Jamals pounded along the desert sands, and all those riding them were well prepared for the desert trek that lay ahead of them. The Faraddi Explorers had left the beach behind them almost an hour ago now, after failing to identify the Culture or Race that built the stone pier or the stone path they were now tracing through the desert. Their failure was largely due to age, and the shifting sands having worn away at the stone, but also because it was simply a crude construction to begin with. There was no discernable style in slapped together ramshackle constructs like those they followed. Finally, after a half hour more, they noticed the top of something off in the distance. It was no mirage, for once, it was real. They closed the distance in a scant few minutes, and it unfolded out before them: a ruined town. Half consumed by the desert, it was clearly of some Qadir design, perhaps once based around some old Sariyd ruin now long indistinguishable from the other ruins surrounding it. It had perhaps once had a wall around it, but tall dunes had eaten those up too. The front gate, or rather by this point an empty archway, was open before them though and so they all slowly proceeded inside past the walls.
Inside, they all dismounted from their Jamals, finding some posts to tie them to. Wary though, and not wanting the animals to be spooked and get away, Amir assigned Naajy Shamuon to watch them. After all, it was just them in this ruin from what they could see, and there was no need for the man's particular skills. The rest of the team is split up into three teams, each going in a different direction in the ruins. Amir Razavi, Khalid Nazari and Kamaria Ahmed headed forward, toward the large central structure while Azra min Eazim, Aaminah Zaman, Aska al-Ali and Birc al-Ali headed left, across the central square into what looked to be a former residential area while Korra Hakim, Aamir Ahmadi and Fahim Khaleel headed to their immediate right, into what appeared to be an old and ruined tavern.
The tavern was indeed ruined, most of the tables broken, lacking shudders on the windows, and the sands had begun to pile up in the space. Despite that, their search of the building and it's second level was thorough. They found no signs of anyone living there, though they noticed old burn marks around the room, seared into the brickwork or present on broken furniture. They all returned downstairs and in a moment of sly thinking, Aamir jumped the bar and located some still intact bottles. He then began a fun bit of role-play, acting as the bartender to the other two "strangers to these parts", who took bemused leans at the bar, as there were no intact stools. He cracked open one of the bottles he had located, and poured them all a bit of the drink as it smelled fine, if not strong, into glasses he'd blown and cleaned while cheekily talking to the others. He called in Naajy, giving him a glass too which the Shifted Slizzar accepted before returning outside with it upon hearing a low from one of the Jamals. The three indoors then clinked glasses and took a sip, all of them immediately wincing. It has quite the bite, and they all settled in to boringly wait, recorking the substance for now. As they sat there, bored, Aamir cheekily gave a flirt or two to each of them in a joking way, earning him a rough but harmless shove from Korra. He chuckled as he stumbled back hard and then suddenly, with a loud crack, it turned into a gasp of shock as he was suddenly dropped through the floor.
There was a crash and the two immediately leapt over the bar to see what had once been a sand-covered wooden trapdoor broken open. The old wood had given way under the full weight of Aamir so roughly pushed back onto it. Luckily for Aamir, the sand hadn't been kept out and the other had landed on a small pile of it instead of on the hard stonework that made up the rest of the underground storage space. He hazily lifted his head and weakly called up that there was a ladder and at that, Korra promptly leapt in the hole as well. She landed next to Aamir with a grunt before she rushed over and collected the ladder, going to set it up and finding that it fit perfectly into grooves on one side of the trapdoor entrance. Clearly, they had once been used in concert. Fahim alerted a concerned Naajy as to what had happened, who had walked in only to not see anyone for a moment before he noticed the other man behind the bar. The Slizzar was asked to stay up on the surface and so he found himself positioned against the doorframe of the establishment, an eye on the bored Jamals just waiting in the sun, and an eye into the bar with an ear also focused in on the building.
Across the square, the team of Azra min Eazim, Aaminah Zaman, Aska al-Ali and Birc al-Ali walked through and around tightly-packed together homes, apartment-style homes with different occupants clearly having lived in each room. The beds they had used were long collapsed, sand lay in all the entrances or on the floors, and there were few belongings to be found. Overall, some sandy clothing belonging to both sexes was found along with the occasional fold-out copper and brass plated dagger or bit of brass mechanism, suggesting a Qadir presence, but one that was long gone. They were on the cusp of giving up when the twins suddenly discovered a cellar in one of the homes, a simple and somewhat rickety ladder hidden underneath and overturned crate. Birc jumped down first, avoiding the ladder the most, feeling that his muscled but heavy body might break the ladder. His twin followed suit, then Azra and finally Aaminah.
"Well, that-" Birc started to say, just as the ladder gave way and collapsed onto the floor before them. There was then a round of cursing in Faraddi and the group spread out in exploration of the large cellar before them.
