The Lava Plains of Monusius Kraktorum

First Slide

After haggling for passage aboard a dirigible airship from the local inhabitants, I sailed idly through a pleasing sunny day. We skirted the edges of the Sulphur Pits of Sekkwash Tloop and sailed through the skies high above any dangerous volcanic activity in the area. The local airship sailors, no doubt used to the dizzying heights that we were carousing from, were causing some of my traveling companions a joyful unease (joyful for the sailors and not for my companions, I assure you), prancing around the edges of the ship and swinging from the rigging ropes to one another to converse as if nothing were safest in the world than being hung by one's thumbs at a two thousand feet above ground.

Suddenly, a great explosion shook the air and ripped through our conversations, making even the sailors forget any casual remarks they had been trading. A blast from one of the volcanos had started an enormous lava flow down into the plains below. My companions were terrified and shook in their boots at the thought of a stray "magma bomb" that might rip through the delicate shell of our balloon, dooming us to the dizzying heights and the furnace below! I also had some dubious moments in regards to our safety. But, after speaking the captain, I was reassured that this was a fairly known occurrence for these well traveled souls and he suggested even lowering the ship over part of the plains, taking all safe precautions to stay well clear of the mouth of the volcano of course, so that we might observe the formation of a new "glass field" below. These, he explained to me, were caused by the lava cooling after a period of time into a black, smooth, and shiny glossy black stone that would appear most beautifully to us above.

My fellow readers, for you I endured.

Approaching the hellish inferno below, I admit that I did quake a touch in my shoes. Of course, I had just journeyed from the Sulphur Pits, but looking at a lava field from close up gives one serious new thoughts about one's mortality! Ah! But how beautiful...I stared in wonder like a child playing with a lit candle to pool beautiful statues of creation that entertain for hours on end. What energy! What greatness lay before me - the continuing creation of this planet that I was on - the cycle that kept all planets in perpetual balance and breathed new life, even as it destroyed.

One can easily see the bent waves of light from the extreme heat; the liquid rock at it's hottest point as it emerges from the interior of the planet, foul and fair alike. Great rushing sounds of air surrounded us and our dirigible was jostled by these great winds. Our captain, adept at these situations, made sure to continue hovering at the right distance and place so as not to float too close to anything that would endanger us.

The sweat poured off of me as I leaned slightly over, with incredible trepidation, to take these photographs. One can easily discern in this first picture that the quagmire below has no easily discernible features yet, and the great swathes of light red pulsed with patches of yellow and only a few darker patches of cooling rock almost too faint for the eye to recognize at first glance! Like a great impressionist painting, the landscape lay before me, it's new form unfolding beneath my eyes.

Onwards to the next slide....

- Traveling Uncle Nat. :)

02/06/00