Early Saturday morning our guild mistress Elshiendra invited me to go exploring in the unfinished Caverns of Time in Taranis with Shinytoaster and Yan, a Canadian friend who controlled Swifty's account.
I will leave the details of that event for Elsh to describe, as this post is not about that. Instead, I have a story of what happened after the event finished and everyone else had left.
I decided to stay behind in the caverns and explore further. If you haven't been there before or seen screenshots, it's a massive dungeon that is roughly snail shaped, with three (inactive) instance portals branching off from a central area at the bottom. The best parts of it is the open sky, which allows you to see the stars, moving asteroids and spectacular energy effects. I was exploring and moving back up to the beginning of the area, I noticed one side of the dungeon tunnel was open and that you could move out onto a ledge overlooking the stars. Down below the ledge was ... nothing... Just endless space. I stepped out onto the ledge and I intended to take a few pictures there and then move on. But, as fate happened, I got too close to the edge and stumbled over into the abyss!
Startled, I looked upwards quickly as I fell like a rock and watched the bottom of the instance expand and then fade into the distance as I tumbled into a massive chamber. Not too long after I slipped, I slammed into the ground a great distance below with a bloody crunch and died, about 2000 feet under the instance.
The ground was not really the ground, since didn't have any texture and was transparent. It was like I was lying on a great pane of glass, as I could view myself from underneath my body. I was outdoors and the sun was there and was shinning down brightly on me. The chamber had few features other than being massive, however there were vague shadows of hills in the distance and, of course, the outline of the instance floor far above me.
I rez'ed as my ghost at the graveyard outside Gadgetzan and immediately decided to make my way back to the Caverns to see if I could find my body so I could explore along the bottom.
After a bit of effort, I was able to make my way back to the ledge where I had slipped off. I positioned myself the best I could to where I thought my body was and then leaped into the void again.
Falling, I watched as the instance disappeared above and I fell again into the deep into the chamber. However, instead of slamming into the ground where my body was, my ghost barreled through the glass barrier and flew even deeper down than before!
I did not see my body as I flew past, nor did I see and pop-up with a chance to rez myself. Suddenly, the chamber changed, gone was the sun and below me, about 1000 feet down was a swirling vortex of clouds. Above me, about an equal distance, was another swirling vortex. I was falling, endlessly and eternally, inside this chamber. For a about 10 seconds, I waited for the inevitable impact with the ground below. But it never came! I just fell ... and fell ... and fell ... But then something happened – a message appeared on my screen. It told me I had changed my zone and entered a different area of Taranis. However, there was nothing to see – just the same vortex above me and below me. Minute or two later, the zone changed again. And then again another minute later. Puzzled, I brought up the map and to my surprise I found I was traveling through Azeroth as I fell! Even through I was falling vertically, my body was moving horizontally in a arc through Taranis. During the 15 minutes that I experienced the free-fall, my body traveled a grand circuit that took me through the Taranis and parts of the Uno'Goro Crater.
Even more interesting was the fact that I entered periods of being underwater. When the arc swung me close to the shore of Taranis, I would be plunged into DEEP water and would stay there, suspended and bobbing. Like the chamber, there was nothing see here... the water extended forever above me and below me. I was not in danger of drowning and my air meter did not appear, obviously due to me being dead. I found in these areas I could swim. However, I could only swim horizontally in a straight line and could not go up vertically or diagonally. If I swam back to shore, I re-entered the vortex and again began falling and moving through the world. Going the opposite way, I could swim out from the shore and go to the depths of the ocean but at that point the fatigue meter appeared.
With that discovery, I realized how to escape from the free-fall. I was a little worried about how to leave – I considered logging out and seeing where I would be when I returned. But after swimming to the depths and seeing the fatigue meter, the answer was clear. I would go there and let my breath run out and "die" again as my ghost and be sent back to the Gadgetzan graveyard to be rez'ed by the spirit healer. Yes, you can "die" again if you are already dead, a feature they added to stop people from exploring deep water with their ghosts.
So I did just that, got my corporeal flesh back and with my feet planted on solid ground again, yelled, "I'm back, baby!"
Thus concludes my adventure. I hope you will consider trying it for yourselves. I'd be happy to give tours and Elsh and Shinytoast also know the method of accessing the Caverns, so feel free to ask them too.
Silverwind
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