Meanwhile, the third group of Amir Razavi, Khalid Nazari and Kamaria Ahmed had perhaps the easiest time out of the bunch. The central building turned out to be an abandoned Sariyd structure, wide and open with wall art depicting Sariyd figures in four large scenes, seeming to represent four seasons or times of the year, or perhaps four places that had once existed on Farah'deen before the sands had consumed the biodiversity of the continent. The far wall held stairs leading down, and carvings around the entrance featuring Sariyd symbols of death though it was unlikely anyone in the group could understand that.
They all descended down. The three soon came to a split staircase that doubled back on itself, the party splitting briefly to go the two ways though they both came out into the same antechamber area. Just then, stumbling out of two doorways, one on the left and the other on the right, came the other two groups! For the Tavern group, the storehouse they found held smashed and long dried barrels of what had likely once been alcohol before a passageway had been discovered. It wound and was a tight fit, but it led them to where they were now. Similarly, the residential group had found in that cellar, with a wall clearly blasted with fire (the burnt bricks indicating as much). They had found a small box beneath a mound of dirty cloth, in which were several thin rings of gold, but not a whole lot else. Their own passageway out had similarly been tight, and now they found themselves with all the rest...save Naajy, sipping the rest of his drink down on the surface and focusing on the Jamals.
The group then proceeded down another set of stairs, but this style was far more of a ramp due to how shallow it was, and when they reached the bottom, they found quite a sight. There had, obviously, once been dead bodies in the space. The sand clearly held indentations for them, everything from ribcages to femurs. The rest of the space was clearly for burials, with once full alcoves marked out for just such a purpose by their small clay inscriptions beneath now empty. The group could begin to read the names, and it gradually dawned on them: pirates. The tablets listed their major victories on the sea, and added how they had died too, with a large number stating at the end in written Faraddi "Killed in battle with the Regalian Navy." If they didn't make the connection, they likely would later: the Bone Horror Crisis, all of the remains in this underground place and perhaps the whole town had all gotten up and left all those years ago. Around the space, there was more Sariyd imagery in addition to four alcoves that held beautiful statues of four major animals of Farah'deen: the Givrais Thunder Bird, the Gargantuan Stoneback Phant, the Saruhanna Sand Ant, and the Cobravv. The brass creations were paneled in wood, and were elegant in their shape, but were also located in the wall somewhat, their rear and backsides attached by stone.
At the far end of the room, under a shaft of light somehow reflected onto the space thanks to the marvel of Qadir engineering sat...nothing. Clearly, the body once meant to be there was long gone, but in its wake it left a large chest inserted into a stone hole on the plinth. As Aamir hauled it out, small handhold shafts on the side leading down to the handholds of the box, there was an audible click. With the box out of the way, Khalid immediately peered down into it to see a pressure sensor device starting to flash red.
He was about to curse when suddenly, the four statues came alive. With a loud rumble as brick and stone were ripped down, the four statues turned out not to be statues at all, but machines. Luckily for the Qadir group, age had clearly worked against them all. The Cobravv machine immediately fell forward and twitched sporadically on its side, unable to stand upright. The Saruhanna Sand Ant machine was sluggish, two legs off kilter and moving at half their normal speed. The other two though, were more or less intact. It was the Thunder Bird that let off the first volley, opening its Brass beak and croaking out a very much degraded caw-like sound before it fired projectiles at the group. Everyone immediately jumped out of the way, a few people crashing into each other as a result, but the two projectiles clattered to the floor harmlessly after they hit the wall. They were sharpened lightning-bolts, made of metal.
Thus the fight began. It was a difficult bit of combat, the Qadir not wanting to damage these unique and masterfully crafted machines too much, but the machines having little to no compunctions about harming them. It was inevitable, but each machine went down, and went down for good one at a time. Even the Cobravv machine had started to crawl toward the fight and had needed a swift smash in the head from Birc's foot to stop functioning altogether. After ten minutes of fighting, the damage was assessed.
Aska was the worst injured, two of the lightning bolts having shot her right in the arm and having to be gingerly remove afterward before a cloth had to be rapidly wound around the wounds. She'd spend at least a week healing before she got her skills and fine touch back. The next group of injuries were Aamir, Korra and Kamaria, all injured in different ways. The Sand Ant had managed to pinch Aamir's foot hard, making him fall and sprain his ankle, a process that would take six days to a week to heal from. The heavyset Phant-shaped machine had whacked Korra full in a chest on a backswing of his arm causing bruising that would last four days while Kamaria had caught one of the lightning bolts in the shoulder, though the wound was not as bad as Aska's and would be healed within three days. As for their standout moments, that had to be Amir and Birc, Birc's kick ending the threat of the Cobravv while Amir had been the one to topple the Phant, though the process knocked the creation's head off. As for the Sand Ant, that had been dispatched by a collective effort after it had pinched Aamir.
