Mysterious Wreckage
Prompt 2
Prompt 2
Solo or RP Format
Counts as 5 RP growth Points
Solo word minimum is 750, RP post minimum is 7
Rumors are spreading of a traveler who has entered the area. Apparently, this traveler has a strange item they claim comes from a different time. It's hard to believe what people are saying, and the only way to really know what is going on is if you see it with your own eyes. So, you make it a point to travel to where the traveler was last sighted, and as you approach you notice a crowd. The traveler is holding up an object, high above their head, and shouting across the crowd. Some approach to get a closer look, some appear fearful, but everyone can agree...this is something no one has ever seen before.
What exactly is the traveler showing off? Roll 1d6 to determine what strange item has been found using the guide below:
Rolled 1-2
The traveler pulls out a strange piece of metal, warped a bit on the edges and covered with an unknown language. It looked similar to what you've read, and you think you can make out words, but overall it doesn't make much sense.
Rolled 3-4
The traveler pulls out a strange piece of metal, wound around and almost bouncy in nature. It seems a bit sharp on the edges, but in general it looks like it could possibly be some sort of jewelry piece, if it was smaller.
Rolled 5-6
The traveler pulls two strange pieces of metal, which don't seem to go together outside of their color. One is covered in a language that sort of looks familiar, but isn't fully legible. The other is a winding spiral, which is too big to wrap comfortably around a wrist.
Payday! Juno was on his way to the market for some shopping. As always, he was counting every coin that made it into his pouch, dutifully putting away a good chunk of it for savings. He kept this money in a clay jar inside the room that he rented, and counted that ever so often to see how the fund was coming along. It wasn’t that he coveted money -- he just had his heart set on a good solid wagon, and all the opportunities that would come with it. The folks at the brewery had promised to take him on as a delivery man once he could provide his own wagon, and with any luck he’d be able to make it to Sauti in time for the grand market!
He was close, that was for sure. Another few weeks’ pay and he’d make it! With that in mind, he wasn’t exactly looking forward to shopping (why, he’d even cut down his beer-drinking to just a couple a week). But a man had to eat, didn’t he?
Anyway, he’d learned a thing or two about Oban foods; which of them were the most to his liking, which of them were filling, and which of them you could buy cheap. If he was clever about it and took the time to cook in his landlord’s shared kitchen, he could do alright for himself. Why, had even figured out how to ferment honey for his own mead (easy enough, all you needed was a big glass jar with a cork stopper)!
So, that was his shopping list today -- beans, honey and yucca-root, and maybe some of that tangy spice sold by the woman on the corner. What he didn’t expect to find was…
Well, some sort of scene.
A large group of people were all bunched up in the middle of one of the wide thoroughfares. It looked like the sort of group that might gather around a performer, except that there wasn’t any music, laughing or clapping to be heard. Instead the hectoring tone of a woman floated over the head of the bystanders, who murmured and whispered amongst each other. Earthlings of many races (and even one Alkidike) looked equally perplexed by whatever was going on, so Juno gathered it wasn’t just some stranger from Zena or something of that sort. Not that strangers from Zena were all that unusual in a city this big, anyway.
Being a fairly big guy, he managed to nudge close enough to see what was going on. He was right -- the hectoring woman wasn’t from Zena. He hadn’t any clue where she was from, actually -- she looked odd. Was she a hybrid?
The attention of the crowd was on the objects she held out to them. They seemed, to Juno, to be two completely unrelated things, except perhaps for their colour. One was a rippled piece of metal, the other… maybe the same metal, but bent around in a spiral. The woman shouted about how these were from a different time, a time before any of the nations of Tendaji had come to be, and that she, a famous treasure-hunter, had found them in a cave.
Juno quirked his mouth, feeling rather doubtful. Sure, the trinkets were odd-looking, but they weren’t that odd-looking. They looked like metal, except some sort of metal with a warm, brown-gold hue. He didn’t know much about metalworking, but he’d seen some pretty fancy jewelry (and weaponry) in the markets… especially here in Oba, where dressing in your finery was a mighty big deal. For all he knew, there was some way to get metal of that colour, perhaps by adding something to the ore. Anyway, even if it wasn’t something you could get in Tendaji proper, surely suggesting they were more ancient than anything was a bit of a stretch? Tendaji had been a while a long time, anyhow, and if things like this were made in a time before… who made them?
Maybe it was just from a different place. Yael -- he hadn’t seen a Yaeli yet, or all that many of their wares (although he had heard of some silly-looking eye lenses that helped folks see better). Maybe this was from Yael. Maybe it wasn’t from Yael, but some other part of the world?
If there was an island like Yael, after all, why couldn’t there be other secret places? It had taken the Alks and the earthlings in places like Jauhar and Tale some time to even find Zena. You didn’t find new places like that every day, sure, but it seemed more reasonable than this ancient-artifact-in-a-cave business. Some folks just wanted attention, he figured, and there wasn’t any point trying to make sense of it.
[word count: 792]
