Face-down in the sand (and terribly bored by it, but that is the price of such demonstrations) Gaja is all smiles. This is not a perfect result—she would prefer to be wrong and the tribe safe, really—but it is the one she expected when she set the plan. She will not be like Laiser, giving what no one else can but holding her gifts hostage. And she will not be like the pharaohs, eliciting obedience through fear. Her father, despite his mistakes, led by inspiring followers, by making his decisions obviously right. To do that here, she will need to show the Stone Lizards what has gone wrong. And so she smiles, because now, not only does she know, as she expected, that the "strange priests" are not performing their duties, so does the tribe.

  So she spends the day singing her prayers into the sand. It muffles her voice, but of course, only because she allows it—and only at first. Throughout the day, that voice grows in reach and clarity until she can be heard singing from one end of the ruins to another and a mile beyond. She praises the sun and solicits the rain, asks the stones to find her worthy and join her in song; there are few specific hymns that are called for without a shaman to lead them, so she is very soon on to the history of her own tribe. And then, in some hours more, she tells her own tales, composing as she goes. By now, the entire plain is blanketed with impossible stories of dark magic, eternal youth, the feel of the ocean beneath her feet, even (she promised) the song that had been stolen from her by a king with a thousand faces. It is not loud. She does not shout. It simply comes from all directions at once.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:49, Sun 21 June 2020.

As the day continues, out of the ruins, movement.

A countersong begins to develop. It's lovely and matches Gaja's melody perfectly, and seems to be emanating from the ruins. This continues for a short time, the song dancing around her melody in a toneless call, getting closer until the singer steps from the last bit of building and is clearly visible in the mid day son.

It is a huge avian form, with at least a 12 foot wingspan. It looking like a vulture only with two heads and a hugely misshapen, bloated body and powerful muscular legs. It doesn't fly so much as hop, a furious flattering of wings allowing it to make extended leaps before it gradually falls to the ground. The feathers on it's body are mismatched and missing in places. It's hard to tell, but it might have fur on it's body around its legs.

No less then three heads are atop its form - one giant beaked form with pupilless milky eyes that you are reasonably certain cannot see. On either side, though asymmetrical, two much smaller bird heads without eyes at all call out the songs that Gaja has been hearing for the past few minutes, strangely beautiful despite the ugly horror of the thing.

Despite being apparently sightless, the thing seems to be heading straight for Gaja, perhaps tracking by sound as it turns and corrects it's clumsy but surprisingly distant leaps and rapidly makes it's way towards Gaja. Its claws and beak look like quite effective weapons, even if the

From the haunting, beautiful tune, a single word cuts the music: "FORBIDDEN" in howlertongue. The creature seems unintelligent. It is hard to tell if this some imprinted word from the corrupting magics of the place, or if it's somehow overheard the words of the howlers and priests of the desert.

Either way, it intones this in an accusatory manner and continues its assault. At least you have some disstance.

This is a misbegotten creature and is not considered a natural denizen of the desert or an natural animal of any kind. It is unintelligent despite it's vocal abilities.
AC: 6 Move: 60’ flying leap
Hit Dice: 6 Save: 15+
Morale: 8 Effort: 2

This thing is quite distant and will have to take a full round moving before it's in range to really threaten you. You have initiative, since you are Godbound.
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:57, Sun 21 June 2020.

  "Aha! Finally, a sign of life!" crows Gaja, rising smoothly from her knees. She watches its movements for a few seconds, growing rapidly uncomfortable with what she sees. Eventually, with a disgusted shake of her head, she stomps hard with one foot, and a line of hand drums, all in different sizes, rises out of the sand behind her. She skips back over them, each one beginning to sounds a rhythm once she touches it, until she is far enough back to maneuver without crossing the line she set for herself. There, with an entire warsong playing on drums with no drummers, she plants both feet firmly.

 TRESPASSER, STRANGER, she howls back at the bird. "Do not tell me where I must not go, thing that should not be! You have no home, and I will send you back to it!" And then she waits. She just... waits. She listens quietly, and she makes no move until the beast nears the spot where she had been praying.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:56, Sun 21 June 2020.

The creature does indeed leave the forbidden area, leaping and clawing and pecking at high rate towards Gaja's general direction.

Despite her silence, the creature leaps right at Gaja, overshooting where she was "praying" and immediately leaping back towards her second line.

23:01, Today: GM, on behalf of Gaja, rolled 15 using 1d20 ((15)).

