User blog comment:Void Samukai/Tenelapis/@comment-32153758-20150609003209/@comment-11135771-20150612185030

The fleet moves on. The water now is only a small amount deeper, but significantly colder thanks to the lack of geothermal sources in this region. Presumably, this is the reason that there seem to be very few fish here apart from the occasional lone specimens of various species. The Scanners' sonar detect that the seabed here is much more uneven, with several slender rock pillars reaching up from the floor nearly to only a few dozen metres below the surface of the water.

As the ships move farther to the southeast, the pillars grow in number, becoming fairly dense. They are short enough however that most of them do not obstruct the ships' movement, especially with the water getting steadily deeper. The ones that do present a problem are easily avoided.

A strange phenomenon begins to appear around this area however - a sort of quiet, low buzzing sound from below the surface which can barely be detected by normal ears, but is quite noticeable to the Scanners, doubly so because it partially disrupts their sonar. The sound intensifies as the group continues on, and as they do so, another unusual feature is noticed. Despite the disruption of their sonar, the Scanners are still able to make out the fact that there are what appear to be huge lumps of metal stuck to the sides of the underwater pillars. These appear to be the source of the noise, which would now be clearly audible even to human ears above the surface.

OOC: Five hours in now. The fleet has travelled around 4100 kilometres from Vent Beta. The ocean floor is highly uneven now and contains many rock pillars similar to stalagmites, which nearly reach the surface. These have giant chunks of metal attached to them, which are emitting some kind of weird buzzing sound.