Chrysalis

To purify the fifth’s mana is an absurd idea, a comical suggestion. It’s impossible, everyone knows it’s impossible, and not because we haven’t tried, or made half-hearted attempts. Hundreds and thousands have died, enough resources to bankrupt an empire have been spent, over several attempts, some by individual empires, some by conglomerates of several major powers.

All have been unsuccessful. Not only unsuccessful, but unmitigated disasters. Even when these efforts managed to gain a foothold, they were eventually snuffed out, unable to hold their ground against the unrelenting pressure placed upon them by the fifth. The monsters there will not abide any change to the environment, which is itself a horrifying ordeal to overcome.

Then, there are the Krath tribes, roving bands of sadistic killers, who will unleash unspeakable torment on any they capture, breaking the will of would-be invaders and sending them running back to the safety of the fourth. Against these factors, purifying the fifth has become nothing more than a dream within a dream.

Yet, when the great ant spoke of it, I couldn’t help but have hope.

- From the private notes of Rathwyn Werilos, Mage of the Tower

I have to say, the fifth, despite everything I’ve heard about it… really sucks. I hate it here. I can’t believe even the mucus-ridden toxi-snails actually enjoy living here. Take a vacation in the fourth rather than trying to melt my face off, maybe you’ll

to feed the wuffers. After all, they’re helpless little things, unable to fight at all, every drop of evolutionary potential and energy was required to

flow of contained ‘goop’, aka fifth stratum mana, to feed to our happily chuffing wuffers. The answer the carvers came up with was a sweet track system. Each section slots into the

work and versatile enough that only a little shaping is required to smooth out the ground before we can lay down the track. The end result is that we can easily expand the formation as the clean mana extends further

engineering

The second they do, they come screaming out of the shadows, twisted with

we have an overwhelming force. With myself and the three amigos present, we’re easily able to outpunch the local riffraff. What makes it difficult is the atmosphere of the fifth. I can endure it for a while, but I’m a little different than the

but that’s no defence against the omni-present acid. Every time he so much as sticks a finger outside the slowly expanding bubble of clean mana, he has to snatch his hand back as it begins to sizzle. Even Crinis has a hard time. Her flesh… shadow… I mean… is it even flesh anymore? Whatever. It’s a lot of things, but it ain’t that durable, so if it's exposed to the acidic atmosphere,

the atmosphere for even a few seconds, he might lose a limb. Thankfully, he’s the one who is the least likely to suffer, since, as a master mage, he doesn’t need to go anywhere near

push back the monsters before they can reach the rest of my family. Every now and again, I duck into