As the creature approached, the foul reek of the being assaulted Gaja's nose. The thing seemed to ooze wrongness, and she felt a deep, powerful urge to rid the natural world of it. This was no trained guardian, or even an understandable wild animal, it was a thing of twised magic that should not be.

The song was beautiful and horrifying, wordless music turned toneless as Gaja's song faded, turned to a cacophony of perfect high notes that just eluded any choral progression or pattern. It seemed to promise salvation, just out of reach, but always remained a lie.

Gaja, of course, had perfect pitch even before she'd awakened into her new powers. Now, she knew the hidden depths of subsonics and the unspoken heights of high frequency sounds (some of claire's weapon systems made these), and as she listened to the bizarre sounds, and watched the creature's smaller heads sing and spin, she realized that the songs were not songs, they were a tracking system. The creature was using sound to find her! Simple silence would not save her, though there was an obvious solution to help deal with the creature.

Good news, bad news. Bad news, the creature is still coming after you, and it's closed the distance so that it can attack next round. Good news: you've figured out that it's song is an echo-location system: it uses sound to track you.

  The temptation to overwhelm the thing with brute force nearly wins. It feels so easy—she can already hear its heartbeat, smell the steam of it's breath. It doesn't belong here, and here belongs to her. But that would be just strange, frightening magic to any tribespeople who might be watching her. Until they understand the communion she holds with the spirits, it's best to stay intelligible. She pulls herself into the coquettish Receiving stance she learned from the concubines in the pyramid, as the ghidra-bird rushes at her.

  But none of that means she can't use her mastery in subtler ways. Even as she settles into position, she vanishes, but not from sight. No, the monster's song flows around her, now, and rebounds only from the same at her back. Invisibly, at the same time, a cooperative zephyr races off to one side, repeating the highest notes of the bird's song right back to it. Gaja had been awestruck the first time after her transformation that she encountered bats, and the attention she paid, then, pays off now.

  As the monster approaches, she opens her arms to embrace its charge, and its bloodlust makes it hers by right. When it turns to chase another woman, she reaches out to take her due, but her heart isn't in it. To be fair, it's even uglier up close, and the style does require some sincerity to use.

03:35, Today: Gaja rolled 14,5 using 1d20+6+6,1d8+3 with rolls of 2;2.  A Kiss Like Poison
A terrible miss!

The thing leaps back out of Gaja's range with surprising agility, somehow sensing the supernatural power in Gaja's blows.

It makes a number of small circling leaps and continues it's bizarre sounds, probing Gaja's stances for weaknesses.

Your turn again, but this turn it's at around a 40 yard range.

  Ah, that's when the Howler finally begins to take this beast seriously. Distorting it's hearing is not perfect cover. That's actually frightening, and she stiffens unintentionally at the thought, but not because of the beast itself. It's still just a warm-up. But if it can find her without eyes, without ears, without any useful kind of scent to chase... It suggests she may be more closely tied to the ancient ruins than she knows what to do with. It paralyzes her with uncertainty for a short time before it gives her an idea, just as the bird begins to close again. The monster has learned to trespass, then? In that case, she will be the guardian.

  "You have no place here," she intones, low and threatening, and crouches the same way. She burrows her fingers into the sand at her feet, and raises her voice again, giving up on misdirection entirely. A sudden strong breeze kicks sand over her back and whips her hair forward. "You do not belong in this land! I AM this land!"

  FORBIDDEN

  It isn't Gaja who utters it like a warcry. It isn't even her voice. When the beast moves in to attack, the wind suddenly becomes a howling torrent of force that carries the word, itself. A great spray of debris sweeps up from behind her and rolls over her and the bird-creature both. Visibility turns poor all around the monster, even on its terms, as the shrieking dust devil feeds it's hunting notes back to it in utter chaos, and the power it followed back to her surrounds it completely. Biting arcs of sand scour it from every direction, tearing out feathers and grinding down its beaks. So much for remaining intelligible: where Gaja had stood her ground, the spot is empty. The drums play on, faster.

I will find a way to obviate this mutant. You can't stop me; this is Godbound!
Specifically, I'm actually skipping a round to let it close distance, then using a miracle to emulate Flesh Of Shifting Sands. Gaja is briefly immune to nonmagical weapons and any physical piercing or cutting. She can use unarmed attacks and gifts only. Such as:

13:34, Today: Gaja rolled 27,6 using 1d20+12,1d8+3 ((15,3)). More kisses like poison, 2HD magical.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:46, Sun 21 June 2020.

