation port. It's smashed into chunks and obviously nonfunctional, and the area immediately surrounding it is full of wildflowers - white lilies, forget-me-nots, and an unfamiliar flower that blooms as clusters of double-layered daisy-like blooms at the top of tall, thin stems. (Should one ask the androids, or have read a book on flower meanings specific to this world, it's called 'Perria,' and the pink variety means 'leaving behind fond memories.' The red, on the other hand, means 'loss of family.')
Hazard: Grief Weeds
Danger level: Low
Type: Fissure Effect
Environment: The area surrounding the teleportation port and about two blocks in any direction
Activity: When approached
These vines can easily be mistaken for morning glories by the unfamiliar; their vines, however, are just too dark, almost black as they climb across the ground, and the shockingly white flowers never seem to bloom, day or night. It's very easy to miss the vines in the places where they crawl across the ground among other plants, but they're pretty obvious on the cracked pavement and climbing the remaining walls of the nearby buildings.
Step on one or pause to examine the flowers - any kind of touch - will reveal the nature of the plants, as you get slammed by a sudden wall of grief. All the grief characters have already experienced in their lives will hit them at once; only the very most fortunate, who have never lost anything, can safely touch the plants without having this reaction.
Critter: Reclaimers
Danger level: Moderate Plus
Type: Fissure creature
Environment: Any outside; rare encounter
Behaviour: Slurpy
These large creatures might at first be mistaken for small hill of dirt and vegetation (which, indeed, is what they become once the area is stabilized). Come close or watch for a while, though, and they'll start to move - anteater-like creatures with the bounty of nature on their backs, come to take back the remains of the town. Small hill, or very large creature, as they're a solid ten feet tall and sometimes twenty feet in length, discounting the growth of any saplings and the like on their backs.
Anything man-made is potentially up for grabs, caught by a sticky tongue and slurped up into the creature's mouth. There's a surprising amount of force to the tongue, easily enough to yank things out of the hands or off the bodies of the unprepared. And once your item's been swallowed... Well, you're not super likely to get it back unless you can cut the critter open, are you? Even then, your reclaimed item might be partially dissolved by the strong magic and acid instead the reclaimer's gut.
Acid that, if forced to defend themselves, these creatures can also spit a fair distance, and do so with some decent amount of force and distance. Indeed, if you stay out of their range, you might see them practicing this tactic on pavement or the remains of the buildings, before slurping up the acidic soup that results.
SORTING AND SURVEYING ZONE
Spanning the area immediately around the mine entrance and the first couple hundred feet within are a maze of tracks, abandoned carts, and spilled piles of crystals and stones. The latter, you can tell, were at one time contained in bins to be sorted - but of course, most of the bins have rotted away, leaving the crystals glittering in the sunlight. While the earth crystals that naturally occur in the Fissure are still the most common, it's obvious that the mines collected several other types as well.
Other than the piles of crystals, it's primarily the minecart tracks that are interesting. They're worked with the same sort of magical power lines as the streets, and while the tracks outside the mine entrance are rusted to the point of being unusable, the carts and tracks further inside will still roll. Push them around a bit to grease up the wheels, and you might even be able to take a nice, easy ride further into the mines...
Provided that the tracks further in aren't broken, of course.
Hazard: Unsorted Crystals
Danger level: Moderate
Type: Magical reaction
Environment: Sorting and Surveying; sometimes deeper into the mines
Activity: Any time.
For the most part, luckily, the crystals aren't particularly reactive. However, sometimes in the unsorted bins of them, the chaotic mix of energies sparks and, if disturbed in the wrong way, reacts explosively. The resulting reaction isn't of a particular element, but a chaotic mix, and varies in intensity based on the size of the pile.
It's possible, if one is careful, to sort the piles without causing such violent results - but to do so for all the crystals in the survey zone, nevermind the ones further within the mine overflowing the mine carts, would be the work of months, perhaps years. Nobody's got time for that.
