DUNGEON LOG: KEYSTONE REEF

[phantasmods]

Expedition day dawns, as usual, with an android mass text -

Okay, so, this time we're aiming to go out and stabilize the Fissure in the reef you can see up a little to the north of here. The waters are usually pretty calm this time of year, so if you can swim instead of needing to take a boat, that'd be a great help. We only have a few of them.

Also, I know that last time was a mess, so I'm just gonna say this: If you need to get out for any reason, just send us a message and a picture of your location. We'll get a drone out to you as soon as we can and bring you home. No questions asked.

( ﾟ▽ﾟ)/ Stay safe out there! When you're ready to go, meet us down at the beach. The rocky, sparkly one, not the sandy one.

Unlike previous expeditions, this time there's no rooftop sendoff - instead, as Charm noted, the tables are set up on Glitterstone beach, along with a series of boats pulled up on the sand. Two rowboats that could maybe sit six people but probably better suited for four, a trio of inflatable rafts (with motors attached to the back, all mismatched) of about the same size, a two-person dinghy and a long canoe that could hold two or three.

Besides the little fleet, there's also the usual bagged lunches (in gallon ziplocs this time, and other such watertight containers), and every boat is equipped with a large number of those chepa dollar-store water bottles, all with their airtight store seals. There's also a selection of life vests and other floatation thingies in a box next to the table. Strange hovers over the setup, checking watertightness of a handful of first aid kits with a spritzer and a bucket to submerge things in. They give a little wave to anyone passing by headed to the boats.

For those who opt instead to swim, everything seems perfectly normal until you reach the border of the Fissure... When, very suddenly, it isn't.

Comments

[misanthropicprinciple]

Lucky for them they ended up somewhere wet, where they can survive.

[Junpei thinks about it, looking around at the boat he's currently investigating, and then sends a second text:]

There must be a connection. We only turned up in a fissure when someone was there to pick us up; these boats ended up in a fissure in the ocean. They can't all be from this world.

[nojohnyouare]

When we first got here. We talked about how so many were from our group. And I thought it was something we all had in common bringing us here.

Aquatic monsters. Shipwrecks. In an ocean. But us in a dream forest? The pattern breaks. If it had been space, or a mansion, or a computer, that would make sense. But it wasn't.

[misanthropicprinciple]

The commonality was the other people, not the place. The guys who were brought here before us. They're (mostly) strangers to us, but even without the weird cross-time, cross-world connections, we share that worldhopping experience.

Then the question is what brought the first ones here a couple months ago. Do we know where the first group turned up?

[nojohnyouare]

I don't. But they'll know. We can ask. ...It would make sense if all of us had been to other worlds. Or none. But it's only "many." Confused.