Good news bad news: The good news is that this creature, as a misbegotten, does do magical damage.

However, its claws and beak are certainly piercing or cutting damage. It can still hurt you by landing on you though, so I'm going to reduce it's damage to a pathetic D4.. which doesn't matter anyway because the thing failed its morale test.

10:51, Today: GM rolled 9 using 2d6 ((3,6)).


After being blasted seemingly out of nowhere, and now sporting hideous weeping wounds all over its body, and suddenly having Gaja turn into shifting sand, the creature finally takes whatever passes for its senses, and makes numerous leaps back into the distant runes, till it's song fades into the distance, replaced only by the usual eerie quiet of the desert.

  The dust devil chases its quarry back to the perimeter Gaja had set, even through the air, but doesn't quite destroy it before it is forced to pull up short.  With no further threats, it collapses into a tight, dense eddy on the way to the ground.  She's standing there as the last grains fall, as though the sand had just been poured over her head like a baptism, and she shakes the last grains out of her hair quickly before settling back to her knees.  It takes her hours, again, to rebuild her crescendo.

  There had been a night of dancing and honoring the old ways in ways that anyone could.  There had been a day of music with only the briefest interruption, at all points a display of clearly supernatural power.  When the sun brushes the horizon again, there is another change, but this time, she does not work to seem benign at all.  She had been presenting melody without words for some time now, just spilling emotion and memory and passion into the air—hope and joy and loss and innocence and freedom and ardor and love and lamentation.  Now, at the end, anger first appears.  And now, when her voice has blanketed the ruin and reached every ear in a mile, it echoes back.  The drums return one at a time, then a roar stick, then a heavy gong to keep time, then a shrill pipe dividing that time into hoofbeats and axeblows and new decisions on the fly.  And all through it, her voice, chanting, crooning, screaming at times, redoubling over and over on itself in ever more complex counterpoise and ostinato, until the effect is somewhere between a war band and the choral arrangements of the One Church.  Either way, it is the voice of a legion at once, by the time the sun vanishes entirely.

  And then she rises.  And tonight, there is no grace in her dance.  There is nothing gentle or smooth to it.  Tonight she dances with a phantom army at her back, all sharp lines and sudden force, striking the ground with her feet as though to punish it for something.  The tremors begin, almost too faintly to perceive, as soon as she completes her first circuit and only grow more intense from there.  She never quite takes it far enough to crumble the bones of the ancient place, but the sand sifts and settles, until all the other bones and stones and lost things swallowed by the desert start to float up from the past.

Miracle: We're not quite Shaking the Walls here, unless you want to say she's just exempting the entire affected area from damage.  But she's going to establish and maintain the kind of vibrations that can't be missed, and probably churn the sand all through the immediate surroundings.  Ain't nobody sleeping tonight.

The whole desert seems to move in time with her dance. Dunes created by the wind for years instantly tumble. Back at the look out, some of the concealed guards rapidly flee as the sands shift around them.

For an entire night, the runes quake.

From the village, there are wails and prayers. The shifting sands cause dunes to tumble. Captive beast panic and flee. Countless flee from tents, grabbing weapons to fight an enemy that isn't there.

It doesn't take long for the faithful.. or superstitious, depending on your point of view, to blame Gaja. Some say Gaja is summoning dark spirits. Others claim the spirits are angry she has approached the ruin. Others say it is a sign they should move on. Drune councils simply that it is a test of their faith, and that they should not overreact. Other important names agree that acting rashly is a bad idea, and they do not move.

No one is suicidal enough to attack Gaja, though many of the guards inside try and mount their skittering beasts. The village seems to be watching Gaja from a distance now. They certainly aren't sleeping.

Though the ruin appeared to be. Nothing seemed to make a sound from it. There were supposed to be natural predators here, but it seemed as though Gaja may have literally frightened them away with that display.

[OOC - There is no response from the ruin. As GM in the interests of moving along, you will be waiting a long time before you get an intelligent response from the ruin.

  Finally, with the dawn, all movement stops.  Her music dies out, her feet slow, and the remarkably flat desert all around goes still at last.  Gaja drops to sitting, weight on her hands behind her, eyes on the sun, in exactly the position you'd expect from a vigil that exhausting.  She isn't even breathing hard.  A very human shout of frustration rises from her throat, then she lets herself fall to her back.

