Noragia waits silently, trying to exemplify confidence in Tuari and Mabwe's abilities to interpret Varantas' communication

The bone initially does not appear to point in a direction, twisting this way and that in Tuari's grip, until at last its tip powerfully and decisively points down toward the earth.

Mabwe, on all fours begins to scratch in the ground beneath him "There's something here, or perhaps was. A rectangle that is slightly sunken compared with the surroundings."

He traces the edge of a rectangle about 8 meters by 3. "The Floor of a lost hut, the permanent type that outsiders build and stay put in. Or perhaps the entrance t an ancient place under the Earth?"

He continues to dig, scraping away the dust to try to find what it is, moving to the centre once he has defined the shape.

As Mabwe begins digging, Norajia lights her oil lamp, and once he has defined the shape she passes the light over it in three strokes of a harmony rune intoning an ancient mantra in a low monotone.
In beauty we ride
With beauty before us we ride
With beauty behind us we ride
With beauty above us we ride
With beauty around us we ride
It has become beauty again
Today we will ride out, today everything negative will leave us
We will be as we were before, we will have vital glow over our bodies.
We will have light bodies, We will be happy forever, nothing will hinder us.
We ride with beauty before us. We ride with beauty behind us.
We ride with beauty below us. We ride with beauty above us.
We ride with beauty around us. My words will be beautiful.

{tweaked a couple of off-tribe words}
This message was last edited by the player at 22:26, Mon 21 Sept 2020.

"I thought this might be the case," says Lemak grimly, watching the bone twitch straight down.



He dismounts and joins the morokanth in his digging, using his dagger axe as a makeshift spade, taking care around the edge of structure, not wanting to chip or damage his weapon in any way.



"The problem," puffs the high llama brave between strokes shoveling sand away, "is that if we need to descend into the Earth, there'll be no beautiful riding.  We will have to leave our mounts above."
This message was last edited by the player at 02:15, Tue 22 Sept 2020.

Tuari dismounts and moves to help as best he can without any real equipment or knowledge on how to dig.  He pauses periodically to check that nothing is creeping up on the group while they are focused on the task at hand.

"It is not often I envy your tribe Mabwe, but now is one of those times."  he says watching the Morkanth dig.

Norajia smiles and shrugs. She extinguishes her lamp and gets a sandal out of her baggage to help shift the loose sand excavated by the others further away from the diggings

Mabwe's claws are the most effective tools you have at scraping the sterile, loose earth away. You don't need to get deep at all before running into a solid surface.  

The exposed surface appears to be bronze, whether it's solid metal or just bronze coating of some more mundane material you can't immediately tell.
It is covered with symbols that are unfamiliar to you, they are certainly not Praxian, and the images have a little more realistic detail in the figures than you are accustomed to.
It's about the dimensions that Mabwe described, and you can see what looks like an interface running down the middle, maybe between two leaflets.

So much metal, thinks Lemak.  We're rich!

But all he does is (reluctantly) tear his eyes away to look to Vorrik and say, "You're an outlander.  Do you know anything about these symbols?"
This message was last edited by the player at 11:56, Wed 23 Sept 2020.

In reply to Lemak (msg # 30):

Vorrik is kneeling and chatting with a magpie. He looks up at Lemak.
"Eh? I was just asking this little fellow if he's ever seen anyone come or go from here. He says No... I think...
Now for these symbols, err, definitely nothing from Sun County. Pavis maybe...? No, I don't think so. And can't be Lunars, not enough bats and moons and such."

Norajia also stares open mouthed at the expanse of metal.
"...and no clan has found this? or succeeded in taking it away?" she shivers "I don't like it." She looks around uneasily.

"And where did that come from? " she adds indicating Vorrick's magpie with a discrete gesture of her fingers

<OOC You haven't seen this bird before, but Vorrik seems to practice his gift of talking to birds whenever he sees one. Theres definitely not a lot of wildlife here>

Mabwe walks to the centre where there appears to be a line or crack and as he does so he asks Vorrik "You think... Is the bird speaking with a very old accent, like the language you know, but how it was spoken once before in older times?"

Reaching the middle of the metal he stands on one side and tries pulling what looks like a ring on the other side.

Vorrik gives another look at the magpie. "Not that I can tell, I do not have much learning in the matter, the speech of birds is a gift givem me from the great Yelmalio".

Investigating the panels it looks like they slightly overlap and that there is a "top"and a "bottom" panel.Mabwe tugs on one of the handles on the top panel. He pulls the creaky metal loop into his thumbless but powerful grip, but he's unable to budge the large structure in the slightest. 

"What is that thing behind you Mabwe?" Norajia asks, "The thing near the join that is not a roundel like the others"  She looks at the panels in the structure. "Empty, empty, empty empty empty, a plant, some fish, what? some claws? bowls of fruit? fire? I can't tell."

She reaches within her clothing to retrieve something Karrith gave her, and compares it with the image of the plant, pursing her lips. "Hmm..." she muses.

Mabwe looks at Norajia and turns around to look behind himself where she indicated. As he does so though he glances at the bird and speaks in the spirit tongue.


Moving to the end he tries to lift the thing Norajia mentioned.

The bird puts its head to one side, looking at Mabwe, but doesn't otherwise react.

Mabwe takes hold of the protrusion, with an effort he rotates it about 30 degrees. You hear a clicking sound.

Mabwe moves back to the rings and tries the same side again before swapping sides and trying the other if the first does not budge.

Putting his back into pulling on on of the rings, Mabwe strains, the panel seems to lift just the tiniest amount before settling  back down.

"Perhaps if we all helped..." Norajia says doubtfully, staring at the potential finger-press, " or could we rig a rope to the mounts somehow?"

"Yes, it's shifting, but I need more help. The llama is high enough up to get the angle if we tie a rope to a ring and Lemak pulls on it."

Lemak climbs onto Lobber and holds out a hand, waiting for a rope.  "Are you sure you know what you're doing," he asks Mabwe.  "Even if these plates can be moved, how do you know the right order?"
This message was last edited by the player at 01:41, Tue 29 Sept 2020.

From Mabwe's slight budging of the plate, it seemed that there is a single top and a single bottom plate.
Each plate is about SIZ 80. 
Of the herd beasts you have, Lobber and Odina are the strongest, followed by the two sable antelopes, the discount zebra and Thangar's little impala, which is much smaller than Mabwe.

From the ground Mabwe can see the slightest bit of movement of the top plate of the gate. He snorts, and raising his paw says "More of them. Rope up the bison and the sable too, there's a lot of weight to lift!"