Shadows of the Past

You think long about where you wish to go and finally pick the compound of the warriors of old. Great things might still be hidden there and some animals lurking in these halls seem not as scary as whatever spirits might infest the other locations. The others seem a bit relieved when you announce your goal to them, especially Mahuizo, who looked as if he would change his mind and forbid you from going out at all when you inquired about the palace and the catacombs.

Under the watchful gaze of him and Manauia, you carefully cover yourself with the dose of Jungles Scent so that the beasts luring there will not be too easily aware of your presence. Then your dagger receives a coating of a much less benign kind. Curare is used by the hunters quite often due to its effectivity and yet handled with great care for the same reason. The poison itself you had prepared some days in advance, but it must applied fresh to be useful and so you have to endure Manauia watching you like a hawk for the slightest mishap.


Considering there are a few hunters who have keeled over minutes later when they messed this up, it's probably her weird way of showing that she does care about your fate when she insists on a short refresher on the animals whose tracks she found in the area and thus holding you back a while longer. Soon though, all excuses are exhausted and everyone goes their separate ways. Mahuizo and Atl go back to harvesting some more herbs, while Manauia disappears to do whatever she does that nobody is supposed to see. You? You go on the walk that you seem to have waited for your entire life.

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The compound is rather well-preserved, all things considered. Legends speak of the bright colors of Cualli cities and how even simple homes were adorned with stunning frescoes which were painted in vivid colors. As you approach the building, though, all you can see is more weathered stone, and only the carvings themselves standing as silent witnesses of what was here long before your time. Moss and lichen haven taken their toll like on all other buildings. and were it not two stories higher than all the others around it, it would not look overly remarkable. A sturdy wall encircles the whole compound and where others crumbled, this one stood against the gnawing tooth of time just fine. You idly think about just climbing it by using the growth on it as footholds, but it is rather high and without a good place to climb back down. You just might get stuck there. Atl would never let you hear the end of it.

So you carefully approach the building that has the only entrance to the walled area. Two large statues flank the empty doorway, though from one of them only the feet and calfs remain. The other still bears his shield with pride, though the moss covering it makes any marking on it invisible. His headdress is made to look like an eagle and carefully-chiseled feathers trail down from his head over the entirety of his elegant armor. What weapon he once bore, you cannot tell. The outstretched arm that should have held it is missing its hand. As you tear away your gaze from the statue, you look into the dark interior of the building. Once, you would have ignited the torch you have with you without a thought, but now you know a lot better. It's not too dark to see in there once your eyes have adjusted, and a torch would be a dead giveaway to anyone, or more likely anything, that would try to find you.


You would like to think that you are silent as a ghost as you carefully skulk around the corners, but you rather trust your eyes to see danger approaching than hoping none is there. On every doorway you pause for a bit and listen closely before looking around the corner to see if truly nothing is there. So far, that's sadly true. The rooms you find are empty save for a few piles of dirt, grime, and the few plants living on them. After a while, though, you find a stairway upwards and eagerly climb to the very top. If nothing else, you will get a good view of your surroundings from up there. The first few rooms are just as boring as the last, but then you find something quite extraordinairy.

With slow steps, you enter a great hall. The left to you is nearly open to the outside, with great arches letting in the sun and offering a great view on the entire city over the ferns that haven taken residence on the floor. The room is taken up by row upon row of stone benches with a raised dais on the opposite end of the room from where you entered. The best part is the wall to your right. Protected from the sun and rain, the fresco on it looks outright pristine compared to all you had seen before. The paint is still flaking off and probably bleached out, but its still there. You can still see the colors it was once meant to have.

