Part 1: The Approach
Kûbuk "Cavefinger" Äsúk led a party of 7 through the endless waste of varicolored sands and rocky badlands known as The Desert of Equaling. As far as his people knew, this desert stretched from pole to pole, a colossal region of absolutely nothing but sand, rock, and the ever-present threat of dehydration and death.
Kûbuk thus led the caravan of archaeologists and guardsman from trickling desert stream, to inland lake (though most of these were saline, due to the natural process of evaporation), to hidden oasis, and so on, never straying far from the path inscibed on the inleaf of a small leather book. This journal was once his grandfathers, who had made many similar treks in search of the western mountains and fossils contained therein, and during these journeys had left careful notes of the safest path through the badlands.
"Stop. Trouble ahead." spoke
Doren, the hired guard and caravan scout, and as the party stalled they could see a ball of dust ahead. "Goblin riders! Get low!"
Kûbuk dropped with the rest of them. The caravan sat just below a ridgeline and was protected from view, and the curious dwarves crawled up on their bellies to peer at the passing goblins. A dozen or so armed and armored scouts rode atop snarling beakdogs. Their weapons appeared cruel to the dwarves, whips and hooks and cleavers, but in truth this was merely their prejudice and the goblins simply carried a wide variety of tools of the trade.
You see, most goblin-dwarf encounters involve little speaking or empathy and the resulting lack of understanding is somewhat of a learned behavior, after hundreds of years of total warfare. Though not exactly a misplaced prejudice considering what might happen should those goblins catch sight of the fairly lightly armed caravan.
The dwarves cowered atop the sandy ridge as the riders grew closer and closer, passing by far too close for comfort, before disappearing around the eastern bend in the ridge. Their trailing dust could be seen retreating further, and the dwarves celebrated, talking excitedly of the encounter. Most of the party were newcomers to this kind of adventure, having been recruited from the bookish types who were great identifiers of ancient fossils and artifacts, and much more likely to be found in the stacks at the mountainhome's libraries than trekking across the surface wastes.
The group returned to the caravan and continued west. Sunset brought the dwarves to a sunken oasis, more of a muddy water-pit than anything else, and the group struggled to filter the sediment before drinking.
***
Like this, they moved across the sprawling desert valley for another week or two. They saw no further goblin patrols, thankfully, and the mood was jovial considering the strain of travel.
One day, while passing a slow stream,
Kûbuk called for a halt, and the group gathered round to listen.
"Here, where the obsidian sand of the east meets the white limestone sand of the south, and so too the iron-rich sand of the west, many centuries of erosion and deposition have left buried curiosities. We will dig here for fossils and artifact specimens."
"But sir," opined
Olon, one of the guards. "This world is only as old as the Gods have made it. Why would there be fossils in the ground when this plane of existence was crafted through divine artifice? And what is a fossil, anyways?"
"Quiet yourself, fool. The Gods crafted this world with careless abandon during a drunken orgy. Half of them have already abandoned us - have you not taken a look around at the state of this world? Have you not heard the stories of our forefathers of the rain-storms than brought great explosions of flowers and vines to the desert soils?
Where has that rain gone?"
Kûbuk waved his arms around and shook his fist at the sky during his ranting.
"It was suggested by those researchers before me that the method for creating the ground beneath our feet was much like that of a smith, folding steel to craft a sword. However during this process of folding, another god saw fit to populate the world with various beings, who were then wrapped into the folded god-materiel and crushed, preserved, entombed.... a horrible thought indeed. But how else might you explain the findings of my Grandfather?"
Kûbuk pointed to the leather-bound journal. "Herein lay the notes of his journeys, and the guide to our work in the coming weeks."
"Let us call this place
Cuggánmomuz, "Sandcrypts", and celebrate! Pierce that last keg of rum!"
And so, these lucky dwarves quickly discovered that the desert is a great place to get drunk (softer falls), and most fell asleep sprawled out in the still-warm sand underneath the bright, hanging half-moon.
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Topic: The World Of Bones - Succession World - Ended (Read 30061 times)