Evelyn: Maybe the construct lost power...


[Timeskip to Expedition!]
[Other]
7420-06-21 Thursday

~

It's Friday evening by the time you reach the closest populated town to the Bassa Falls. Driving is definitely much slower than taking Ingret, and reminds you of when you had to use the trains to go up and down Siana.

Bezel gave you some money from her loans so you could pay for basic things like food or a motel room if you happened to need it, but better to use it as little as possible.


The town of Redgrove is small, with buildings of old wood and stone and surrounded by plots of farmland, and that surrounded by forest.

Probably best to rest here for the night, and continue to the ruins in the morning - don't want to run into any beasts in the dark.

You're riding shotgun while Oliver is behind the wheel, slowly driving around the streets until he finds a small tavern and parks the truck in the empty lot beside it.


Oliver: "What's the plan from here?"
7420-06-21 Friday

Oliver: "Cool."

The team exits the truck and heads into the tavern, and only a short time passes before Valerie collects information from the patrons and bartender, returning to your table to deliver the results.

Valerie: "Looks like all the locals know of the Bassa Falls ruins, no one here knows where it is. The Bassa Falls area has beasts they call 'wildcats', the sorts of things that drag lumberjacks into the dark of the woods and only leave behind bones. No one knows if they're pure flesh-and-blood or core beasts."
7420-06-21 Friday

Valerie: "Descriptions of the wildcats seem to vary though, and it doesn't sound like anyone's literally seen a man get dragged or taken away. People just go go missing when near the woods, and there're occasional sightings of large cat-like beasts. Some say they're no bigger than a man, others say they're as big as a carriage.

I'm not a beast expert, so no clue what that might suggest."
7420-06-21 Friday

Evelyn: "Hopefully they're not weird spiritless creatures again..."

Oliver: "We set off on foot or'n the truck? Think we'll definitely be safe in the truck, but might've a hard time drivin' it through a forest if there's no wide trail."
7420-06-21 Friday

~

In an effort to conserve Bezel's money, the team decided it would be best to sleep in the truck. It's still not quite dark yet, so they decide to explore the town while you sit in the truck alone.


Searching through the forest with Observer, the Bassa Falls are easy enough to find - a rather unremarkable waterfall in a remote section of the forest.

A view from the sky shows a void in the trees, a good distance from the falls. Dozens of hills covered in brush, most of them rather short, with a few noticeably taller than the others.

Bringing Observer into one of the hills, you find it full of stone fragments - old masonry.


Guess that was pretty easy.
7420-06-21 Friday

No monsters in sight - that's good, you supposed.

There aren't any standing intact structures or entrances, just wreckage piles of collapse buildings that have become overgrown with time.


Several of the larger hills have basement structures that are still intact, but it'll take a lot of digging to access them.

Checking the various basements, you find one that has a large sealed vault of sorts that you can't push Observer into - a space barrier.

Weird. Didn't Wendy say they didn't detect any space compression in the area? Though, if it's a just a space barrier with no compression, maybe it isn't detected by whatever method that was used.
7420-06-21 Friday

The sports casters are unfortunately rather combat-oriented, not too useful for archaeology with the current set of magic cards.

Hm. If you could get your TI-Comp rigged to an autocaster with some generic kinetic and fire modules, that'd be quite a versatile programmable magic tool.


Scanning the area and surrounding forests for wildcats, you don't see anything of note, so after a few minutes you decide to return back to your body.


~


It's noon by the time the truck reaches the site of the ruins. You were able to pick out a path barely wide enough for the truck to take, and it's definitely a lot easier than lugging all the equipment with you.

The ruins look the same as they did during the day - a strange array of hills covered in dense brush, making it annoyingly more difficult to navigate through than the somewhat-clear forest floor.


Your team dismounts, Evelyn and Valerie keeping a sharp eye out for wildcats while Oliver and Frederick take a look at the waist-high thicket of thorns and vines between you and the destination hill.

Oliver: "That's a right pain."

Frederick: "Shall I blast it away?"
7420-06-22 Saturday