  A scorpion, one of the normal-size ones, skitters up and over one of her ankles.  It, too, is hers.  She can feel its place in the delicate network of survival that occupies these blasted lands, just as surely as she can feel her own littlest toes.  She wiggles them, just the two.  She had tried so hard to work within the laws, but there is clearly a problem here deep enough that there are no laws to respond to it.  She would have to Trespass, or else leave the Stone Lizards to die out waiting for omens they hadn't received in a month.  They aren't her family, maybe... But they are the first tribe she had spent any time among in the year since the Shining Fifth was broken.  Here, even for a day, even at a safe distance, she had heard the old songs, watched children playing the games she had grown up with.  Here, finally, they had looked and talked and moved and thought in ways she could recognize.

  Gaja takes a deep breath and closes her eyes.  It can't hurt to look, right?  A sidewinder twists past her, headed into the rubble.  Then three more.  Then ten.  And none of them quite hold together like snakes ought to, as though maybe they are nothing but windblown dust and the distortion of mirage.  Gaja's eyes remain closed, but they see for her.  She is the land.

I figured.  She's just exhausting respectful measures first, on principle.  She's really very conservative, aside from the reforms she believes are necessary to maintain the traditions in the face of outside pressure.  Effort is all recovered, and she's committing one for the day to emulate Lord of the Empty Quarter and be aware of all that happens, even where she fears to tread.

Slowly, you scan the ruins.

There are a number of creatures hiding away within the place: none quite alike, all mutated by the energies of the ancient ruin.

The buildings are mostly burnt down to rubble, and these are the distant places, with only foundations and basements, and perhaps half a story of stone off the ground, creating a weird maze of rapidly fading buildings. Only the basements really remain, providing a number of places to hide.

Even here, there are scorch marks inside the basement, and very little remains intact within the ruins.

Something about the very pattern of the streets gnaws at you, awakening some deep, primordial memory. The very layout of the buildings indicating some deep, magical meaning, and your ability to view these causes you to involuntarily shudder as you recognize that the very pattern of the remaining streets may be one of the forbidden symbols of your fallen past.

You turn your attention back to the task at hand.

The scorpions explore the ruins. A number of paths lead to horrific creatures, well concealed, and you lose a few scorpions to them, as well as small flying pests that are hard to identify as they flit from one building frame to the next. One thing happens: there is a ward on this place against scrying.. a powerful one. You feel it push lightly against your desire to see, but it fades into oblivion against your mastery of the desert.

Something odd happens.

Your scorpion begins to hear a song. It is howler speak! But slightly distorted. The voice is beautiful, haunting and familiar. It praises the sun and calls for rain, asks the stones to join in chorus, and begins to offer stories of dark magic and youth. After a moment, you realize it is your own voice. What?

The song is replaced by the bellow you made earlier, the one that drove all the creatures off. Ths chorus continues, and only your power over the desert allows the scorpion to function despite the subsonics that you eminated.. yesterday?

What is going on here?

Your earlier song from the previous days fades out.

There is an explosion from one of the buildings. You shift your perspective and see a man in obvious distress by the entrance to one of the buildings. He is clearly in severe distress, lying in the entrance to one of the buildings and bound to the ground. He is protected from the shade. He doesn't really move. His position makes you think of the "trapped" people you saw in the cave: had you walked up there as a human, you would have not seen him until you were right on top of him.

  Well, that gets her to sit up sharply.  Gaja's eyes open wide, but it makes no difference—they aren't what she uses to see, just now.  With an anxious thought, she shifts her awareness backward, toward the small camp where she left Szkarik and Sarnai.  She has been away for some time.  Best just to be sure, especially...  Especially when she is about to court death.

  Working by feel and the sight of herself from without, she rises and takes her first steps into the forbidden place.  To hell with all her philosophical turmoil and agonizing over the right way to set a Proper example.  Her people, their way of life, their whole world, are under attack by foreign magic, and who else would do the job?  This.  This is what the power is for.  The ukthee... chose a champion.  The law will just have to understand.

