[Lost Era, year 1001, Underdark.
Since there was no real distinction between day and night underground, keeping exact track of time was difficult. I only remembered that this was our seventh sleep since setting out.
The underground world was quieter than I had imagined. Your only companions were scattered luminous fungi beside the cold, damp rock moss, leaving a faint, elusive scent of earth with you as you traveled.
Besides caverns as vast as plains, with towering rock terraces forming bottomless rifts between them, intricate caves were another indispensable part of the Underdark.
Some connected to one another, while others were dead ends. The connected sections spread in every direction like a spiderweb.
Their winding tunnels often led you to discover that, although an entrance appeared to face south, by the time you emerged, you had already traveled a considerable distance west.
It was hard to tell whether they had been excavated or formed naturally.
But the saying "Every road leads to Sotoma" clearly did not apply here.
These paths branching in every direction were like a box of chocolates: you never knew what flavor awaited at the end of a cave.
Perhaps you would glimpse a Carrion Crawler writhing among a pile of bones—for ordinary adventurers, these things were quite vicious.
They looked like oversized worms. The tentacles on their heads secreted venom, entangling and paralyzing their prey before they bit through its throat to drain its blood. Then they tossed the corpse aside, waiting for underground spores to consume its vitality, and only feasted on the remaining flesh and skin once it had rotted.
Yes, these fellows were surprisingly picky eaters. But when faced with experienced "prey," they could not even complete the first step—
Agile scouts would swiftly circle behind them, into the blind spot their tentacles