MAIN TUNNELS
The deeper you go, the less well-finished the tunnels of the mines are, and the more often you see veins of magical crystals lighting the path. This is a good thing, since there's no other source of light within the mines - you'll have to bring your own, or rely on other senses. While the remains of lanterns can be seen hanging overhead, they've long since gone out, their magical sources of energy depleted. Occasionally there's an elevator shaft or two leading to deeper layers of tunnels, for those willing to take the risk - it might be for the best to not trust any elevators you find back here to work, however. (Unless another PC has made use of them, all elevators are at the primary/entrance level of the tunnels.)
Cart tracks also follow along the larger tunnels, up to a certain point, but eventually the tunnels narrow from arteries to vessels, and along these smaller paths - often only large enough for one person at a time, and rarely larger than the space it takes for two people to walk side by side - there's very little in the way of guidance. Here and there is a dead lantern and a support beam in various degrees of disrepair, but for the most part it's just you and the crystals, the magic making the air tingle against your skin.
And every now and again, you'll find a place where those support beams have failed - most of them relatively minor, the larger stones supported by each other, but some of them... Less so. Fortunately for you, most of the cave-ins can be squeezed past, and for those that can't, the tunnels have any number of redundancies designed in for exactly this reason. But you'll still have to find your way back around, and sometimes that's a very, very long trek...
Critter: Mine Mites
Danger level: None to moderate
Type: Magical creature
Environment: Any underground in the mines
Behaviour: Mighty.
These mites - which look mostly like pill bugs in stony shells - aren't especially aggressive. They mostly want to munch crystals, primarily earth crystals, and scuttle along in search of such on the walls and floor of the mines. If you leave them alone, they'll leave you alone. The smaller ones are about the length of a forearm; the largest are five or six feet from one end to the other.
If, on the other hand, you think All Bugs Must Die, the mites will roll up into balls like their much smaller counterparts, and you'll find that their armored shells are, in fact, as stony as they appear, rendering them nearly invulnerable to physical damage and as heavy as stone as well. And when they start to roll as a form of counter-attack... You'd better be quick on your feet to get out of the way.
Hazard: Animate Tools
Danger level: Low
Type: Object; Fissure Effect
Environment: Anywhere in the mines, but typically near carts
Activity: Any time.
The miners might be gone, but their tools remain - and so, apparently, does the work. Even largely rusted away and damaged, the pickaxes, sorting trays, and other objects of work in the mines do their best to continue, going through the same motions they once did. And while plenty of them are no longer any good at it, too tired and rusted to be of use, the crystals overfilling the mine carts to the point of sometimes making them disappear entirely attest to the fact that the tools were once very good at their jobs.
As long as they remain undisturbed, the tools won't disturb you (aside from the endless amount of noise they make in their routines, and the possibility of causing a cave-in, and so on). However, if you try to get them to stop, or even just wind up in their way, they're likely to chase you off a good distance before returning to work. If you'd rather fight a rusty pickaxe than run from it, they're also not that hard to destroy. And when the area is stabilized, they fall to the ground and remain there at last.
Hazard: Cave-in
Danger level: Moderate to high
Type: Cave-in
Environment: Mine tunnels
Activity: It's a cave-in.
After so long undisturbed, it's only natural for some of the mine tunnels to be... Well, less than stable. There's evidence of a number of small cave-ins around the tunnels, especially in the regions where pickaxes work blindly at the walls (the tools are, after all, not smart enough to figure out how not to cause cave-ins), or where former support beams have given way. Any loud sound or other disturbance could potentially bring things crashing down.
Fortunately, at least, it seems like most of the mine was designed around the idea that there would be cave-ins, eventually. There are very few dead-ends in the mines, and most of the ones that do exist are shallow and recently-dug (at least relatively). The majority of tunnels do, eventually, loop around (unless the other end is also caved in, in which case you might have to go digging or start using the network to beg someone to dig you out).
But in the process of following those tunnels around, it's easy enough to get lost...
SUBFISSURE EFFECT: FLIP-FLOP
The eastern part of the mines comes with its own secondary distortion - one that will be immediately visible (to those of you who still have vision). After all, it's caused not only the colors of the area, but the sources of light to invert - like someone's flipped the monitor settings, such that black appears white, red appears green, and the darkest, shadowy corners are the most brightly lit.
