POKÉMON MYSTERY DUNGEON: GATES INTO SHADOW

unedited campaign notes
this is very messy and none of this is final

ambur and hazy scout out carson's wagon. it's burnt to shit and missing most of his tools, along with his wishing stone. ambur goes to bed, hazy goes to the café. it's closed. racist pokémon are gathered outside angry about ghost types. hazy eats at the inn instead then also goes to bed. ambur wakes up in the middle of the night to some armored figure searching around their house. they tell it to fuck off and it runs away eastward.

the next morning ambur and hazy meet up outside the café. ambur confronts a racist bellsprout. asks if he doesn't feel embarrassed calling all ghost types bad when there's a grass type crook in town right now. asks whether he'd throw ambur under the bus if a gang of poochyena rolled through. he says yes. ambur calls him a cunt hard enough to knock him across the street. he says he'll file a complaint to the guild. hazy's the current most senior guild member so he takes the complaint and ignores it.

they go into town. breloom and truffle are helping repair the guildhouse. ambur grabs some snacks from the inn. mike n ike are closed for repairs.

they head into old oak. the rock the ghosts threw at them is still there. the path's about the same, crumbling stone lanterns with wiggly flames inside. they're obviously litwick. hazy intimidates one of them. ambur just carries on down the path determined to storm into burnwillow all cool looking. the weird red dog escorts them in and makes ambur feel a lot less cool. can't storm in if you've just been invited all friendly like.

they reach the mansion. it's shifted around a little. the mural seems bigger and the red dragon's eye blinks. carson and strawberry are having tea and seem content to stay. wisp is oblivious to any ghostly attack on pannacotta. bonsly acts suspicious. they intimidate wisp for a bit, then hazy gets pissed and fires ghostly beam at the painting. it screeches and the mansion unfolds. it's a dynamaxed runerigus. wisp is very confused.

bonsly and ninjask are actually phantump and shedinja. they try to distract hazy while he dynamaxes and starts fighting ormendahl. ambur gets wisp to carry carson out of falling rock danger while they haul strawberry out. hue the larvesta-litwick tries to lead the townsfolk away out of danger but ambur stands in his way. the ghost sword flies at them but they bite it out of the air and bury it in the ground. hazy keeps slashing through whatever shield ormendahl puts up. ambur insists the townsfolk stay right there but hue tries to confusion-gaslight them. they darkpulse him pointblank and he collapses against the buried sword. strawberry snaps out of her confusion and a few illusions around town start to falter.

runerigus traps hazy in a shield-bubble with benji and bow. he knocks benji out immediately while flame charging his way out. ormendahl tries to charge at ambur but they dynamax and hit it with darkpulse after darkpulse, breaking through whatever shields it pops up. it tries to call a swarm of litwick at them but hazy freezes them with a foe-hold orb. combined, they both hit it hard enough to explode and send chunks of rock flying across the village. hazy picks up one of the rocks and eats a bit of its soul while ambur goes looking for whatever chunk had the wishing stone. the sword unburies itself and tries to fly at hazy but ambur intercepts it and buries it again. bow runs off in search of the head rock. a swarm of litwick and seedot encroach from outside town as ambur carves the wishing stone out of the rock with their basic bronze explorer team badge. hazy works on melting the sword down with a flamethrower. bow succeeds in whatever they were doing and the rocks start to move again.

the sword wriggles out of hazy's grasp and flees down a path away from town, deeper into the forest. litwick swarm's candlelights start pointing toward where bow had gone. ambur and hazy start running toward it but hazy stops when he feels like his soul's being ripped out. ambur witnesses the runerigus' headstone absorb the flames from all the 90-something litwick, cracks in the rock glowing pink and green. bow is gone, already among the spiritomb's collected souls. dark pulse does nothing. ambur runs back toward town and warns them of what's happening, explaining what hazy felt. they brainstorm solutions but can't find anything. no escape orbs. hazy pulls out the RKS sword and ambur starts examining it. it's got sigils somewhat like entercards that can apparently be rearranged. considering deneb was trying to use it to escape, it's probably coded to warp to star league hq. not much of an escape route. but maybe they can send it back with a little present attached. with wisp's help they douse out a leyline intersection, scooping up a few litwick (including hew) to use as bait. hazy makes sure to take rin along for the ride. they reach the leyline and ambur writes a little note with their cartography kit. "you dropped your sword. with love, the midnight crew"

ambur passes the sword to hazy cause he's got thumbs. he somehow activates it and stabs the spiritomb, with ambur tossing hew into the middle of the leylines as a final piece of bait. it works. ormendahl is now the star league's problem.

they take a moment to rest before ambur tries to find another exit to the dungeon, closer than the one way back at the start. they find one but hazy says it feels weird. they step through the threshold into burnwillow. the real burnwillow. like fifty years after hazy left. meaning it's 950 years in the past. we've fucking time travelled. that's not how it's supposed to work.

there's a little memorial shrine to wisp the hisuian zorua outside town. wisp the "suicune" feels awkward about it. we head into town and meet lady burnwillow who welcomes hazy back. hazy doesn't want to stay. she insists on holding a celebration for his return. a bunch of other talk that ambur doesn't care about. isn't it fun that the recap is from the perspective of the least interesting character? they're offered a room to stay and they go to bed.

wake up in burnwillow, conversation with hazy about whether he wants to stay. he obviously doesn't. wisp is pacing outside, hazy tells her to drop the suicune disguise. she says one of lady burnwillow's friends from the war will be coming to the feast. checking in on carson and strawberry, carson thinks he might stay and strawb's just very confused but trying to take it like a vacation. they head into town for shopping, ambur buys a revival herb and a couple escape orbs, carson tries and fails to barter for some fancy silk. hazy trades some future fruits for weird extinct past berries. the old coins have a falling star design on them that reminds ambur of the star league emblem. they're minted east, past dragonsgrave, where polaris lives, and also the future location of star league hq. someone else remarks that hazy reminds them of a family that used to live here before they all moved out with polaris. also the mountains to the east look bigger in this time period.

polaris shows up for the feast. it's a deoxys.

the gang goes back to the mansion and relaxes for a while before the festivities start.

lady burnwillow gives a speech before the feast about how great it is that wisp and hazy and carson and rin are home. polaris and burnwillow are side by side at the head of the table with ambur and hazy on polaris' side and carson wisp and strawberry on burnwillow's side. burnwillow tries unsuccessfully to reconnect with wisp who is basically her adoptive kid. polaris recognises hazy and has some of his "hisuian" cyndaquil compatriots hand over a family heirloom. it's a sword. he also recognises ambur as an umbreon when no one else here knew what those were. ambur asks him if he knew any other umbreon and he says yes, from before he arrived on this world and turned the tide of the war against the ghost lord skithrix. some explorers, some researchers. ambur says that they're both, and that they're researching mystery dungeons still a thousand years in the future. polaris says that he and his organisation will have to redouble their efforts in mystery dungeon reserach in that case. he asks them what the future is like and they say it's pretty good. less swords around says hazy, besides some fanatics who get kinda weird about them. this gives polaris the idea to limit swords to a select exclusive guard class. oops we might have just invented the star knights. also apparently something in the mountains also came from space?? the feast wraps up. ambur has the chance to ask polaris for any favour he can provide. they don't know what to ask for.

ambur wakes mid sleep and overhears carson and wisp in the adjacent room talking about whether they're staying in burnwillow. carson's keen to leave, wisp is unsure. wisp leaves, and ambur decides they also need a little fresh air, not used to sleeping during the night. wisp sits undisguised until she notices ambur. they talk for a bit about whether to leave or stay. ambur says she's welcome in pannacotta. she's worried about choosing wrong. ambur says everyone chooses wrong sometimes, statistically. they are book-smart not people-smart. re-entering the mansion, lady burnwillow is observing ambur. they lock eyes, she gestures them toward a small study room. she tells them to keep wisp safe, they say sure thing. she gives them a flame scale.