  Ten paces in, Gaja realizes what the trap means and picks up her pace.  At the cave before, the nearly dead would explode if their strings were pulled, but the mages inside could activate them as well.  They'd been used to guard a site where clearly much work was done.  On the slim chance that her adversary was still present—and oh, how she suddenly regretted such a long announcement of her approach—it would be a terrible mistake to be seen approaching.  She lengthens her path, darting left and right behind every scrap of cover available.  Soon enough, she closes on the trapped building and crouches behind what remains of a wall, across the cracked street.  That she is flagrantly violating the taboo has begun to weigh heavily on Gaja's peace of mind, and she feels a terrible need to hurry, perhaps to limit her blasphemy by leaving again soon.  But not blind.  There is no reason to go in blind, not when her thousand eyes drift through every part of these buildings, not when every grain of sand dutifully reports back to her what it sees.

03:54, Today: Gaja rolled 26 using 1d20+16.  Dex for stealth.

The day is night, and day again, and the swirling dust is replaced with clear clean summer skies. The fresh pavement seems to pulse with heat, and the market is packed with travelers from across the world. The sun is bright, so shiny you cannot make out the exact design, only that they make up what was broken only seconds before.

People do not just walk, they fly, supported by magical conveinces far above, powered by bizarre theurgies, wearing outlandish costumes.

Down below, on the earth where you are, colorful tiles not there before lie all around. You can FEEL the falseness of it, the burning sand and cracked pavement, but your eyes and ears show you the beautiful tile. The howling wind is all you should hear, but the sounds of an active marketplace fill your senses, magic and natural.

"Come! Fresh Ankhan!" The language is archaic, but you can make out the howler. Carts sell a bewildering array of dancing magic toys, and most absurdly, fresh ices being passed around in the 80 degree heat. You feel the lightest trace of breeze from the stall, no doubt packed with elemental energies. Bewildering and happy music. Children laughing as they caper with their delightful mechanical men.

None seem to react to the bewildered woman/god in their mist.

The most insane visage in this place are books and signs! In the forbidden ruins! You aren't sure you should even look at them, but it doesn't matter: you cannot make out a single line. It is not that you do not recognize the script, it is that the script is obscured to you somehow, replaced with a blinding white blur that obscures it completely.

Then it is gone, and you are back in the city, the dust under your feet and only the wind, the sounds of the marketplace fading. You have purpose. You redouble your speed, avoiding tripwires and deadfalls you noticed earlier when you scanned this place.

You avoid the traps despite the strange tricks this place is playing on your mind.

01:13, Today: GM, on behalf of Gaja, rolled 19 using 1d20 ((19)).

You make your way to the large building, and come to a scene of gore. There is a body, dead for some time. It looked like it had exploded in a similar manner to the cave, his soul 'unreavelled' somehow from bizarre forbidden necromancy. There was significant damage to the already ruined enterence. It was a good thing it was solid stone. The condition of the body was dessicated. It looked as though the body had remained out here for at least a week, maybe two. The magical energies of the place had somehow kept away predators, including vermin, so the remaining viscera was dried out. Wait a minute... hadn't Gaja heard an explosion as well?

Soft, mornful music came from deeper inside the building. Gaja could recognize it as howler speech, but the exact words, melodies were... off what you'd hear from any Howler tribe you'd heard of. It sounded similar to the songs the priest sang, but more alien. The emotional context of the song was clear though: loss, anguish and regret.

  There are times when the most important, headstrong, and cautious must all reach there same conclusion: The fates have made sport of them, and whatever the source of their confidence, the world is bigger and stranger than they can be ready for. It is in this spirit that Gaja creeps forward toward the source of the sound. She remembers talking to Orlan about his vision quests as shaman; she hadn't understood then what he meant when he said, "yesterday and tomorrow joined together," but now... She creeps toward the blasted entrance, sleet for tripwires and the body she saw with her magic, but no longer sure when she saw it.

A body or two had been laid out in a similar manner, but it looked like they had already exploded. There were a few traps, but they were easily avoided. The walls of this place looked like they were sun blanched, so that every discernable surface had been wiped, despite the fact that that this area was underground.

Scraps of priestly robes were visible on some of the bodies. Most were very clearly howlers.

Was this some sort of bunker? What had the ancients use this place for?

Inside the basement was almost entirely wide open, a huge empty large wide chamber that seemed to descend into a downward spiral, surrounding the innter building. Most of the ground was open flat area with a wide short ramp descending downward. You also notice that there is another exit, not visible from the outside, that has been sealed. It was wood and metal and mechanical looking, but you'd guess that it had been contructed after the fall, out of more available components. You could even identify a sinew or rope from one of the more common magical creatures of the desert.The place was large enough that you could bring most Howler mounts in here very easily, if the larger secondary enterance was unsealed.

