Session 2: The Ruin

OOLIN glided to the water's edge to get a closer look at the exposed golden synth. Even from the short distance away, she could see that it was made of some type of golden, hexagonal plates joined together with an amber-colored substance. Tuning her senses to the nanites in the area, she picked out that they had been excited at some point within the past month. A bit surprised, OOLIN could still feel them humming with a subtle energy.

Crash squatted next to a fallen tree and took a gander of the area. Judging by the overall shape of the treefall that he could see, he guessed that the hill before them didn't use to be there. His attention was halted however by something gleaming in the nearby shadows.

Zandoran stood protectively near Ythrinda and took in his surroundings. The water was moving very quickly at this point, and he worried about his charge getting too close to it. Come to think of it, all the upturned soil in the area seemed to be heavy with water and generally unstable. And with the myriad of trees in varying stages of falling, he started to grow a bit alarmed at the natural danger that seemed to surround them.

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Mig and Zippo circle the hill in opposite directions. The surrounding hillside is covered in downed trees, upturned soil, and dirt-caked rocks, making their journey harder than they had perhaps anticipated.

As he worked his way around the perimeter, Zippo found an abandoned campsite, marked by a cold fire-ring and a few fallen logs.

Traveling in the opposite direction, Mig found other places where the golden plates were visible. One especially large section of exposed synth had obviously been smashed open from the outside. From what he could tell, the walls inside were made of the same type of material and composition as the exterior.

Crash poked through the brush and uncovered two metallic insects the size of pigeons. Each of the insects had a small needle-like appendage below its two red eyes as well as a nasty-looking stinger on the opposite end. The golden insects had been smashed by some sort of blunt object and lay inert, the wings of one of them all but torn off.

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As Zippo looked over the abandoned campsite, he gathered that it hadn't been used in a couple of weeks, and even when it had been used, it was probably only by a couple of people. There wasn't any indication that it had been left in a hurry. Going over the site, he thought he was only going to find a few castaway bits of rope and kindling when he saw a patch of white cloth peeking out of the dirt on the fringes of the camp.

As Crash looked around, he couldn't tell where they had come from, though considering they were winged, it was possible they flew or fell here. After handing them over to Ythrinda, she closely examined them and saw that though they were certainly mechanical in nature, they had also once been living. Some sort of biomechanical creature. The stinger was needle-sharp and looked like it might have been used to inject venom into whatever it had stung. The whole wings on the one creature looked like they might be strong enough to support the weight of a person, and she tinkered with the two creatures for a moment and was able to cobble together a cypher.Zandoran kept his eyes and ears peeled for any unnatural activity in the forest around them, but other than the gurgling stream and the birds singing around them, everything was quiet.

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Mig and OOLIN peered into the opening and saw that a smooth-walled tunnel extended into the darkness. It was large enough for a person to walk upright, and two people could almost walk side by side through it. Turning from the opening, Mig continued making his way around the hillock and found the small campsite where Zippo was tugging at something embedded in the ground.Zippo reached down and tugged on the cloth, partially pulling it from the earth and revealing a hastily-buried body.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~