it's morning, they're having breakfast in the main hall. polaris needs to leave early. they give a few enchanted items to the party. ambur gets a cool cloak. hazy gets a power band, carson a luck vest, strawberry a recovery scarf. polaris also gives ambur a badge that looks like an old timey version of the star league ID badge. he leaves through the other path out of burnwillow, through the dragonsgrave mountains. lady accompanies the crew to the dungeon entrance, which seems to have shifted a little? wisp is coming with them. lady says wisp will know how to reach her in the future. they say their goodbyes and all step through.

whatever they did with ormendahl has kinda broken the seal on the dungeon's shape. the path is different, and chunks of town are randomly appearing well before they reach the real fake burnwillow. they stop to serch for carson's stolen goods but don't find any. they eventually navigate to the stairs back to the first floor. it's again very reorganised, no pattern to the empty lamps strewn about. they reach a fork in the road, ambur mapping things out, finding that the shorter path is crawling with seedot and nuzleaf and maybe some fire types, while the longer path still also leads to that big tree clearing they ran through the first time around.

they decide to go through the clearing. better the known danger than the unknown danger. the seedot seem intimidated by wisp's vulpix disguise. a nuzleaf hops down in front of ambur, they stare it down, and ask polite yet firm to simply pass through without disturbance. they succeed, and manage to reach the exit. ambur voices worry about whether they'll even get back to the present, strawberry tells them not to Manifest bad things, ambur says Manifesting is stupid and Manifests what if the inn burned down, strawberry bonks them on the head. they step back through like a week after they left. they walk and talk all the way back to town. strawberry goes to the inn while they head up to the guild tower to meet with cinni (who is finally out of bed) and rigatoni and meringue. they update guildmaster on a few things then talk more out of earshot so he doesn't need to worry about Learning too much and being a liability. turns out cinni didn't actually offer the wishing stone to breloom as payment for his help, breloom either just assumed as such or they made it sound like that was the discussion because they're generally sleazy. cinni also talks shit about wisp because she tried to hypno them to stay in the dungeon while she was under ormendahl's control. wisp and carson stay at the inn.

hazy's gonna go check on the café first thing next session. ambur's just gonna go to bed.

ambur goes home to spend the evening reading then sleeping through noon the next day, while hazy checks in on the café. it is still closed but turmeric's outside and says that lavender was waiting for hazy to come back and give the all clear before reopening. they talk a bit, eric's still worried about chip acting shadowy, also a bunch of people just left town as soon as the roads cleared up. hazy spends the rest of the night weeding his overgrown garden.

next day, hazy goes to the café and finds it open though nowhere near as busy as it used to be. chip and eric are outside, chip standing guard in case anyone wants to start trouble. he goes inside and chats with lavender. talking about myths and legends, lavender's been around here for a loooong time and things used to be a little weirder, but also recently is maybe the weirdest they've been. hazy can't actually read their menu because it's in cursive and he still hasn't learned modern writing systems.

ambur wakes up at noon and goes around the town square. mike and ike are like entirely out of supplies, shallot is frazzled because most of his staff left. construction has started on carson's new wagon. mars asks ambur to deliver some mail and packages to licorice because he's really busy sorting through the months of backlog he's just received. ambur does exactly that, licorice says he hasn't been able to do much with the mouldy book they left behind but they did reach out to their contact in nori and they said they'll try their best (and do it for free). ambur tries doing a little research on the star league's history after having met polaris in the past, but can't find much besides what's basically a borderline propagandistic brochure. turns out the star league lab facility is like, part of a whole town called moonstone, out east beyond dragonsgrave. they also pick up a map of nori while at the library.

ambur heads to the café to relay the info to hazy and lay out their plan to head to nori and get gumdrop to clean up the book. eric also comes over after a bit and they talk with him about a couple things. him and chip came from soda springs and were called to pannacotta by giri in nori, but they're not in any hurry to go back there so they're not gonna accompany them to nori. he's still worried about chip, but he's glad that things have kinda gotten better in that regard. ambur calls their relationship cute and eric gets awkward and leaves.

ambur ends up massively oversleeping. hazy goes to meringue to talk about their team rank and meringue admits they're supposed to be gold rank, and offers him their new badges, then takes them back after getting the idea to make more of an event out of it for town morale. hazy goes to talk to strawberry about it (accidentally catching sight of eric and chip cuddling in one of the rooms. ambur was right all along) and she says to talk to cinnamin about it too. wisp is hanging out with the breloom and telling him about the mysterious history of nori. hazy casually drops info about the breloom's less than heroic past and he gets awkward and leaves. hazy also offers to take wisp to lavender's café since she doesn't know about it.

they go there and lavender immediately sees through wisp's vulpix disguise and treats her very very nicely as hazy talks to lavender about the rank up celebration.

ambur wakes up way after the town's kinda started falling asleep so they don't bother heading out, just doing some midnight reading and research. a shadow passes over the moon and they climb onto their roof to investigate. the shadow lugia is flying overhead seeming to search for something. its red eye focuses on them for a moment as it sweeps over emmental, then dives into the dungeon at black forest. hazy got fucking blazed and missed the whole thing.

the next day ambur wakes up to the celebration they had no idea about. hazy fills them in on their promotion then starts talking about the weird pirate dream he was having all night. in the middle of his explanation of what the fuck a devil fruit is, chip interrupts and congratulates them on getting gold rank, explaining that him and eric would be technically under their authority when doing a multi team excursion. they all go grab some breakfast at lavender's little café stall, then sitting with wisp and eric as they talk about the history of nori.

cinnamin and rigatoni are being very loud on stage and without very much rhythm. eventually meringue calls them up on stage, giving a little speech and preparing to hand out the gold badges. hazy is actively toking it up on stage. ambur, already a little wigged out before the crowd, spots a clefable way at the back and just stares wide-eyed. he meets their gaze and smirks, interrupting his conversation with a bellsprout farmer to duck away behind the inn. ambur dives off the stage and chases after him, barely missing tackling him as he tries to raise an RKS sword but still interrupting his escape.

it's syr orion and he wants to be a little more diplomatic than deneb and rigel were. he explains the rest of the star league wants to take more drastic action against them but he thinks he can convince ambur to hand over the wishing stones peacefully. ambur tells him to go fuck himself, they know the star league's been stalking their house at night. hazy shows up as orion tells them he'll be in nori if they want to talk -- but deneb is also in nori, taking some anger leave after the spiritomb incident. he teleports out. ambur swipes at the swirl on the ground as chip also shows up. they just want to be left alone. they explain the stalking to hazy.

they return to the celebration, trying their best to enjoy the rest of it.

tomorrow, they'll start heading into the black forest, taking wisp and team dirtbag along for the ride. might also check in on shallot and his farm.

hazy goes to see shallot first thing the next day. dungeon's still open but the shed's still standing strong around the entrance. hazy pays shallot to watch his plants while he's out in nori. ambur drops off one of the two wishing stones they're still carrying with carson and takes the other one along in their bag. they also grab the umbreon's diary from licorice.

team midnight crew meets at the café and has a brief conversation about writing systems, hazy still has trouble reading footprint runes and especially can't read more abstract and stylised forms like scrawled handwriting or fancy cursive. they head to the guild tower and ask meringue for payment again, he explains they're still waiting for funding through the nori guild after all the repairs they had to pay for, but he can pay them out of his own pocket. they get 800poké, a couple orbs, some blast seeds, and a wonder gummi.

they head to the inn to pick up wisp and team dirtbag, with ambur buying some food supplies for the trip also. wisp is talking about burnwillow mansion and carl is very interested. they all head out toward the forest, the trip is uneventful. they stop at the hot springs because wisp is very curious, they all briefly wonder if the heat is coming from a mystery dungeon instead of any geothermal activity. ambur takes the opportunity to check on the swirl at the top. it's much more defined, someone's been through here again multiple times since they last checked. there's also a shiny half buried under the silt.