Those paying careful attention to sound - or those who have no choice but to do so - will find that it is reversed much more straightforwardly - left and right, up and down, back and front. this grows all the more disorienting for the fact that the visual effect is not reversed in the same way - so if you look in the direction of the sound you hear on your left, you're looking perfectly away from whatever made the noise...
Critter?: Shadow-lights
Danger level: Not dangerous, but creepy
Type: Fissure creature(?)
Environment: The eastern mine Subfissure
Behaviour: Misbehaving
Those who keep an eye on their shadows (or, rather, their lights?) within the inverted Fissure will notice that they seem to have taken on something of a life of their own. The longer one is within the Subfissure, the more their shadow will start to act out - the lighter white outline at first mimicking their actions in a way that feels almost mocking, but increasingly they'll do the opposite of whatever a character is doing. Lend a hand to help someone? The play of your shadows will be one of you slapping the other's hand away. Take a drink out of your waterbottle? Your shadow turns theirs over and pours it out on the ground.
The effect is entirely harmless, but there's still the unsettling question of what would happen if your shadow was more solid...
THE BRILLIANT CAVERN
It's easy to see, smell, and hear this cavern before you arrive in it; from within erupts the light of day, the sound of water and rustling leaves, and the smell of blooming flowers. Indeed, it's easy to initially mistake the entrance of the medium-sized cavern - perhaps fifty feet across in any direction and thirty feet high at its peak - as an exit, a way entirely out of the mines. Those with a decent sense of direction, though, will realize that it's far too deep in the mountainside for that to be remotely possible.
And, indeed, that's not the case; investigation of the cavern will reveal that it's entirely self-contained. Yet the crystals in the walls here are in an abnormally energized state; fresh air flows from wind crystals, soil surrounds earth crystals in place of the usual stone, and most importantly, water flows from a cluster of bright blue crystals on one wall and light shines from fragments embedded everywhere, strong as sunlight. The result is what's functionally a greenhouse, buried deep within the mine tunnels.
What's perhaps most interesting, however, is that the plants here are clearly not native to the area, when compared to those outside their mines. Indeed, characters may well find plants from their own worlds here, the seeds deposited by the whims of the Fissures. And unchecked and undisturbed for a century within the magical influence, they've grown intensely and wildly, some of them quite mutated - in particular, plants that characters are used to seeing as very small might be very large, while trees they are used to seeing very large might be very small, their growth among the stalagmites and stalactites stunted by the small space of the cavern.
Critter: Leaf-storm
Danger level: Moderate
Type: Magical effect(?)
Environment: The Brilliant Cavern
Behaviour: Whirlwind
These rare creatures - if they can even be called such - take the form of a tornado of relatively fresh leaves around a central wind-aspected crystal. Something about the way they clash with the elemental lean of the rest of the Fissure keeps them contained in this cavern, but they are still whirlwinds, if relatively minor ones rarely topping three feet across.
However, there is a definitely air of intelligence to them, rather than just mindless wandering. For the most part, they're curious about you, the strange new creatures that have arrived in their domain, and their curiosity takes the form of swirling all over you in a twist of wind, leaves, and tiny crystals. They aren't intending to be aggressive, but it's easy to misread something that has no normal means of communication.
If attacked, they let out a screech of wind, summoning several others of their kind to help defend them. And then you're dealing with a ten-foot whirlwind of leaves, crystals, and thorns, which isn't an experience I'd recommend.
DEEP SHAFT
Near to the back of the mines, easily missed by those who aren't paying attention, is one elevator shaft that does not possess an elevator inside at the ground floor. A curious thing, and if you're willing to try climbing into the shaft, you'll find that it goes down, down, down... Leading to what is, almost certainly, the deepest part of the mine.
The crystals in the stones here are much less depleted than the ones above - there are large cracks in the stone where networks and formations of crystals have split the surrounding rock apart, making the whole area glow and glitter. The air hangs magically potent and tingles on the skin.