//------------------------------//
// Margrave Gilderoy, Date Unknown, w/Notes III 
// Story: The Gilderoy Expedition 
// by PaulAsaran 
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From the private logbook of Lord Margrave Gilderoy of Fletcherstown.



Good news: The brew works!

Bad news: This is going to take a while.

The liquid is viscous and dangerous. It ate the paint right off the pouring apparatus. Really changed its aesthetic! Eastern Leaves was very careful. Maybe too careful, but I don’t blame her. I got the impression this stuff would eat through flesh like a dragon through a gem mine. At least its high viscosity means it doesn’t splash easily.

It boiled and bubbled when it touched the ice, but in the end it ate right through. This process would have been much easier if we’d simply used one of the boring machines. We’ve only so many drill bits and must save those for the actual ice and rock, should we reach any of the latter. Plus I’d hate to wake up an ancient, all-powerful deity by sticking a needle in its eye!

Acid hardly seems better, but the tablets were very clear that this brew is the proper method of getting his its attention.

Gertrude used to tease me. There’s no point in correcting her and admitting that I don’t actually believe there’s a creature sleeping under the ice. That’s ridiculous. I am convinced there is something down there, something physical and old and very interesting. A ruin, perhaps? A great vault to antiquity? I couldn’t say for sure.

The formations below match what was described on the map and in the tablets perfectly! How could two such things from two completely different cultures and geological ages specify the exact same details and relate to the exact same recipe that itself was found in an entirely different location? My greatest hope is that what we have below us is a sealed tomb or trove to which the acid is the secret to gaining access. This drop of acid is merely a precursor, a check to ensure that it alone is not enough to simply open the long-buried gates and do most of the excavation work for us. If that fails—which, let’s face it, is likely—then we’ll just have to get down there the hard way.

I haven’t told the others about any of this. I am confident that Mystery Tonic or Low Rock has some spies and saboteurs amongst my crew. I trust Eastern Leaves, and the diamond dogs are far too forward and blunt to have any hope at being spies. The zebras? And especially the griffons? Who knows?

I probably shouldn’t even be writing this down. I’m due to meet with Sweetooth soon anyway.




Cptn. Decadent Dawn, Notes:

Finally, some Cadance-blessed information!

So now at last I come to learn what Lord Gilderoy was after. Without access to his research notes, perhaps now being poured over by one of my fellow officers, I could not hope to judge his chances of success. Even so, what little I do see in these pages seem like precious little to base an entire expedition on, especially one so isolated and fretfully dangerous as this. But I must admit that Lord Gilderoy does not sound mad. Naive and paranoid, perhaps, but still in possession of his logical capabilities.

What he was after has been determined. Where he and his entire crew of seventy-two souls vanished to, however, remains a frustrating mystery. Were I to take in Rusty’s wild ramblings, I would guess something esoteric such as ‘into the aether’.