they try to dive in after it but almost drown. hazy chomps down a watmel berry he got from burnwillow and dives in gracefully, spending a full minute or two down at the bottom of the topmost deepest tier of the hot springs. the swirl is carved into the rock from repeated reopenings of the dungeon. there's also some large clawprints and a little ditch from something approximately lugia-sized resting at the bottom repeatedly for the past like six months. he digs up a bunch of coins and also the shiny thing. it's a cobalt blue entercard with a silver star.

ambur lays out the set of four they now have and speculates on where they could lead. it's definitely not the same symbols as the RKS sword so it won't lead to the star league. the silver wing is a symbol often associated with lugia, and the red/gold swirl is a general mystery dungeon leyline symbol. carl says he's seen it before too. they put them all away again and they head into the dungeon.

black forest dungeon is fully back to normal, so ambur and carl get super lost since they're still used to its previous spider apocalypse vibes. after a lot of wandering they stumble on a blue door.

astra the farigiraf steps through a blue door into stax's 7/11. he's been tasked with finding some fault in the mystery dungeon network by his boss, a genesect. stax recognises him even though they've never met before and asks him what happened to the umbreon and typhlosion and where the sword he promised to retrieve is. astra futuresights the RKS-01 sword and bullshits his way through the convo, saying it's in a safe spot right now and they'll get it to stax soon.

the extended midnight crew walks into all this as astra pulls a poryphone from inside his "hood", snapping a photo of stax to post to social media but finding he's got no signal in here. stax gets a little upset but greets ambur and hazy, then calls carl over to pay off his debt. carl slams a bag of coin onto the counter then retreats back to the door.

ambur and astra have a very confused conversation. astra's from neo kobe city, in the future. ambur can't read most of the labels in the store but astra can. they go over different writing systems again, adding in astra's future letters. they go over all the store's junk. there's a buster sword, rocket armor fit for a mewtwo, weird goggles, spamton shades, an armband labeled "pipe bomb", weird cards with a D on them, some comic books that look a lot like the weird pirate dream hazy was having.. hazy barters for another watmel berry, giving away a couple orbs and some blast seeds in exchange for the berry, a couple potion sprays, the pipe bomb band and some CD bagels.

astra prepares to say goodbye but steps back through the blue door into black forest dungeon. guess he's joining the team!

carl says his goodbyes amid the crew talking about timelines and nonlinearity, satisfied having paid his debt to stax and not caring at all about whether they're meeting the porygon in the right order or not. with a clearer mind and without carl there giving bad advice, ambur finds the way much easier. they take a little break for food while astra explains what a Phone is and what the Internet is. they find the dungeon exit eventually but are accosted by the revived ariados and a couple spinarak. hazy, after dealing with a mouthful of string shot, hyperbeams it to near death and they all just fuck off, leaving the team alone even when they trip all the web traps in front of the exit.

out of the dungeon at the edge of the forest, astra seems a little confused by the bright noon light and ambur calls for them to camp out just behind the treeline where there's shade. wisp doesn't sleep. wisp never sleeps. astra keeps watch initially, with ambur and hazy tagging in later. it's midnight by the time they wake up, they briefly consider looking for a mystery dungeon shortcut but ambur decides that it's better to take a longer known path than trying to find an unknown shorter path. they start walking across the flat grassland plains, wisp lamenting that they used to be farmland before the ghostlord wars. hazy's gardening knowledge says the soil is poisoned from the ghosts' scorched earth policy. astra goes wait huh GHOSTS and pulls out a silph scope type thing which starts pinging two signals right next to him. wisp and hazy are half ghost, dhari gets spooked for a moment but they chill out about it.

astra talks some more about the future after seeing that the moon is still in one piece right now. he pulls out his phone and shows a photo of the night sky, with half the moon smeared across the sky in a trail of moondust. there's a lot of umbreon in the future too, but he doesn't seem to know about other eeveelutions. ambur explains that environment can have a big effect on mutations in eevee's unstable genetics, and if astra's future doesn't have many trees it'd make sense there's no leafeon. but an excess of umbreon over anything else doesn't make any sense -- the conditions for umbreon and espeon are identical, the only difference is sunlight vs moonlight, so it'd still have to be like 50/50 right?

the morning sun starts rising over the horizon and astra freaks. his future is perpetual night, he's never seen the sun before. wisp remarks that lady burnwillow has something to do with the sun.

astra also talks about beedrill fossils, which puts ambur in a funk realising that the species they know right now, the friends they have right now, might all die out in the future. minor existential crisis. astra puts on some fucking vaporwave while they walk further.

it gets to noon, they're still half a day out from mallow town, so they camp out again, setting up the tent only for shade from the sun. astra doesn't seem that bothered by the heat though, the environment feeling kinda natural to him. he keeps watch for the first hours of rest.

about halfway through his watch a furret and nidoran step out looking at him all weird. after determining that he's not a tree and realising that he's not from around here they try to fleece him for some "payment" by making up a local custom about leaving a gift to the pokémon whose territory you're passing through. astra can't see wisp anywhere. he offers some wasabi peas, the poison type likes them but still demands money. astra pulls out his phone and pulls up his $MEOWTH wallet which only confuses them further. a red-white suicune stalks the grass behind them, astra spots it and obliviously calls out hello, making wisp just drop the stealth and march out in front of them, scaring the two thieves off. she reverts back to her vulpix disguise and astra learns she's got disguises.

they wake up ambur and hazy, deciding it's better to move the camp rather than risk the furret and nido having backup.

ambur lays on astra's back as they walk. they run into a lotad in the road who expresses concern about them being out alone wandering the path through the plains late at night. his name is tortilla. with just a little hestiation they follow him to his place of rest, the remnants of a basement to a house that no longer exists. he asks for ten coins a head, and despite the hefty charge for just a few hours' stay, they all pay up, dropping the gold in the lotad's rain dish. out here in the middle of nowhere you kinda have to charge a little more.

they leave in the middle of the night with the lotad missing. wisp, still awake and having kept watch the whole time, says he didn't do anything, just wander around a little. they shrug it off and leave, continuing down the path to mallow.

they run into the furret and nidoran again, this time harrassing and attempting to rob a familiar bellsprout, one that had been very mean to the café ghosts and had left town pretty soon after. the team just decide to not intervene until the nido mentions their boss, and after some intimidation from dhari he coughs up the name tortilla. the lotad's a mob boss. they tell the pair to fuck off cause their boss already got paid today, and hazy hands the furret his huge bag of granola. they also offer to accompany the bellsprout to mallow town as long as he keeps quiet, but he just has to run his mouth about untrustworhty dark types, so they leave him in the dirt.

mallow town is smaller than pannacotta, only four main buildings and a few scattered houses, around a crossroad connecting pannacotta, nori, vanilla and lone lodge. they check in at the inn staffed by a wooper, securing a room for two days and some breakfast, with astra asking if they serve torchic nuggets before realising that fresh baked bread and jam made with real fruits is way better.

they check out the kecleon shop, run by a black and white pair called licorice and mint. pokémon are allowed to share names i guess sure. ambur buys a blow dart gun and a couple darts and grabs all of hazy's seeds. a bellsprout checks in at the inn while they're shopping.

curious to see if they have a map of local dungeon shortcuts, ambur heads into the town hall, finding a victreebel behind the desk talking with a goomy called jujube, who runs a local guide business that's been disrupted by a lot of unstable dungeons popping up lately. ambur offers team midnight crew's services to help some of jujube's customers across the marsh, as well as delivering a letter to the goomy's brother in nori, in exchange for payment, and he accepts. they'll meet back here tomorrow.

they head to the inn for the day.

after a quick breakfast, the midnight crew meet up with jujube and his clients, a pair of blitzle named salt and pepper. the gang jokes about potential kecleon shop names like ketchup & mustard and pb & jay as they head out of town in the opposite direction they need to be travelling in, because the closest entrance to cola marsh dungeon is actually to the south.

they hop into the dungeon. it's muddy and wet and foggy and horrible. ambur gets to mapping their way through, though most of the forks in the road are technical dead ends -- the water's too deep to go any further down them. they have to cross some slightly deep muddy sludge occasionally too, with ambur hopping up on astra's back the first time.