There are no stairs. It wasn't so much a room as a huge chamber. Ancient rusting.. sculptures? rested along the walls. They were wood, metal, and sometimes odder materials. Most of the metal had long rusted away. It looked like they had been maintained over the years, probably by the priests.

It was obvious that the place had been maintained by the priests

10:36, Today: GM, on behalf of Gaja, rolled 17 using 1d20 ((17)).

You may not have much theurgic training, but you recognize that the sculptures have magical components, in particular magically infused crystals that act as power sources. They must be some kind of magical devices, though most are long ruined. The priests may have been maintaining them and using them for some purpose, though you'd need study, one of them, or someone who had training in Theotechology to experiment with them. You notice that the most complete of them appear to have been located on the top floor.

On each level were two doors that had been sealed and blocked with rocks. You could probably remove them with supernatural gifts, but none of this looked recent, and you had more pressing things to worry about, and you were not the sort to disturb this sacred place.

The spiral seems to circle around the ruins of the central building. Finally, at the bottom levels of.. whatever this place is, you find an open area with signs of habitation.

There were bowls, some food and water, books and tools set out. More thamaturgical tools, similar to the ones you had recovered from the cave. Most of the.. sculptures? were naught but frames or had crumbled away, but a few in better condition were in places of prominence, and surrounded by tools. One odd thing: all of the books were blank, the lettering and pages worn away.

There was sign of a struggle and recent death. Haphhazardly, a pile of bodies had been placed in the corner of the room. Most were priests, but one was very clearly a howler corpse. Despite the corpses, there was no smell in this place or obvious signs of rot: the magic seemed to have preserved the bodies.

Prominently displayed on the bottom level was a single character that exuded power. Gaja found herself drawn to it, but something within her told her that looking at it might be very dangerous. Underneath it was a small shrine, in which a single crystal was displayed in a position of prominence. The shrine looked like soemthing howlers would make, and numerous delicacies of the desert were placed as offerings there. The shrine and character looked odd, but it might be dangerous to approach them more closely.

A corridor on the bottom level lead into the central chamber. It looked human sized, unlike the rest of the building which had huge open areas. A solid stone door had been removed from it's hinges and placed to the side of it. While howlers had no written language, they did keep a number of simple marks for danger, and these were regularly placed around the entrance. A few signs were here and there, but all of them had been sunbleached into obscurity.

OOC there is a lot to unpack here. Some possibilities
Examine the tools
Examine the sculuptures
Examine the symbol (something tells you this is dangerous)
Examine the shrine/crystals (might be dangerous, as you'll have to approach the symbol for that)
Examine the bodies
Go down the entrance to the interior structure (which the signs on the floors tells you is dangerous)

  Well, it's obvious Gaja arrived here too late, possibly by weeks. And it is obvious, now, that their sacred places are being violated by the foreign looters. She had promised to return promptly to Vicino alla Sabbia, once she had the information she needed, but... Well, if there is no one to teach her, she can't be faulted that the learning takes a bit of chasing around the wastes, can she? Her trip to the bottom is quiet, filled with sharp attention to sounds and shadows, and marveling at the completely unexpected scale of hidden history. Her trip back up is quicker, requiring her only to make mental notes about what, specifically, she wants to achieve here, now that there is clearly no one to save.

  The problem is that almost anything might be a trap of some kind.  There may be one of the exploding bodies at the bottom of the heap.  Half the mysteries in the chamber are clearly dangerous.  For all Gaja knows, these vandals, desecrators, grave-robbers might have heard about the joint attack on the other cave and taken precautions that—  Well, no use in following that thought out.  She came there precisely because no one else could handle the worst that might come, and shying away from it now would render the whole effort pointless.  The only risk she can afford to concern herself with is that setting off a trap might destroy some kind of evidence she would need.

  With that in mind, she returns to the piled dead.  She knows the rites, even if they feel insufficient for the situation.  And she would absolutely need some sign of the chief's demise to justify her trespass, later.  First, though, the rites.  A terrible evil happened here.  At an absolute minimum, duty demands that she do what she can for the souls of the departed.

Gonna check out the bodies, yeah, particularly hoping for some identifying token of the chief's.  Then gonna put the time into at least an abbreviated funeral ceremony.  It feels like wis check time:

01:25, Today: Gaja rolled 27 using 1d20+14.  pawing at carcasses.