Despite their injured companions, the team immediately got down to trying to salvage the four machines. Sadly, they were dismayed to see most of the parts long corroded or sand-clogged, the cost of their age, only collecting six or so components from the machines before they all slowly headed up to the surface. Up there, with the sun hanging low, they found Naajy just about ready to charge into the tavern and go down the hole, but they stopped him. Their journey was now over, they had a complexly locked metal box, a handful of component parts, some gold rings, and a quarter of their group injured. They then set off onto the dunes as the sun set, their shadows long…
In the distance, far away, an eye watched them go. The advanced scope slowly dropped down and it's owner frowned.
"They have it now, sir…"
Another voice replied in a heavy Daendroquin accent, "We'll shadow them. It's only a matter of time until they figure it out."
The tavern was indeed ruined, most of the tables broken, lacking shudders on the windows, and the sands had begun to pile up in the space. Despite that, their search of the building and it's second level was thorough. They found no signs of anyone living there, though they noticed old burn marks around the room, seared into the brickwork or present on broken furniture. They all returned downstairs and in a moment of sly thinking, Aamir jumped the bar and located some still intact bottles. He then began a fun bit of role-play, acting as the bartender to the other two "strangers to these parts", who took bemused leans at the bar, as there were no intact stools. He cracked open one of the bottles he had located, and poured them all a bit of the drink as it smelled fine, if not strong, into glasses he'd blown and cleaned while cheekily talking to the others. He called in Naajy, giving him a glass too which the Shifted Slizzar accepted before returning outside with it upon hearing a low from one of the Jamals. The three indoors then clinked glasses and took a sip, all of them immediately wincing. It has quite the bite, and they all settled in to boringly wait, recorking the substance for now. As they sat there, bored, Aamir cheekily gave a flirt or two to each of them in a joking way, earning him a rough but harmless shove from Korra. He chuckled as he stumbled back hard and then suddenly, with a loud crack, it turned into a gasp of shock as he was suddenly dropped through the floor.
There was a crash and the two immediately leapt over the bar to see what had once been a sand-covered wooden trapdoor broken open. The old wood had given way under the full weight of Aamir so roughly pushed back onto it. Luckily for Aamir, the sand hadn't been kept out and the other had landed on a small pile of it instead of on the hard stonework that made up the rest of the underground storage space. He hazily lifted his head and weakly called up that there was a ladder and at that, Korra promptly leapt in the hole as well. She landed next to Aamir with a grunt before she rushed over and collected the ladder, going to set it up and finding that it fit perfectly into grooves on one side of the trapdoor entrance. Clearly, they had once been used in concert. Fahim alerted a concerned Naajy as to what had happened, who had walked in only to not see anyone for a moment before he noticed the other man behind the bar. The Slizzar was asked to stay up on the surface and so he found himself positioned against the doorframe of the establishment, an eye on the bored Jamals just waiting in the sun, and an eye into the bar with an ear also focused in on the building.
Across the square, the team of Azra min Eazim, Aaminah Zaman, Aska al-Ali and Birc al-Ali walked through and around tightly-packed together homes, apartment-style homes with different occupants clearly having lived in each room. The beds they had used were long collapsed, sand lay in all the entrances or on the floors, and there were few belongings to be found. Overall, some sandy clothing belonging to both sexes was found along with the occasional fold-out copper and brass plated dagger or bit of brass mechanism, suggesting a Qadir presence, but one that was long gone. They were on the cusp of giving up when the twins suddenly discovered a cellar in one of the homes, a simple and somewhat rickety ladder hidden underneath and overturned crate. Birc jumped down first, avoiding the ladder the most, feeling that his muscled but heavy body might break the ladder. His twin followed suit, then Azra and finally Aaminah.
"Well, that-" Birc started to say, just as the ladder gave way and collapsed onto the floor before them. There was then a round of cursing in Faraddi and the group spread out in exploration of the large cellar before them.
Meanwhile, the third group of Amir Razavi, Khalid Nazari and Kamaria Ahmed had perhaps the easiest time out of the bunch. The central building turned out to be an abandoned Sariyd structure, wide and open with wall art depicting Sariyd figures in four large scenes, seeming to represent four seasons or times of the year, or perhaps four places that had once existed on Farah'deen before the sands had consumed the biodiversity of the continent. The far wall held stairs leading down, and carvings around the entrance featuring Sariyd symbols of death though it was unlikely anyone in the group could understand that.