the second time though, they spot some black fins poking out of the water, and after multiple failed attempts at amicable communication, they decide to just head forward, not wanting to start a fight themselves. the marshtomp certainly do want to start a fight though, the three of them making a muddy wave that leaves ambur drowning for most of the fight until wisp rescues them. hazy cuts through the wave with his sword though, then stabs one of the marshtomp, grabs it by the jaw, and slams it against another marshtomp, while the third gets plucked out of the water by astra's gravity control, twinbeamed at point blank range, then thrown back into the water just a few feet away. they wisely decide to retreat after that, and the gang crosses over to the other side, with ambur and astra both using up their healing moves to recover from almost drowning.

the path forward continues in a mostly straightforward way with lots of split paths leading to deepwater dead ends -- until one of those dead ends actually has a boardwalk bridge crossing it, fractally replicating boards and posts a little scattershot but still clearly a solid enough path. after checking in with salt and pepper that the carts can go over that bridge just fine, they decide to go ahead and take the path, finding it branches out a little more than the muddy swamp floor path did, with one such fork in the road leading directly into the misty walls of the dungeon. astra spots lights beyond the semitranslucent wall, so the gang pushes forward into the fog.

the lights are a building, single-storey, with an orchard directly behind -- surrounded by a fence lined with ghost-warding talismans. a sign outside written in standard footprint runes identifies it as the "tea time inn". the party does need a rest so they head inside, ambur leading the way. it's staffed by a vileplume, a roserade, and three gloom. due to hazy and astra's size the main party is gonna have to rest in the front hall, but salt & pepper can have a room for themselves. astra asks about torchic nuggets and ambur very quickly corrects and asks about the orchard, wondering if they offer fresh fruit and jams and fritters. they do! it's a really nice feast for the whole party -- except hazy who prefers veggies, munching on a raw onion from his bag.

one of the inn staff remarks on the blitzles' carts outside, and when asked if they've seen any of the previous couriers who've come through here, they answer affirmatively and say they offered some of their cargo as payment. ambur finds that kinda suspicious so asks wisp if she'll keep watch on the carts -- her just not ever needing to sleep being a very convenient excuse for her staying awake to do that.

she is already asleep though. in fact so is astra, neck like a felled tree in the middle of the hall. salt & pepper already went to their rooms after eating just a little -- and hazy didn't eat any of the fruit. ambur dozes off while the vileplume questions hazy on why he didn't eat any of their offerings, and their insistence that he try at least one fritter makes him extremely suspicious -- so he pulls out a heal orb and flashes it at the party, lifting the sleep status the food had inflicted. drugged food, a common bandit trick.

after a brief moment of panic the vileplume flees and ambur and astra chase after it, with hazy going to find salt & pepper in their room and wisp staying to watch the carts. the blitzle are also awake again thanks to the heal orb considering them part of the party, so hazy helps guide them out to wisp, then runs back in saying he'll burn the inn down. barely a second later the entire side of the building explodes.

simultaneously, ambur and astra arrive at the back room of the inn, full of stolen supplies from robbed couriers and housing all five of the inn staff. ambur immediately throw a blinker seed, hitting the roserade square in the face and blinding most of the gloom, who in their panic flood the room with sleep powder. astra's out cold again, but ambur holds out and attempts to interrogate them as to where the previous couriers are, and on receiving no answer, throws a blast seed at the vileplume.

turns out pollen is incredbily flammable. the room lights up, and a second later half the wall is missing, and most of the ghost-warding talismans along with it. hazy arrives and notices astra knocked out, ambur crumpled in a heap, and the grass types attempting to limp away. hazy looms over one of them and questions where the couriers are, with the gloom desperately explaining that they had to keep the ghosts in the orchard happy in exchange for all that delicious fruit.

the orchard is full of trevenant. they've been feeding pokémon to the trees. hazy enraged kicks the roserade into the orchard, then flames on and sprints in to try and find any survivors to rescue. ambur meanwhile feeds astra a revival herb, who upon hearing about the situation switches out for dhari and sprints in after hazy. ambur scarfs down a couple oran berries and follows them.

with all the sealing talismans broken, the trevenant are starting to escape -- save for one who stays in place, surrounded by recently disturbed dirt. hazy and ambur and dhari hit it with three simultaneous attacks, then as dhari lifts it using psychic ambur digs at the dirt underneath, finding an emolga and two bidoof. hazy begins eating the trevenant's ghostly essence while dhari psychically squeezes it, making its roots squirm and desperately wrap around both the bidoof's throats. ambur Bites at one root managing to free one bidoof but the other is lifting too high for them to reach, and as the trevenants' ghost drains the wood is solidifying, choking the bidoof tighter. ambur asks hazy to stop and hazy lets go, while dhari switches his psychic focus to the bidoof, managing to pop him out like a cork, then holding him while sprinting to the courier carts like a footballer.

that does mean he let go of the tree though, letting it fall on top of ambur while they're trying to drag the bidoof and emolga out from the crater the roots left. hazy, landing, manages to brace the tree on his shoulders long enough that ambur can drag the two unconscious pokémon out, before dropping it back down and finishing his ghostly meal. they carry the pokémon back to the rest of the party, dump them in the carts, then tell salt & pepper to fucking book it -- the trees are out and this dungeon is gonna get a lot less friendly.

having gotten absolutely zero rest but needing to keep moving to avoid the trees, ambur suggests that the party take shifts hauling the carts -- salt volunteers to keep going while pepper rests, and hazy drags the other cart along as ambur climbs in and dozes off.

after a few hours of wandering, hazy feels a dungeon gateway somewhere nearby, while astra gets a ping on his phone. it's a text, illegibly garbled and glitchy, random ascii characters with random diacritics. the phone also picks up two wi-fi signals -- one incredibly strong, its name consisting of the same garbled text, and another weak signal labeled with a string of alchemical and astrological symbols.

heading further, they find the gateway -- a hole in a hollowed-out tree trunk, flickering like a cracked screen. they wake ambur up and ambur suggests astra stick his head in like a periscope, but the portal tries pulling him all the way in until hazy drags his ass back out. torn between their job protecting the couriers and their curiosity as a mystery dungeon researcher, ambur dives through, telling the rest of the party that they'll send a note back if it's safe. hazy pulls out an hourglass, saying they'll come in after ambur if they don't hear anything by the time the sand runs out.

ambur ends up in the clouds, a second sun burning in the sky, with footsteps in the distance -- and a skeletal kabutops occasionally flashing into view in the corner of their eye. they try tracking the footsteps, but stop when they notice wisp and astra following them through the portal, unable to wait even five minutes. ambur tells them to wait by the portal, and astra listens, but wisp disguises herself even smaller and sneaks behind the umbreon.

ambur tracks down the footsteps, finding a charmander and bulbasaur, decked out in rescue team equipment. or is it a squirtle and cubone? pikachu and eevee? it changes every time ambur blinks. they ask what's going on, and the rescue team tells them to get out dummy, the end of the world is coming. ambur remembers the story of the young rescue team, their ascent up the heavens, their quest to convince the great sky dragon to halt a meteor.

they turn to run back, noticing the jumpluff sneaking behind them and instinctively bapping it with their tail -- it immediately poofs back into wisp's undisguised zoroark form, they tell her to fucking run. the flame scale ambur got from lady burnwillow feels hot in their bag as they hear a roar from high above. running back to the portal, ambur yells at astra to jump through, then stops and waits by it for wisp, who is lagging behind. a beam fires from the top of sky tower and hits the second sun as ambur pulls out the flame scale and examines it, feeling protected from the wave of heat. wisp trips a distance away from the portal, and ambur goes to help her out, her shifting to a vulpix to become easier to carry.

they sprint to the portal, but it flickers closed as they try to jump through. they see the skeletal kabutops again.

hazy watches astra come barrelling back through the portal before it flickers closed. then a skeletal ghost appears above the log, and ambur and wisp come tumbling out of the darkness, fur singed but otherwise looking fine.