The bodies are mostly howlers, priests from the robes. A number have been killed by traps, others in violence, others by.. weird magical effects that are not immediately obvious. The bodies are probably a few weeks old, but again, they are fairly preserved as there are no vermin in here.

Two corpses though, died of old age, which is.. very strange.

One of the corpses that seemed particularly aged was wearing clothes (rags now, really) though, you identify as belonging to Stone Lizard, and a few tokens that usually indicate rank. This may be the chief. The corpse looks like it's been here for YEARS. Right next to him is a crossbow that you've seen the Lizards carry, marked with honorifics befitting the weapon of a chief: it looks totally brand new.

The hunched form of the two "aged" bodies don't just look like they've been here a while, they look like the person died old, much older than most Howlers live, and far older than when most chiefs would retire.

You complete the rites of your people, and place them in "restful" positions. You think that if you don't remove them from this place on the way out or remove the bodies with gifts, they might remain in this position as they are for a long, long time.

There were still many mysteries about this place, and it was clear someone had killed the priests here.

  "I will seal your tomb before I leave this valley.  I swear.  Rest easy."  With that parting oath, Gaja rises from beside the dead.  Not a shaman, but doing shaman's work.  She shook her head and took a look around.  She'll absolutely have to bring some of those crystals out with her, she quickly decides.  This relic has lost its caretakers.  Whatever it was preserving, it can no longer preserve.  It would be foolish to leave it full of power that might draw looters, or be corrupted by the sigils all around.  And if that power was holding back disaster, far better to find out now, with her present to deal with it, rather than ten years from now when the danger is all but forgotten.

  So she turns for the central building.  Because there's no way she's about to risk whatever crazy disaster that symbol might trigger without ensuring it's the only danger to prepare for.  Always check the back of a cave before sleeping in it.  She traces the heavy cross-hatch gouges with a fingertip before passing them, if only to remind herself of caution.

OOC- To make it clear, the shrine and weird symbol are together in one place, the enterance is in another.



You touch the edges of the enterance. The stone feels brand new. The surrounding structure you just past through was unnautrslly preserved, but at least it showed some kind of wear and tear. In here, nothing.

The enterance leads down a short corridor.  There is a strange feeling of discontinuity, and you hear laughing xhildren, and an endless tapping. Children
make their way in here, passing by you in a blur. Most cary canes, and wear blinsfolds, though not all.

As your hands run, you feel an odd rension. It is similar to being electrocuted, but strangely different. Your heart pounds at a hammerbeat rate as
Some kind of magical force grounds through your body.

02:08, Today: GM, on behalf of Gaja, rolled 13 using 1d20 ((13)).

Somehow, your godlike nature resists the worst of the effects. Your clothes become threadbare and aged, but you yourself are unaffected physically as your bodys metabolism shoots up to insane levels. Your innate sense of rhythm lets you know that this process has just thrown off your internal clock, speeding it up insanely.

Once this odd energy has ground through you, a few quick breaths later you are fine, and the bizarre illusions cease.

The short corridor is otherwise unremarkable other than a thin layer of crumbling dust that might have been people.. but are eroded by millenia. Have they been here weeks? Years? Centuries?

The corridor leads to a large, dark room in whixh only certain areas are lit.

The floor is perfectly preserved rugs, in styles similar to those you have seen carried by priests. A central desk faces you, with a single large crystal sealed centrally, facing you. The floor is slightly sloped, so that you are drawn to the desk should you walk in the room, directly in front of the crystal.

Off to the side are a number of small curtained (open) alcoves, lit but distant. Handrails guide the way to these.

What is very disconcerting is what you see above you.. or more accurately, you dont see the ceiling.  There is a ramp that leads upwards behind the desk, but it sinply stops in darkness and nothingness.

It's hard to even look at it, and you get the idea that somethong is exceedingly powerful within it, and may be responsible for the weirdness around here. Thougb whether it was causing it or holding it back remained to be seen.

Yeah.  I only meant that she doesn't know what might come out of this door, so better to check it first.  :)

  Gaja pulls her hand back quickly, but it doesn't immediately stop the visions.  She knows these are ruins of the distant ancestors, from before the People learned humility.  Were those children here once, centuries ago?  It seems indisputable.  And the way they walked, feeling in front with sticks like old Keolin, whose eyes had failed him...  Were so many of them blind?  How could that happen?  Suddenly, the ruin seems both more and less dangerous, at once.  Something terrible happened there once, and in places seems to be still happening, trapped someplace years don't pass.  But it isn't meant for her.  It's not a trap—the withered corpses removed from where they fell attest to that.  The foreigners had left much behind.  Then whatever they had come in looking for...

