151. Sparkling Dunes
Even through the trees of the forest, the reflected glow of the salt dunes requires you to shield your eyes as you approach. Husks of buildings and machines of the Old Ones sit beside large piles of pure salt. You can only imagine how tall they must have been, as even with untold years of weathering, they still would dwarf all but the largest Utaru buildings.
In a now-familiar sight, a trio of Glinthawks perch on the dilapidated walls of the old building, rotating through brief patrols of the area. On the ground, three more Shell-Walkers work to scoop salt into containers, with a pair of Watchers doing neck-bobbing laps around the area.
Closing the large hexagonal containers, the Shell-Walkers lift them onto their backs, stabilizing locks snapping into place. Heading toward the Southtap, they eventually turn east to follow its shore downriver, Watcher escorts ahead and behind. The Glinthawks all take off at once, swooping low to pick up the smaller cubes by their raised handles before banking east and flying lazy circles to keep pace with the Shell-Walkers.
Keeping the Glinthawks in sight, you can search the area. The very rusted metal structures seem to have been a combination of trusses and supports, maybe of some kind of watchtower, or a flimsy metal building. Aside from a few amusing artifacts of the Old Ones, there is nothing of value here other than the salt.
Several kilometers downriver, the Shell-Walkers find a broad and shallow segment and ford to the south side. From there, a circuitous route through the hills and forest eventually leads to what at first seems to be just another small gully. The Glinthawks dip behind a hill, and when they rise again they are without their cargo. They, and the Watchers, go into a patrol pattern, scanning the area as the Shell-Walkers unload their cargo.
Using your System Adapter, make a group Stealth check at Moderate difficulty. If you fail, resolve an encounter with three Glinthawks and two Watchers — the Shell-Walkers will remain with their cargo and will not join unless specifically brought into the combat. The forest here is quite thick, so you might also conceive a plan to lose them without fighting.
This area is what the Old Ones called Alabaster Caverns State Park, Oklahoma.
It takes a moment, but you start to pick up signs of a modest ruin of the Old Ones — shaped stones, rusted metal poles from what might have been a fence or handrail. Moving into the gully, you discover a cave leading beneath the hill. While most of the entrance looks natural, the earth has been flattened into a smooth stone ramp, wide enough to admit two Shell-Walkers side-by-side. Colorful striations in the stone walls point upward as the ground slopes down, producing a disconcerting effect on your sense of balance.
The hole emanates a powerful smell of bat waste. If you have not already dealt with the Shell-Walkers, they can be seen moving into the darkness with just their large hexagonal containers on their backs, the smaller containers left at the entrance. Off the main path, the occasional carved stone of human-sized step stairs reveals the continuing presence of the Old Ones.
Making a few twists along the way, the cave descends at least a half kilometer into the earth. The sky and forest break through here and there, and the walls weep gently with the runoff of the creeks above.
In a jarring transition, you reach an area where the natural cave has been replaced or extended with something unnatural. It’s still a cave, but with stalagmites, stalactites, and boulders replaced with worked stone equivalents. Looking at the ceiling, it is an undulating hybrid of some kind of stone or mortar and a wide hexagonal metal grid. It’s also moving: more bats than you could count in a week are jostling for position on the geometric stone and metal. They also drop to fly to new locations, flip in place to relieve themselves, and chatter in infinite conversations.
Looking down, the already-worked floor has transitioned to something resembling a raked garden patch: thin parallel ridges have been machined into the stone.
A steady trickle of water sluices most of the bat waste down to the far end of the room, still another hundred meters in the distance.
Rows of drainage grating take the waste away to some unknown location, while the Cauldron door on the other side is clean and untouched.
Your Focus labels this as THETA-CP19.
If you have not yet dealt with the Shell-Walkers, the Cauldron will open for them. You may follow them in, or you may deal with them here and override the door as usual. This door is different from the ones you’ve seen — as it opens, gusts of cool air push against you. Bats which happen to be flitting through the area are knocked back, and none make it into the Cauldron before the door closes behind you.