215. The Road to Threadmaw Valley
The road southwest from Bristletooth leaves the south end of the lake behind you, cutting through untended fields of high grass and grain. A smaller lake passes on the right, dotted with the outlined remains of the Old Ones’ buildings. The river reappears on the left, the road curving to follow it in an arc to the south, avoiding the increasing density of ruins.
Until, that is, the Utaru road sidles up to the remains of one built by the Old Ones and stops. A hand-carved sign shows an arrow and two symbols. The arrow points ahead, south. The first symbol is the oval of a human face, with the rough outline of a hand across where the mouth would be. The second symbol is a jagged triangular shape with teeth — a Snapmaw. This sign is repeated several times along your path.
It’s not long before the barking gulps of Snapmaws can be heard on the wind from the west. Any excessive noise through this area will draw a pair of reconnaissance machines: one Snapmaw and one Watcher. Stealthing by can be done via a Normal-rated skill check. If you fight any machines and cause any explosions, another pair of machines will be drawn to the noise.
Crossing the Salt River
The brine of the Salt River hits your nose as you approach. It smells absolutely foul and unnatural. One final sign stands before you: a trio of wavy water lines above that same oval face with crosses through the eyes and mouth. It’s not clear whether the warning is about drinking or swimming in the water, but given the smell of rotting fish and other animals, neither seems safe.
The reason for the earlier signs becomes apparent: machines as far as you can see in either direction. Snapmaws slide in and out of the water, belching up their Chillwater containers as they come ashore. Shell-Walkers scuttle around the nests, collecting those containers and packing them into crates. Watchers patrol as the Shell-Walkers hoist the containers onto their backs, before grouping up into semi-regular convoys across the bridge to the south.
The bridge across the river is ancient and crumbling. Shiny metal glints in the sun where it’s been buttressed by the machines to support their weight. They have not done a very thorough job, however, as the machines line up to walk single-file along a path which looks like it will fall into the water at any moment.
While there are no patrols across the bridge, you must still spend time observing the convoys to get a sense for when is safe to cross. Resolve a test of your Observation skills against Normal difficulty. If you succeed, the next skill test, against your Stealth, is at Normal difficulty. Otherwise, the Stealth test is against Moderate difficulty.
If you fail the Stealth test, resolve an encounter against one Watcher and two Shell-Walkers. As before, any explosions or other significantly loud noises will draw the attention of two additional Snapmaws. The Shell-Walkers are only carrying Chillwater in their containers, which can be looted if not destroyed.
An ancient road
The far side of the bridge finds another sign and the divergence of the roads. On the left of the sign, a familiar oval face points down the Utaru road. To the right, the hexagonal shape of a Shell-Walker container and the S-curve of a Watcher point down the too-straight ancient road.
The Utaru road is barely more than a footpath, and seems to have never seen the wheel of a cart. It also parallels the ancient road, always keeping it in sight. The reason becomes clear after a few minutes: the river doubles back toward the roads, putting you with Shell-Walker convoys to your right and Snapmaws to your left, but each just far enough away to keep you out of sight.
The roads pass by another lake, this one with only a few Snapmaws which are easily avoided. Just past it, the ancient roads form a land-bridged intersection with an even larger road running west-east, curving down to southeast. The convoys follow the southeast path onto the larger road, while another Utaru sign points you to continue south along your own road. This sign has new shapes pointing to the east: the jagged rectangles of ancient ruins, beneath the angled and taloned lines which might represent Glinthawks or Stormbirds.
The road leads through the heart of a mid-size Ruins, before crossing another winding river with a crumbling bridge. This river, fortunately, lacks the machine presence of the last.
You almost miss it as you’re used to the pictograph signs, but one last sign marks your path. This one, in weathered but legible text carved deep into the wood and painted in Utaru gold and black, reads “Southtap”. The large text is accompanied by an arrow pointing west. Below that, an arrow to the southeast points to the barest hint of a footpath, and is labeled “Threadmaw”. The reverse of the sign says “Plainsong”, boxed in by wavy lines below and to the right, clearly meant to show this as the corner of the region.
Here, at the limits of Plainsong, the Southtap is barely more than a creek winding around sandbars, far from the frothing whitewater you saw in Tapwash. The ancient bridge across it stands, barely, with fading yellow paint marking the safest path of traversal.
Once across, the trail through the grass is marked by a half dozen logs and branches. In two piles, roughly arms-length apart, they point southeast, away from the ancient road. No further indicators are given, but the ground has something of a divot that may have been an ancient creek bed. It leads into an old-growth forest, the canopy dense overhead.
An hour later, the bright lights of Glinthawks can be seen through the trees crossing the horizon in each direction. Another hour after that you begin to hear the clatter of machines following the same path along the ground. The trees thin out, revealing an arrow-straight road of the Old Ones — one of the larger ones, split by tall grasses down the middle. Convoys of Shell-Walkers and Behemoths trundle slowly in both directions, escorted by Watchers.
The ancient road had bridges across the creek bed, one to each side. Only the nearest one remains, the farther lies in rubble across the creek. The collapse seems like it may have been in the past few years, as the grasses of the creek bed have not yet overtaken it, and scattered machine parts can still be seen pinned under debris.
The convoys are not frequent, and the Glinthawks are quite regular. Resolve a Stealth skill test at Easy difficulty to get under the first bridge and over the remains of the second without being noticed. If you fail, resolve an encounter versus two Watchers, one Shell-Walker, and one Behemoth. If you’d like the extra challenge or parts, you could easily attract a Glinthawk or two if you want.
Hours later, the creek bed dead-ends into another, this one clearly carved out by the Old Ones and lined in grass-eaten flat stone. Three crude but deep grooves carved into the far stone wall form the vague shape of an arrow, pointing forward out of the creek and on the same southeast heading. Only a few hundred paces beyond that, past the outlines of long-gone buildings, another road of the Old Ones heads due south. Again, a too-convenient collection of logs by the road indicates that you should follow it.
Not even an hour later, the road leads through the middle of a small Ruins. Seeing no machine activity, or signs you should detour around, you decide to head straight through.
The Old Ones would have referred to these ruins as Prague, OK, US.
You’re barely a hundred steps past the first flattened building when you notice the light coming from a semi-intact structure. The lights seem to be the orange flicker of firelight, not the artificial blue or red of most machines.