  She raises her head to consider the veil of shadow, and her mouth does not rise with it.  They had broken something here.  Something important.  And maybe she is wise, or maybe she is just afraid, but Gaja does not feel inclined to charge straight up the ramp.  Maybe the first floor will tell her how the second ought to look, when she gets there.  She tries the alcoves first, circling wide around the desk and whatever that crystal might do.

You make your way through the library. As you pass by the stairs, leading to the blackness you'd rather not think about, something.. resonates with you. You know that there is something above that you will have to deal with eventually.. you have come to understand that your powers relate to certain things: music, dance and deserts, that your power represents a primal, quintessential force, the essence of those words as they relate to creation. Above you is something that resonates with Time. It feels fundamentally broken, and not quite of this world. Is this some sort of night road?

As you make your way to the alcoves, you are able to see more of this room, and you are made aware of an endless pile of shattered glass and crystal at your feet, difficult to make out in the darkness until you feel it crinkling under your sandals. There are numerous shelves made of wood. The shelves are divided into countless small glass openings, mostly containing broken crystals. There are a few truly ancient skeletons, here and there, and a few bits of odd material, but most of this floor appears to be taken up with these shelves full of broken crystals. Here and there, there are a few sun burnt flat areas where you'd expect signs to be, but not many.

The alcoves are small and comfortable looking. There are more handrails and sumptuous cushions to sit on, nearly perfectly preserved. There are curtains that can be drawn to isolate each alcove. The alcoves are barely lit inside. You notice many more broken crystal shards and a few bones. The third alcove you come to has an unbroken crystal sitting at the center of the table.

  "They wanted privacy for this..."  Gaja sniffs the air in the first alcove a few times, before she remembers how old this ruin is.  And older, perhaps, for the way everything to come into the center ages.  Still, whatever the distant ancestors did here must have been something politely embarrassing.  There are too many stalls for it to have been sacred.  At least there are fewer marks of broken words, here.  That much is a comfort, no matter what goes on above.  She almost thoughtlessly picks up a cushion from the second alcove, and is about to turn back at the third fruitless mess when she spots the one crystal to have made it through whatever happened here.

  "Hello, and what are you?" she asks, and picks it up to examine.  It is far too silent in here, and even hearing just her own voice is less unnerving.  It doesn't look like the reservoirs of power she witnessed outside, as far as she can tell.  She hums softly to herself as she turns it over.

When you handle the crystal, the is a soft chime, and a voice begins speaking from the crystal in Pelagic. The words are a little muddled. They sound a bit like a scratchy record. The voice is oddly accented. The word choices are.. odd, and not everything translates perfectly.

"Beginning recording, segment 1. Perfect Stories of the Demagogue: For Which He Was Burnt, Copyright *SCRATCH* by Irna Malnus, recorded by *SCRATCH* Begin recording now,

It being 50 years since the death of my grandfather Xalthan Manus, papers in our family were released, and our estate gave allowance to record the tale of my grandfather's early life, his rise to *scratch* of the Sand Finch party... the purpose of this is not to defend, but to define my grandfather..."

There are numerous short skips from damage, missing over words, sentences and the occasional paragraph. Exact dates seem to be the worst culprits, causing numerous errors. The recording refers to terms that mean little to you, and you are not used to this style of tale: including mundane details about someone's life, presumedly some kind of contentious political figure who incited a mob and was executed for it.

When your hand leaves the crystal, the recording fades off.

  "I think he deserved it," Gaja mumbles quietly before setting the crystal down on the cushion she is still carrying.  There are some things she feels she will need much more time to consider, before their meanings will come to light.  But for now...

  She looks up again into the darkness above, where her attention remains as she crosses back to the central desk.  If the crystals are only storyteller stones, there's no need to be so cautious.  It's the same as knotting cords on a belt to jog the memory, except it does the talking part, too.  Not as good as sharing the past directly, but a harmless convenience in a pinch.  She sets it down on the ageless pillow, on the tabletop, and begins to walk up.  Forget the back of her neck—the hair on top of her head nearly stands up.  But someone unburied the past, here, and it was buried for good reason.