The Gilderoy Expedition

by PaulAsaran

Cptn. D. Design, 01-23-1005, III

From the private logbook of Decadent Design, Captain HRH Aurora Dawn.

This itching in the back of my skull is wont to drive me to the very boundaries of madness! The feeling is of such drastic heaviness to the mind such that I suspect I might take a pair of pliers and rip off some grotesque deformity from the back of my skull. I briefly visited Doctor Cloudstone about it, and even suggested she investigate the back of my head beneath the mane, but she discovered nothing that might explain the itching, alien sensation. At least I am not alone: Rusty Iron was in the medical bay with the same symptoms, as were a few others of the away team.

Though it seems obvious in hindsight, I failed at the time to realize that all the afflicted were of the crystalline pony race. Not a single member of the softer pony tribes – physically softer, mind you, I mean no insult to my dear kin! – were present. It was Doctor Cloudstone who made the observation. She is usually quite the bored individual, having taken to a life in the Royal Air Navy in the hopes of adding some excitement to her own wearying days. I daresay the mare found it, for she was uncharacteristically, cruelly fascinated by this petulant turn of events! She theorized that it might be some foul disease unearthed by Gilderoy and his acidic agent, finding its way to the surface of the Mighty Matti after thousands of years of prehistoric imprisonment. Rusty, understandably soured by her cheer in the face of our misery, was sure to point out that Cloudstone herself is a Crystal Pony, and remarked that she should show greater concern for her own people and her own health, especially as a learned practitioner of the medical sciences! The grimly grinning mare amiably countered that only those ponies who visited the camp appeared to be affected and that she could find no sign or example whatsoever of contagiousness.

So now I sit in my cabin, scratching out these words in this journal and hoping that a little rest will do me some modicum of good. Yet I find myself ill at ease, for problems abound. To begin, the Aurora Dawn is now twenty meters further from that monstrous crack in the ice. Somehow the anchoring bolts came loose and had to be re-applied. Our chief engineer, Mrs. Bracket, examined the entirety of the anchoring equipment and determined that the fault lay within the anchoring bolts themselves. Indeed, she demonstrated a sample bolt to me, revealing that the screw threads intended to grip the ice had been sheared entirely! She was all afoul with curses and insults that would make the lowliest mongrel of the most crime-laden slums blush, blaming the whole unprofessional affair on the incompetence of the forgers who crafted the bolts in the first place. She promptly replaced them and set the anchors once more.

Yet the mystery deepens. Despite the terrible storm still visible in the distance, in the vicinity of the camp the air is as still as a tomb. Clearly, the weather directly over the Matti Ths Aioniotitas is tamed. That in itself is cause for great confusion and study, for there hasn’t been a weather team to do said taming in the area for as long as the very concept has existed! By all accounts, as Sleekwing has affirmed, the weather here should be as wild as they come. Yet there is no wind. No clouds. No rain, and no snow. Only flat, smooth ice for so many kilometers as the bare equine eye can make out.

Which brings our attention to the above problem once more: the Aurora Dawn moved twenty meters further from the expedition camp. No wind! No navigation from the bridge! The magnificent magi-engines that make this noble vessel a reality have been turned off for nearly twenty-four hours!

By Tirek's blasted horns, how did the ship move?

I suppose I should at the very least be grateful that, of all the possible directions this confoundedness has taken us, it is away from that crack and its incessant ringing.

It would be best that I refocus my attention on why we are out here in this infernal, cold desert. This morning I ordered the pegasi teams to do another sweep of the area, but with a change in tactics. Now they are to stay low and hunt for evidence of these scientific borings Gilderoy and Ms. Eastern Leaves brought up in their individual journals. The idea, proposed by Ms. Sherry of all the unlikeliest ponies, is to follow the pattern of drillings as described to perhaps locate the missing borer teams. We are fortunate enough that within Doctor Cloudstone’s cache of reading materials last night was a detailed statement and description of the intended locations of the boreholes, but even with such a resource it will be a monstrous challenge to the pegasi, sharp-eyed though they may be, to spot what is little more than a small hole in the ice. There is a possibility that the deep depth of these ice extractions combined with the almost unnatural, lovely purity of the ice will make the discrepancy more visible, but I do not have high hopes.

In the meantime, I and a dozen ponies chosen for their calm attitudes and known caution in all things combed across Gilderoy’s camp in an intricately conducted hunt for any further evidence to assist us in our ongoing investigation. The search took up much of the afternoon and was significantly, frustratingly hampered by our collective loathing of that continuous and ever-disturbing ringing – or whistling, as the non-crystalline members of the team describe it.

Our laborious scouring produced fruit. Some papers missed in the initial, admittedly sloppy search have been discovered and brought back to the ship for analysis. I have assigned them to Coxswain, seeing as she has already exhausted her own material. Also discovered in one tent on the edge of camp was a cache of makeshift weapons, clearly put together with whatever materials were readily available. The natural assumption is that the primitive things were meant for use in the mutiny, particularly for the races that lacked more overt natural weapons such as the horrendous yet respectable claws and fangs of the griffons and dogs. However, it cannot be cast aside that these may have been intended more for the purposes of obligatory self-defense, particularly against whatever threat laid waste to the ill-fated camp.

The foul itching continues unabated! Time and time again my hoof runs along the back of my head, expecting to find a lump or feel some heat as in a fever or healing wound, yet there remains an foul nothing. How I would love to uncover evidence of injury, blatant and frightening, if only so that there might be some explanation for this ceaseless torture.

I fear my own capacity for concentration. I shall attempt to lie down. Perhaps a bout of blessed oblivion will allow this deleterious pain to run its due course and leave me in peace!