they continue looking for the dungeon's actual exit while ambur recounts the story, and speculates that they ended up in the story, rather than anywhere "real", since small details like the species of the two heroes kept changing. astra checks his phone and the glitchy wi-fi signal is gone, but the other weak signal remains.

astra uses his future tech support know-how to poke around the second weak wi-fi signal, finding it belongs to the star league. a lot of files are encrypted to a degree that you'd have to have physical access to the star league internal system to unlock, but some have only weak security measures, if at all. mostly it's internal communications about resource requests, shipments of glass, copper, aluminum, all very pure and refined, orbs and other dungeon supplies, complaints about reliance on nori's industry, etc -- but some have more juicy info, like discussions of the RKS system discs and their connection to leylines allowing for miniaturisation of entercard tech and of requirements for vacuum-tight parts and of a "ghost incident" that they learned a lot from (oops). eventually astra loses connection, not due to a security lockout but just due to losing wi-fi signal.

he relays this info to ambur and they start discussing it very loudly and very openly in front of their clients, who very reasonably get a little weird about it and ask how and why we are discussing confidential star league info -- especially considering their shipment is to nori, the town the star league does most of its industry in. ambur slightly threatens to leave them in the dungeon, which freaks them out more while hazy explains that the star league have kinda been dicks to us in the past. that only worries the zebstrika a little more, the star league are good guys why would they be mean to you? ambur, still frazzled from witnessing the collapse of sky tower and the end of the world, presents the not at all helpful hypothetical of "we are dangerous criminals but we are still helping you get to where you need to be so who gives a shit now shut up and let me figure out where we are"

ambur stares at the very unhelpful map for a few moments, then stares directly up into the sky with wide manic eyes and suddenly sees everything, they see the leylines intersect and cross they see the flow of the soul of the world pulsing and thrumming and they burst into a full speed sprint diving around corners and barrelling down hallways and crashing directly through the dungeon's exit gateway. the rest of the party manages to follow their tracks and leaves the dungeon to find them sitting in the middle of the path staring up at the sky, and when asked what's going on they start rambling about leylines and worldsouls and it's all coming down it's all collapsing somewhere everywhere at any second millions of worlds are dying and billions are being created anew and-- astra shoves them into one of the carts and tells them to rest. ambur refuses, scribbling rambling nonsense notes that they absolutely will not be able to understand tomorrow morning.

the party rests up, with ambur's sleep and wake delayed by a couple hours thanks to their manic note-taking. wisp asks astra if he can see the city, the old fort as she remembers it, but all astra can see is the smoke of industry. eventually they get close enough to see the city walls -- nori is a modern town built on top of an old fortification, ruins of old walls among current style houses. the industrial sector is to the north, on the far side of the city. stationed at every entrance into nori are golurk guards bearing the star league's insignia -- with two more guarding the entrance to nori's local guildhall.

they accompany the zebras to just outside the guildhall, receiving payment and letting them cart their shipment off to the metal guild, while astra and hazy carry the bidoof and emolga into the rescue guild. ambur rings the bell at the front but a mudkip and torchic team say there's no one running the desk, then go to call a medic seeing the still KOd pokémon. they tell team midnight crew they should go to mustard at the fishing guild for their reward money -- the bidoof went missing a while ago while egg the emolga was escorting them. nori guild is massively understaffed, with only three "teams", counting egg as his own solo team. the star knights help out with some jobs here and there too but they're terrible at rescue work. they used to have a lot more teams but they got lost in unstable dungeons and went missing. they go get astra his own gold team badge since midnight crew is adopting him as part of the team, plus one spare extra badge in case wisp wants to formally join. they discuss how pannacotta's doing, explaining they found chipotle but he's not gonna come back to nori for a while, he's still resting up and recovering. team hot cross buns is not here either, they went off to dragonsgrave to deal with the shadow pokémon and never returned.

they notice wisp is gone but carry on to the fishing guild anyway, explaining to mustard the bibarel that the bidoof are safe and getting medical care at the guildhall. he gives them money and some smoked fish. they meet wisp again outside who says she's been looking around to see if any landmarks she remembers from the old fort are still here. they see a couple star knights escorting some kind of white puffball pokémon into the guildhall.

they stop by the kecleon shop (bon & bonne's) and grab a couple supplies. wisp is sure they're being watched. astra checks his phone and sees that being in the dungeon charged his battery a little bit. of course it did that's star league tech.

they walk to the library, noticing there's a star knight stationed outside the guildhall now in addition to the pair of golurk. it's syr rigel. at the library they meet gumdrop the goodra, presenting her with the letters from licorice and jujube, and with the umbreon diary. she says she'll do her best but it'll take a week, and in exchange they have to make a delivery back to jujube. while at the library, astra researches ghosts (some cool info on trevenant, spiritomb, and a weird ghost dragon that's the namesake for dragonsgrave), hazy demonstrates his knowledge of unown script (gumdrop will have to hire him for some translation work at some point), and ambur looks into whether there's any more mystery dungeon info here (nothing that they haven't already read). they also research the star league's history some more, finding some really fancily printed books with fine paper pages and crisp printed letters, and some very clear non-illustrated images. star league has modern type printers and photography. most that they glean is polaris is still alive. an older style and probably less propagandistic book says the star league used to basically just be moonstone town's local guild, but they expanded out across the entire continent and split off into the r&d side (star labs) and the militaristic side (star knights)

resting up at the lighthouse inn (getting two separate rooms because none of them are big enough to fit astra and hazy Together), waking up around noon the next day and getting no response knocking on wisp and astra's door. guess they're still sleeping! not much to do besides wait around town for gumdrop to finish her restoration work on the umbreon diary so ambur and hazy are probably just gonna look around the guild for posted jobs to pass the time.

there's a bunch of star knights sat around a table in the inn's front hall and they wave us down uh oh. midnight crew sits with them and listens to their whole spiel, cola marsh dungeon is comprehensively Fucked after we unleashed a swarm of trevenant and they gotta deal with it. they want our help. ambur chews them out for being dicks, embarrasses syr orion by pointing out how him skulking in the crowd at our badge ceremony and stalking outside ambur's house at night is very weird, goes off on syr rigel for busting through some guy's house in pursuit of his Noble Mission, and doesn't say anything to syr bela cause we don't know her at all yet. syr orion begs for our help. ambur says Pay The Fuck Up. give me So much money. and i will consider it. orion reluctantly agrees.

team midnight crew will meet with rigel and bela at the gate in an hour, but in the meantime they check on astra and wisp again. knocking again gives no response. hazy opens the door and ambur feels a weird ghostly aura that feels like wisp. there's a note on the bed, written in old unown. wisp wrote it. says her and astra are off to do their own thing around town, and will hopefully be back before this note is found. no luck on that. some letters are in bold though, and after playing eye spy out the lighthouse window at the lone ruined pillar standing out in the foggy bay, part of the old nori fortress wall, hazy anagrams it out to spell "GHOST TOWER". okay guess we'll check that out if they're not back by the time we're back.

wandering through town, stopping in front of the guild to observe some commotion -- apparently some strange armed-and-dangerous pink pokémon showed up, and the guild and the league are bickering for who gets to Claim them as part of their own ranks. anyway we go meet up with the knights at the town gate and start heading out toward cola marsh again. ambur quizzes rigel on how the swords and their entercard tech works, curious how the arrangement of symbols corresponds to a location coordinate, especially considering they already have four entercards in their pocket. rigel says the swords are only coded for a small set of locations and he doesn't really know the nitty gritty of how the symbols work. also ambur just keeps passively being mean to him. for good reason.