And what scenes it shows! Row upon row of warriors in their armors stand on these pictures side by side. You recognize the armored statue you had seen at the entrance and have to see that it was not nearly as dull brown as you imagined. The feathers are shown in vivid colors. Most warriors have green feathers, some with blue mixed in and only a few sport a coat of nothing but deep blue and red. They fight grand battles against weird people who hide their face beneath cloth on some yellow ground with no tree in sight. Strange birds soar above them, raining down arrows on their enemies, and a mighty priest behind their lines that seems to call down the wrath of the spirits or gods of old. You greedily drink in every little bit of the painting. Your hand idly trails over the wall as you imagine who these men might have been. Who their enemies were. How it would have been to stand beside them and see the strange place they fought in.

Your hand gets caught on something and you at first assume it to be a crack in the wall, until you look closer. Silently you take a step a back at the image carved beneath the fresco. A human skull was hastily hammered into the wall with no care or skill, but what looks like a lot of desperation. Beside it are letters written, but while you recognize them as such, you have no idea what they might mean. Was it a warning? A last desperate message from the defenders of this city as the spirits' wrath struck them down? The exhilaration of having found this place drains out of you far too quickly as you remember where you are—the ruins of an empire that died long before even your father's father was born. You would never get to see the events depicted here to unfold before your own eyes, for all they were showing, all they stood for, has lain dead and crumbling for untold years.

With somber thoughts you walk over to the only door leading out of the hall, back near the dais, and into another small room. This one looks rather plain again, with a rotten desk of wood still recognizable in the pile of dirt and plants in the center, but it has a window out into the courtyard that you quickly use to check what is there. After a large open space comes another building with two stories that is surrounded by long a series of long and narrow buildings which enclose a total of eight smaller courtyards. The plants stand rather high there, but not enough to really hinder you from venturing further. You stand and watch a good long while, but nothing seems to move down there. So much for the expected cavalcade of wild animals trying to make your their next meal it seems.


As you turn to leave, something catches your eye. You nearly dismissed it as a trick of the light, but then bow down and gingerly run your hand over the dirt. As you push against it, a tiny sun rises from the muck and shines into your face.
You catch yourself just in time from whooping in joy as you pull the little thing out of the dirt. Carefully you brush the grime away as it lays in your hand and you are certain that his journey was worth it for this treasure and the things you saw.

It is in good spirits that you go back down the stairs, yet it seems as if you are not allowed to remain happy too long today. As you peek out around the last turn of the stairs before being back on the ground, you spot something standing in the dark. It's a mangy wolf and a rather young one at that, but something is off about it. It stands far too calm and rigid and for an animal. It would actually give a good impression of a statue.


You have just picked up the weird gleam on the side facing away from you that made it look as if the wolf is bearing a tiny torch on his other side when something rustles deeper in the building. The wolf turns and you have suppress a gasp. The left half of its face is just gone. Torn away right down to the bone.

The left eye is just an empty socket with maggots squirming around in it, tiny insects that glow an eerie orange hue crawl over its flesh and with a start you see one of them bore right through his skin. A tiny bulge under its flaking pelt makes you realize that its crawling beneath its skin. In its flank, huge holes were torn or more likely eaten. You can look right inside its body and see more of tiny insects crawling and maggots squirming over its clearly visible ribs. There is nothing where its organs should be and it seem its skin is just a hollow shell, kept in place by strings of black material that look like tent poles keeping the skin aloft where no flesh is beneath to do so anymore.

Yet despite this horrific damage, the wolf moves just fine! The pelt that is left is even moving normally as it moves around. Were it not for the holes in its side, you could mistake it for a perfectly normal wolf. Just now you notice the dull buzzing coming from it and the insects flying away from it just to return after a moment.

Whatever had made that sound, the wolf was no longer interested in it. It turns around to face the entrance and only exit to the compound again. You somehow got the feeling that it has a lot of patience to wait for whatever it is looking.

What do you do?
[] Try to distract it and flee.
-[] Write-In how.

[] Try to find another exit on the second floor.

[] Try to sneak past it and deeper into the compound. It will hopefully be gone when you return.

[] Write-In

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AN: Congratulations on your first treasure. It's even a nice one. Don't mind the guard dog.