They all descended down. The three soon came to a split staircase that doubled back on itself, the party splitting briefly to go the two ways though they both came out into the same antechamber area. Just then, stumbling out of two doorways, one on the left and the other on the right, came the other two groups! For the Tavern group, the storehouse they found held smashed and long dried barrels of what had likely once been alcohol before a passageway had been discovered. It wound and was a tight fit, but it led them to where they were now. Similarly, the residential group had found in that cellar, with a wall clearly blasted with fire (the burnt bricks indicating as much). They had found a small box beneath a mound of dirty cloth, in which were several thin rings of gold, but not a whole lot else. Their own passageway out had similarly been tight, and now they found themselves with all the rest...save Naajy, sipping the rest of his drink down on the surface and focusing on the Jamals.
The group then proceeded down another set of stairs, but this style was far more of a ramp due to how shallow it was, and when they reached the bottom, they found quite a sight. There had, obviously, once been dead bodies in the space. The sand clearly held indentations for them, everything from ribcages to femurs. The rest of the space was clearly for burials, with once full alcoves marked out for just such a purpose by their small clay inscriptions beneath now empty. The group could begin to read the names, and it gradually dawned on them: pirates. The tablets listed their major victories on the sea, and added how they had died too, with a large number stating at the end in written Faraddi "Killed in battle with the Regalian Navy." If they didn't make the connection, they likely would later: the Bone Horror Crisis, all of the remains in this underground place and perhaps the whole town had all gotten up and left all those years ago. Around the space, there was more Sariyd imagery in addition to four alcoves that held beautiful statues of four major animals of Farah'deen: the Givrais Thunder Bird, the Gargantuan Stoneback Phant, the Saruhanna Sand Ant, and the Cobravv. The brass creations were paneled in wood, and were elegant in their shape, but were also located in the wall somewhat, their rear and backsides attached by stone.
At the far end of the room, under a shaft of light somehow reflected onto the space thanks to the marvel of Qadir engineering sat...nothing. Clearly, the body once meant to be there was long gone, but in its wake it left a large chest inserted into a stone hole on the plinth. As Aamir hauled it out, small handhold shafts on the side leading down to the handholds of the box, there was an audible click. With the box out of the way, Khalid immediately peered down into it to see a pressure sensor device starting to flash red.
He was about to curse when suddenly, the four statues came alive. With a loud rumble as brick and stone were ripped down, the four statues turned out not to be statues at all, but machines. Luckily for the Qadir group, age had clearly worked against them all. The Cobravv machine immediately fell forward and twitched sporadically on its side, unable to stand upright. The Saruhanna Sand Ant machine was sluggish, two legs off kilter and moving at half their normal speed. The other two though, were more or less intact. It was the Thunder Bird that let off the first volley, opening its Brass beak and croaking out a very much degraded caw-like sound before it fired projectiles at the group. Everyone immediately jumped out of the way, a few people crashing into each other as a result, but the two projectiles clattered to the floor harmlessly after they hit the wall. They were sharpened lightning-bolts, made of metal.
Thus the fight began. It was a difficult bit of combat, the Qadir not wanting to damage these unique and masterfully crafted machines too much, but the machines having little to no compunctions about harming them. It was inevitable, but each machine went down, and went down for good one at a time. Even the Cobravv machine had started to crawl toward the fight and had needed a swift smash in the head from Birc's foot to stop functioning altogether. After ten minutes of fighting, the damage was assessed.
Aska was the worst injured, two of the lightning bolts having shot her right in the arm and having to be gingerly remove afterward before a cloth had to be rapidly wound around the wounds. She'd spend at least a week healing before she got her skills and fine touch back. The next group of injuries were Aamir, Korra and Kamaria, all injured in different ways. The Sand Ant had managed to pinch Aamir's foot hard, making him fall and sprain his ankle, a process that would take six days to a week to heal from. The heavyset Phant-shaped machine had whacked Korra full in a chest on a backswing of his arm causing bruising that would last four days while Kamaria had caught one of the lightning bolts in the shoulder, though the wound was not as bad as Aska's and would be healed within three days. As for their standout moments, that had to be Amir and Birc, Birc's kick ending the threat of the Cobravv while Amir had been the one to topple the Phant, though the process knocked the creation's head off. As for the Sand Ant, that had been dispatched by a collective effort after it had pinched Aamir.
Despite their injured companions, the team immediately got down to trying to salvage the four machines. Sadly, they were dismayed to see most of the parts long corroded or sand-clogged, the cost of their age, only collecting six or so components from the machines before they all slowly headed up to the surface. Up there, with the sun hanging low, they found Naajy just about ready to charge into the tavern and go down the hole, but they stopped him. Their journey was now over, they had a complexly locked metal box, a handful of component parts, some gold rings, and a quarter of their group injured. They then set off onto the dunes as the sun set, their shadows long…
In the distance, far away, an eye watched them go. The advanced scope slowly dropped down and it's owner frowned.
"They have it now, sir…"
Another voice replied in a heavy Daendroquin accent, "We'll shadow them. It's only a matter of time until they figure it out."
