User blog comment:Void Samukai/Tenelapis/@comment-32153758-20150609003209/@comment-11135771-20150610175442

The fleet sets off from Vent Alpha, the ocean in this region shallow and warm. Shortly after departure, one of the Scanners detects a massive seismic disturbance in the stone ceiling above. The rock shakes for several minutes as whatever it is moves through the ceiling, sending waves of dust and stone fragments down into the ocean. After a while, the shaking subsides, and the Scanner loses track of the signature. Computed estimates suggested that whatever caused the disturbance was roughly cylindrical, between 600 to 1400 metres in length and 30 to 120 metres in diameter.

As the ships sail on, they are surrounded by shoals of small fish which appear to be inquisitive but not aggressive. They are around 50 centimetres in length and appear to be more-or-less normal by Earth standards, save for being completely white in colouration and having dimly glowing filaments trailing off their fins. The fish begin to thin out as the fleet moves farther from the vent and the sea gets deeper and colder, disappearing entirely after three hours' travel.

OOC: I decided to do this in more of a part-by-part format since it's such a long trip - this way I'll just give you a few paragraphs at a time and you can decide what the fleet does between each post, whether you want to investigate a particular thing more, move on, change course, et cetera.