they camp out just outside the marsh, ambur keeping watch first (spotting that burned-up pirate airship floating out to sea along the opposite coast of sashimi bay), followed by hazy (spotting some light off in the distance toward moonstone/dragonsgrave flying up toward a lone star and disappearing). a quick breakfast later, we're right outside the dungeon entrance, discussing how to deal with all these fucking trees. ambur suggests Fire before remembering it's a peat bog mystery dungeon and will probably be burning forever if we light a bunch of shit on fire. hazy suggests eating the ghosts. probably a better plan. we dive in

after a brief discussion about the pirate ship (nori will probably be fine if they do head that way) they dive in to the dungeon, ambur mapping out their path through while bela douses for points of interest with her sword. there's two fixed points the sword keeps locking on to, plus a moving target somewhere else. we talk a bunch of shit, hazy "joking" about time travel and about meeting star league founder Polaris. bela uses gravity control to keep everyone from sinking into the swamp muck.

they spot an upturned barge out in the swamp water off to the side, hazy pops a slip seed and just walks on the water and hoists it up out of there. a few barrels and crates also bob up out of the water now that they're no longer pinned under the barge. we pile everything up on to it then ride it out across the water, shortcutting to one of the fixed points. investigating the crates and barrels: one has some type of Liquid inside, we'd need a tap to get it out. two barrels full of onions, a crate of apples, a crate of lemons, a crate of gardening/tree care equipment -- that one feels Suspicious, and as hazy takes it all out ambur spots a false bottom. hazy rips it out and uncovers a hidden compartment, hiding a fancy ornate box, holding a rather plain looking wooden bracelet. ambur tries it on to see if it has any Effect but nothing happens.

those fucking marshtomp show up again and throw a wave of muddy water at us. ambur darkpulse distracts one of them while the rest dodge, then tries to flashbang them with a blinker seed but it misses and just plunks into the water. bela tries to gravity lift them out of the water, hazy blasts them with ghostfire, rigel fires a moonblast, but we all get overwhelmed with another mud wave anyway. ambur has the bright idea to throw a crate into the water as a target platform for the seed to actually hit, but rigel's stubby arms are not up to the task. bela goes for another gravity control, creating a well that draws both the marshtomp in as well as a small Sphere of mud water, and ambur tries another blast seed (i can't miss, i have Gravity on my side!) and misses.

hazy fires a hyper beam. the blinker seed explodes. the blast seed explodes. one marshtomp is instantly knocked out, the other flails uselessly in the gravity sphere, trying to escape. the well collapses after a minute and they make a break for it, but rigel tries to shoot them while they're retreating -- and misses, hitting a tree that splashes down and creates a wave that gets them out of there even faster.

ambur puts the mysterious bracelet away again and after clearing out all the mud and water from the barge they carry on along the water, eventually reaching the wooden boardwalk that leads to the bandit inn.

they head toward the inn, bela and rigel securing the area and clearing out the rubble while ambur and hazy investigate the rooms still standing. there's someone sneaking around one of the rooms. it's a poltchageist. very confused, very lost, clearly newly awoken. probably either a victim or one of the former owners. ambur offers to let it tag along with them while it figures itself out, but it's content to stay wandering the rooms for now.

bela and rigel return to the inn's front entrance with a bunch of the wood scraps from the blown-out side of the inn, and we grab the crates from the barge to build a makeshift little fort out there. ambur sneaks across to the fence to snatch up one of the ghost-warding talismans, examining it, while hazy discusses a plan of action with the star knights. there were about a dozen trees, and there's eight of them still in the orchard. it was their haunting ground, it's where most of them were "born" from the souls of the buried-alive, so it's the place they'll naturally return to.

after initially planning to simply replicate the talisman's design on paper, ambur remembers what they read in that book on ghosts and realises the design doesn't really matter, moreso the power, intent, and faith placed into the talisman, and the amount of effort and will imbued into its creation. pencil and paper talismans won't last very long, but carving into wood with hazy's ghostfire might be enough power and effort that we can rebuild the "fence" just by placing down a bunch of marked posts.

it takes a while but eventually the broken portion of the binding-circle is filled in with those new fenceposts, unown-script warding messages carved into each plank and imbued with hazy's ghostly power. the other four trees will return here Eventually, but it's better to go hunt them down ahead of time, so they'll go and do that, after a rest.

ambur takes first watch. atop a stack of crates they watch the boardwalk fizz, splitting into inch-cubes and reforming in a new pattern. a skeletal kabutops walks down the fractal-shifting path. no, a square mass of void. no, a towering white monolith. no, something else entirely. the water changes hue around it -- purple dotted with lilypads, pale blue with little branch-roots, green and foamy -- the boardwalk made of different types of wood with each plank.

it's approaching the inn. it's going to reshape the dungeon. it's going to break the fence.

ambur hops down from their makeshift watchtower and politely asks it to leave. it speaks to them. sings to them, sad. ambur says their friends are going to be in danger if it comes any closer. it... acknowledges. a black void with piercing red-white eyes, a diagonal cross of golden light, and it's gone. ambur sits, staring up at where the tower had been, until hazy wakes up for his shift. they go to bed. hazy notices four pawprints burned into the wood of the boardwalk, and below it a circle of swamp-water entirely clear of dirt and silt. he doesn't spot anything else for the rest of the night.

bela stays behind at the inn ruins while ambur, hazy and rigel head off in search of the last four trees, hazy using his latent talents as an ex ghost hunter to sniff them out. rigel is very impatient and floats the idea of just entirely deforesting the entire dungeon, ambur says that's a bad idea -- even if all the trees will magically come back thanks to the dungeon's status-quo inertia, the damage to its ecosystem will have far-reaching effects. there are still consequences, even in mystery dungeons.

rigel spots a croconaw floating in the swamp muck but it disappears immediately, and ambur talks him out of picking a fight with it, since there are probably far worse things lurking under the surface.

eventually they happen upon a little hut, surrounded by four ghosty trees. ambur hazy and rigel immediately hit one with a combo dark pulse infernal parade and moonblast, almost taking it out in one shot. hazy hits it again and takes it all the way out while ambur flashbangs the other three with a blinker seed -- but they shrug it off, and inflict hazy and rigel with THE DRYAD'S CURSE. rigel wildly swings his sword while ambur slaps a blast seed directly against a tree trunk, tanking the splash damage. hazy charges up a (now grass type) hyper beam and tells rigel to dodge -- rigel falls flat on his face and immediately gets succ'd by a tree -- as hazy fires a fucking timber railgun and annihilates two more trevenant. the last remaining tree gets the fuck out of there but ambur hazy and rigel snipe it down.

they haul the temporarily inert wood out into a little pile in front of the hut, and hazy waits for the curse to wear off so he can begin his ghostly mukbang, while ambur scopes out the hut. it's only recently been abandoned, with flowery scents still lingering, and a pot of mystery stew still lukewarm. the roserade and gloom from the fake inn were hiding here, and they might eventually return. once all the evil spirits have been successfully vored, they put all the heads in a little pile, and ambur writes a little note for whenever the inn bandits show up again. "CLEANED UP YOUR MESS. DON'T DO THIS AGAIN. HOPE WE NEVER MEET."

they head back toward the inn's ruins, reuniting with bela, who passed the time fishing some flat rocks out of the swamp muck with her gravity powers, and carving them with entercard-like symbols, in order to create an easy escape orb type exit. she says she'll stay behind here and gives rigel some paperwork to hand off at the guild to begin the formal process of setting up a little outpost here in this dungeon. she also says they should take the poltchageist out with them, so hazy goes to talk to it, while ambur observes the enterstones curiously.

hazy talks ghost stuff with the poltchageist, helping convince them to tag along for the moment while they decide what to do with their new unlife.

ambur quizzes bela on how the enterstones work, examining the spiral symbols carved onto three of the four rocks. it's a permanent fixture, unlike the temporary constructs of entercards, designed for regular reuse. it works as an escape orb, in the same way an escape orb does, by teleporting you to its own same coordinate and creating a feedback loop of dungeon energy that slingshots you back to whatever doorway you entered into the dungeonspace through. ambur secretly scribbles down a bunch of notes.

bela stays behind to help set up the inn as a proper outpost while ambur, hazy, rigel and the ghost step onto the stones and get launched back out of the dungeon, beginning the hike back towards nori. it takes a day and a half, nothing really happens along the way.

