Excursion Log, LD129: The Ruins

Date: LD129
Author: Tam Rykard

Good news! We made it to the ruins the scan tower team saw. They’re real! It feels so nice to be able to stretch my legs out after driving in that cramped truck for a week. Thankfully the Praxis team was really good at helping keep spirits high.

We encountered some weird stuff along the way though. Or, rather, Praxis did, as they went in to secure the areas first. Midway through the drive, I noticed that the sky was getting darker, even though it was midday and the sun was still out. Very weird! And then at some time in the afternoon, we spotted a big pit ahead of us. The pit had a bunch of bones in it. Also very weird. So we stopped and let Praxis check it out.

We knew that they were fighting something, but it was so dark at the pit that we couldn’t see them. They were successful though because after they killed whatever it was, the sky immediately returned to normal brightness.

The team wanted to spend more time investigating but Praxis wanted to keep going, since we had a few more days of driving, so we settled on 45 minutes to check out the bone pit. Meanwhile, I interviewed the Praxis team to get more information. According to them, some of the skeletons in the pit came to life! That’s VERY weird! They were humanoid and were fighting with old, rusted stone and wood weapons, and some of the skeletons were throwing bones. One of them, the leader I guess, was in hide armor. Oh and he had smoke coming out of his eye sockets. Yikes.

More importantly, after the hide armor skeleton was killed, the other skeletons died as well, but then something inside the skeleton came out. Some kind of smoke or shadow monster that was creating the darkness, apparently. Praxis said the thing made them feel sad, or despairing. I asked some of Omega team if they had felt sad when it started getting darker out, but I couldn’t get a conclusive answer.

Anyway, we took samples and got back in the truck. A few days later, more darkness as we approached the ruins. (Side note: it’s weird that the scan tower team didn’t see patches of darkness at the ruins, from their vantage point. I guess it’s only dark when you’re in it?) Since we knew what was happening, we sent Praxis ahead again to clear the area.

Praxis investigated the ruins. Around the edge were a few nearly razed buildings spaced far apart—probably farmhouses—and then six buildings clumped together around a center point, a village square or something. One of them found a box with some ceramic pieces in it which are probably currency. Triangles and hexagons (the triangles with the ends snapped off). Then they experienced some kind of hallucination? But it was real? It was a vision of the past, they think, of an army or invading force destroying the village. But the weapons actually hurt! Praxis managed to avoid most of the danger, but then when it ended, an old rotting door to the northernmost building flew open and there was an undead woman.

She attacked the party along with more skeletons, using the same type of shadowy smoke powers from the bone pit. According to Praxis, it was a difficult fight, as she could weave in and out of the shadows, but in the end, they managed to defeat her. Embedded in her chest was a black crystal which was retrieved and is being analyzed by Maya.

Once the light came back, we knew things were over, so we brought the truck in and are in the process of unloading the tents and research equipment now! This planet has some very strange stuff going on!