58.3

You’ve become accustomed to the gloomy chambers of the arcology and make your way quickly to Silaro’s latest site. He looks up from another etching in the wall and grins when he sees you. “My friends!” he calls. “Good to see you as always. Quickly, come here and look at this!”

You crouch down next to him and see that he has been scraping away lichen from what appears to be sets of lines stamped all across the metal. “I think this is a map!” Silaro exclaims. “If I’m right, this arcology goes much deeper than any of us assumed. It’s spread out much further too! All through the Valley, and maybe even out into the Verdessa!”

You tell Silaro about your own investigations, and he excitedly compares your notes to his map. “Indeed, indeed!” he shouts. “Thanks to your observations, I think I can orient myself to this map. It appears you’re right … the arcology does reach out to the Verdessa. See this route here? It reaches all the way out into that huge forest. There must be something there … too bad the route is far deeper than we’ve ever traveled in these ruins.”

He thinks for a long moment. “But what makes me even more curious is the evidence that they were gone long before the floods. I always assumed the floods wiped them out, but if they were already gone, then…well, clearly the dam failed because of their long absence, so they must have left decades or even centuries before. “I can tell you one thing, though. They didn’t travel overland; there’s no evidence of them leaving through the northern passes. Honestly, there’s no evidence that they migrated from this place at all. So … what happened to them?”

Each Ranger soothes 2 fatigue.