there are even more golurk guarding the streets once they return. rigel immediately heads off to the star league regional HQ to drop off all the paperwork pertaining to their new outpost, while ambur and hazy head to the rescue guild house in search of orion. egg the emolga greets them at the desk, briefly hopeful that they're new recruits or transfers, before they remind him that they rescued him from the dungeon.

orion's upstairs in the records office, looking through logs of all the teams that passed through nori. so many of them have gone missing. midnight crew relays all the info to him, he says he'll send mini off to meet bela with some supplies. hazy almost mentions the ghost tower but ambur keeps him quiet.

they check in on the library, gumdrop is overworked as always but promises she'll get the book cleaned up in a few days. she's been getting a lot of requests for books on mystery dungeon phenomena from concerned townsfolk who have lost their friends to the dungeons, and all of the relevant books have been sequestered by the star league -- including one book she remembers by the same author as the diary ambur brought in, that was requested by a deoxys many years ago and never returned...

they take another look at the job board, and hazy finally decides to scoop up all of the jobs pertaining to rescue teams that got lost in the plains to the south. ambur's unsure if they're really going to be able to succeed where so many other teams failed, hazy says they're pretty experienced by now, and that it also never hurts to try.

after leaving a message at the lighthouse inn in case wisp & astra come back looking for them, ambur & hazy head into the guildhouse to drop the poltchageist off momentarily, offering them up as a temporary intern while they go off on their rescue mission. once they're done they'll take them along to pannacotta to meet lavender & violet at the café.

they head up to the guild dorms to rest up, sleep schedule mildly fucked from mystery dungeon time dilation. after an hour or two, they're woken up by a whiny eldegoss, prodding them with a sheathed starknight sword. that's giri, the guildmaster! he's a cunt. he complains about them sleeping in the middle of the day, ambur reminds him they're nocturnal. what about hazy? hazy's the bed. he demands to know why they didn't register with him immediately upon arriving in town, they say they're just passing through & don't actually work for him, no matter what the hierarchy says. he whines about them talking back to him & threatens to kick them out, hazy reminds him they're the only hope he currently has to get all his missing teams back. after a lot more impotent whining that team midnight crew just shrugs off, he leaves, without bothering to close the door. dick.

later in the evening they check at the front desk again -- it's sriracha this time, the torchic. ambur asks for a map of the plains with known dungeon entrances marked, but the map they're given is full of question marks and unsure scrawls of unstable and unconfirmed entrances. it's still useful for finding patterns though. hazy asks about the missing teams. basil the riolu & fennel the bulbasaur, ramune the squirtle & ciabatta the meowth. cool.

they head off out of town, passing by farmers tending to the wheat fields, then out past where the farmland ends and untamed unstable plains begin. they pass close by one of the known, stable dungeon entrances, but hazy says it keeps blipping in and out of his radar. they steer clear of it.

that croconaw they spotted earlier seems to be stalking them. it's never looking at them, but it keeps popping up in the middle-distance. as long as it doesn't pick a fight with them, they're not gonna pick a fight with it. they take a rest around midday, entirely uneventful.

heading for a cluster of dungeon entrances further south, they aim for the stable entrance right at its center, but find themselves caught entirely off guard by an entrance sweeping by under their paws. they fall in, everything suddenly shifting around them. the space feels ill, as if there's something deeply wrong with this dungeon, patches of sandy beach cutting swaths across the fields of dead grass.

with no idea where to start looking, ambur just starts wandering. there are very few signs of life, the usually well-worn paths showing very little of the disturbance or erosion that regular foot traffic would cause. they spend a few hours walking in the same direction overall, discussing back and forth about what might be causing this, what might have happened -- hazy thinks the dungeon is dying in some way, ambur thinks it's overflowing and breaking its banks, and both of them agree the star league has something to do with it.

they stop for lunch, but as hazy's mid bite on chomping his onions a golisopod bursts out of the beachfront water and socks him in the back of the head. it's clouded in shadow aura, eyes bright red. their wishing stones start feeling weird, ambur feeling that staticky feeling you get right before lightning's about to strike, so they quickly drop their bag on the sand to cut contact with the stone. hazy wrestles the golisopod as ambur fires beams indiscriminately, but it immediately darts for their discarded bag, which ambur quickly scoops up again as hazy fucking suplex-pins the bug against grassy ground. grass becomes sand and the golisopod wriggles free, tanking a couple infernal parades as hazy's parting shot.

ambur looks inside their bag to examine the wishing stone. it's flickering and sparking weirdly, covered in the same type of pixelmush static as the weird missingno pillar that approached the inn ruins a few nights ago. they poke it.

the umbreon is suddenly fucking kaiju size, ears brushing at the ceiling of the dungeon, sending out a dark pulse shockwave that knocks the wind out of hazy. some kind of extremely powerful presence pings from the east, and elsewhere in the dungeon a black hole draws in all the energy that it can. they drop the stone and collapse on the sand, taking a nap, briefly noticing the flame scale also flickering with that same static.

hazy scoops them up and tries to escape orb, knowing that everything in the dungeon knows exactly where they are now, but the orb doesn't work. it's missing its sparkle. the hole ate it. so hazy just fucking runs, a KOd umbreon in his arms.

a roaring moon cuts through the grass walls trying to get them as they run away, but hazy successfully flees, throwing everything off their trail, until they happen across a long disused cook-fire. hazy lights it and sets ambur back down, letting them rest for a minute.

they wake up again shortly, and hazy describes what he saw, with ambur sketching out his description and concluding it's some weird fucking salamence. they agree that they need to keep moving, but don't know where exactly they should go, besides maybe trying to find that weird hole. none of their orbs work any more.

they get moving again, maneuvering around a sleeping snorlax. ambur spots two pairs of eyes observing them from within the grass and meets their gaze directly, flashing their exploration team badge. a shinx and a nidorina walk out, with their own badges carved out of wood. they introduce themselves as jolt and curaçao, and offer to lead them to the town of hope.

the other team seems to know their way around the dungeon instinctively, leading them to a stairway, and explaining that we all need to step through together or else the dungeon will separate us. hazy just scoops up the other three and steps through himself.

it's a ramshackle town, huts built of packed dirt and driftwood, barely stable mostly by virtue of being inhabited. a very elderly kecleon mans the shop, a zangoose naps nearby... a graymuzzle riolu steps out to greet the newcomers, introducing himself as basil. an ivysaur, fennel, joins him. they both have very scuffed silver-rank badges. they say they've been here for decades.

ambur insists there HAS to be a way out, cause considering any other outcome is basically equivalent to accepting suicide -- then they briefly lose their fucking mind spotting a kabutops near the back of the crowd, realising it's the living version of the weird ghostly glitch-fossil that rescued them from the collapsing sky tower. oh, time is REALLY bad here.

hazy has an idea. he thinks they need to go in the hole. jolt says they should go see ciabatta about that. ambur insists they get some rest though, still frazzled. the novice-rank team leads them to an empty house -- it used to be the snorlax's. jolt's coat briefly fizzes with that same pixel static.

the next morning they go around town asking for ciabatta. she's out on some mission. we chat with the town guard, a zangoose. he mentions The Dragon and ambur pulls out the sketch they made of the weird crescent-moon salamence. yeah that's the one. he asks if they have any games. hazy pulls out his hourglass, ambur roots around in their bag and pulls out the entercards, before hurriedly putting them away again.

hazy goes to help a couple miltank out with their garden while ambur goes home to experiment with the cards, remembering the way bela put some together to act as an escape orb. they get interrupted by jolt and curaçao again, talking about how cool it was that they became giant. ambur tells them not to talk about it, and explains how the star league is looking for those wishing stones, and how the star league's experiments are probably the entire reason they've lived their whole lives in this fucked up dungeon. they promise to tell some cool stories whenever ciabatta comes back to town, though.

back home, they lay the cards down on the ground and try to press them together in different configurations. every time they feel like they're close to any kind of discovery, they also feel like they're close to doing something horribly wrong, the red-white leyline energy of a magnagate coursing between the four cards, but failing to latch onto anything in the dungeon besides the Hole, and the distant pull from all the way in dragonsgrave. this dungeon doesn't have a leyline running through it -- but it's not just missing, it's been taken. and considering the connection to dragonsgrave, it's a safe bet that the star league did it.

feeling like something is going horribly wrong, hazy rushes back to their temporary home, kicking open the door and finding ambur hunched over the entercards, almost crying. they were so close to having all the answers, so close to decoding the umbreon's diary, so close to perfectly understanding just how these things work, knowledge which would have been extremely useful if they ever got stuck in a dungeon with no other way out. hazy gives them a hug.

time passes. they meet more townsfolk, including a flutter mane called sherry. she's got a sworn rivalry with The Dragon. it feels like it's mostly a performance. there's also an amaura. time is bad here. about half the residents have been doing that weird glitchy pixel-fizz too.

it's another few days before ciabatta returns. hazy's helping out with the gardening again, and ambur's taken up doodling on their cartography kit, doing figure studies of the village residents. the meowth is standing on the shoulders of a 10 foot tall blastoise -- ramune, former squirtle, ciabatta's partner. all the townsfolk gather around expectantly, but ramune ushers the midnight crew into their home and shuts the door.

they've been at the Hole for the past few hours/weeks. they call it the Nexus. time moves like a black hole, as you approach the center it slips by faster and faster, days passing in the village for each hour you spend near the nexus. apparently there's a sword stuck into the ground at the center of it. probably another one of those RKS swords.

ambur lays the entercards down on the table and explains what they've been hoping to accomplish. ciabatta doesn't know much about those, besides that they're a star league thing. ramune thinks ambur's got something more in their pockets. with a little reluctance but with the assurance that neither team is affiliated with the star league, ambur dumps out the entire contents of their bag, in order to reveal the wishing stone without touching it directly. as it hits the table, the dungeon-detritus wood planks it's constructed of turn violently purple and start crackling with weird dungeon energy. hazy scoops the wishing stone up with his gardening trowel, and explains he's got two more of the things in his bag. the flame scale is also glowing a little weird, but not as bad as last time they checked.

ciabatta and ramune ask what the Fuck those stones are, ambur explains half of it: they make us grow kaiju size. they're also surprised at the flame scale, cause according to them it's a piece of a legendary. (volcarona's a legendary?) all their other enchanted items have a faint glow too -- their convert cloak, hazy's power band, the plain wooden bracelet.

they discuss more concrete plans, ambur explains their theory for why the dungeon's fucked up -- it's had its "heart" surgically removed. the central leyline has been diverted to dragonsgrave, and the sword stabbed into the center of the nexus is probably the lynchpin for it all. ciabatta disagrees with just running to the sword and plucking it out, worried it'd collapse the entire dungeon. also the description she gives for the sword sounds nothing like an RKS sword -- it's bright neon pink, crackling with energy, covered in stars, with a white-gold hilt.

after a little back and forth ciabatta proposes a theory that maybe the wishing stone can reactivate one of the dormant exits they've found, and that it'd be worth testing that before they go tearing out the sword that might be holding the entire dungeon together. hazy disagrees but ambur decides to roll with it cause they don't really have anything better.

they go to sherry for help. her amaura friend, gelato, is still napping but hazy offers to carry them. we head out, ambur noticing that they're being stalked by the couple of dreepy that had been hanging around their temporary house earlier. later, they spot red eyes and flashes of blue and black amid the grass, and ask the others to quiet down so they can keep an ear out for whoever's tracking them.

they reach a bottleneck leading out into a clearing, and ambur asks hazy to set gelato down and take the lead, and single-file (hazy, then gelato then sherry then ambur) they walk through the narrow path.

two luxray jump out of the grass on opposite ends of the path, pincering them. ambur and sherry tag team one of them, hitting it with darkpulses and moonblasts, with ambur managing to poison it before it flashbangs them and runs -- mostly spooked by hazy having immediately fucking hyperbeamed the one in front of him and leaving nothing but a smoldering hole in the dungeon wall and a patch of sand-turned-glass. gelato is fucking shellshocked.

they keep moving.

ambur remarks on how weird it is that the dungeon seems to have variable weather -- going from calm cozy summer day to cloudy windy early spring. gelato doesn't get why it isn't normal. dungeons change to reflect their surroundings, no? ambur says they generally just extend a snapshot of a single moment into infinite space and time. gelato asks about when a town is built over a dungeon and the dungeon starts having townstuff in it. ambur explains that for a pokémon to observe that kind of change from within a dungeon, they'd have to be in there long enough that they'd likely go mad, considering the different flow of time, and just how long it takes for an empty field to become a full-fledged town.

gelato asks how a field could be empty if it's full of grass. ambur shows her an empty page on their cartography kit. she says okay but grass isn't empty empty, it's full of cool rocks and stuff! look there's some cool rocks here.

she goes digging around in a patch of grass, finding some interestingly shaped rocks, a stripped-bare berry bush, and some weird goggles. ambur can't read the writing on them, but hazy can -- it's like ancient unown script, but cleaner, more angular and sharp, like the text on astra's weird device. it says SILPH. gelato wears them and notices that sherry and hazy glow weirdly purple, but ambur doesn't. cool, it's a ghost detector. hazy takes a minute to work his gardening skills on that berry bush, digging it up and working to prune it in hopes it'll recover and yield more fruit eventually.

travelling further, they arrive at the gateway. on one side, a gnarled tree, and on the other side a pillar of rock encrusted with sea-salt, both floating slightly off the ground, both partially shattered, as if frozen in the instant after an impact. between them, Nothing. an empty space of no light and no colour, of blinding light and strobing colour. it's a voidspace, incomprehensible to normal vision, unconscious mindstatic filling in the visual gap in spacetime. that strange pixel-fuzz rolls in waves across that void, flat against its surface but clearly Separate by virtue of existing where the void does not.

using hazy's trowel, they scoop ambur's wishing stone out of their bag. the void reacts to its presence, the strobing empty static writhing as they push it closer. it hurts to look at for more than a second, like staring into the clear blue summer sky. ambur urges hazy to push closer. the trowel touches the void, then so does the stone.

the trowel disintegrates, melting into pixels and static that explode backward into the void, but the stone remains in place, stuck firm against the gap's surface. five pillars of violet chrome pierce through the ground and beyond the ceiling as the emptiness fills in with pure magenta light, a beacon taller than the dungeonspace should allow. hazy, having been in contact with the trowel in contact with the stone in contact with the void, perceives a presence older than the world, one that was never alive, one that can never die, staring back at him.

he feels like something very bad is about to happen. so he makes it worse. reaching out with his bare paw he grabs the wishing stone.

vivid pink turns to blinding white, as bright as the sun, as a shockwave expands the clearing by a hundred feet in all directions, turning each surrounding patch of sand to glass and lighting each surrounding patch of grass on fire. sherry's shield, though lasting barely a split-second, fortunately left her and gelato simply unconscious, rather than atomized. ambur is still standing, seemingly by virtue of the flame scale, which had burned a hole through their bag, now resting on the glass floor and smoldering. hazy, apparently, just fucking tanked it. the bush he's been carrying also magically survives.

the empty void is back, smaller than before, and flickering unhealthily. the tree and rock are blasted even worse, and the five pillars are reduced to just one. hazy pulls his arm back and looks at the wishing stone. it's dead.

ambur takes it from him, and tries to call upon its power. nothing. desperate for any result, they clink it against the one remaining pillar of indigo chrome.

it's only a second, but ambur spends an eternity, feeling this strange otherworldly presence, older than the world, never living never dying, flicking through the pages of their mind like a book it cannot read. from the blinding pink light, six eyes stare back.

whenever they manage to snap back awake, they simply lay down on the ground. their rings, previously a healthy golden yellow, now carry an odd undercurrent of pink.

hazy uses a revival herb to wake sherry, and the moment she comes to, a draconic roar sounds out from nearby. the weird salamence found them, thanks to that fucking beacon they just lit. hazy scoops up ambur and gelato, and they book it.