Place of Interest
Description:
More Than It Appears to Be
For centuries, the barren lava plains of Carnon were avoided by all but the most dedicated (or desperate) of travelers. A handful of tribes who hunted the steppes surrounding Carnon would use the rippling expanse of basalt as meeting grounds for ritual combat or purification dances, but it was many years before anyone learned of the strange things that flourished beneath the sterile stone.
Bizarre Hidden Gardens
A section of the Carnon lava plains appears to be a long and regular series of furrows, as though some great power took a plow to the basalt but left it barren. Most are roughly a kilometer long, and measure fifteen meters deep and wide. Some of the furrows have kinks along their length and seem to wind in serpentine patterns, while a scattered few intersect those beside them in short diagonal lines, as though letters in some enormous abecedarium.
The latter was a theory once posited by Timekeeper scholars traveling overhead by aerostat, but the true nature of the Carnon Furrows was realized on the discovery of hatches designed to blend in with the stone around them. Those bold enough to open one of these hatches and go through it found themselves in massive chambers nearly filled to bursting with a riot of alien flora and fauna.
Quirks:
Garden or Accident of Nature?
There are a number of opinions as to the true nature of the Carnon Furrows, with most scholars proclaiming allegiance to one of two camps: the Gardeners and the Naturalists
The Gardener faction believes that an unknown ancient race of beings (referred to, coherently, as the Gardeners) either created or found the furrows in the lava plains of Carnon and deliberately seeded them with life. Evidence that supports this claim include the hatches into the underground chambers (which smoothly open with a light touch in the correct place, but otherwise remain sealed tight) as well as the mirrorichalcum "airlocks" that block off the hatch antechambers from the "gardens" themselves (not to mention the Wondrous "mittens" that rest in the cubical depressions set into the walls of the antechamber, which are necessary to navigate the gardens safely).
The Naturalist faction concedes that the hatches, the airlock walls, and the mittens all appear to be purposefully manufactured objects, however, neither their nature nor their presence near the gardens necessitates that the gardens themselves be constructed. It's completely possible for the so-called "Gardeners" simply found the furrows as they were, and created the hatches, airlocks, and mittens to take advantage of this strange location that they'd found.
In either case—Gardeners or no Gardeners—those wishing to explore what lies beneath the Carnon Furrows had best put on their mittens in the antechamber before traveling through the shining metallic airlock that leads into the gardens themselves.
Dark, Hot, Humid, and Rotting
The first thing an explorer will notice on passing through the mirrorichalcum wall is that the chambers are completely dark. With the proper finger movements, the mittens can create strobing lights, but be warned—the effect can be disorienting, so use it with caution. Almost at the same time as the darkness, one may notice that the best word to describe air of the gardens (which is breathable to most common humanoid species) is "intense." From its smell of putrefaction to its incredibly high heat index, the gardens' environment was clearly designed for the comfort of its inhabitants, and no one else.
Inhabitants of the Gardens
If one translocated a 21st-century biologist to gardens beneath the Carnon Furrows and asked them to describe the primary fauna that dwell there, the answer would most likely involve a lot of screaming, flailing, and peeing of their pants.* The former is a perfectly safe activity in the Gardens—the creatures most refer to as "legbeasts" seem unable to perceive sound in any way. However, the latter two activities would quickly lead to the unfortunate scientist's demise, as legbeasts are extraordinary at sensing heat, scent, and air currents.
A suitably rigorous dissection of these creatures has not yet been achieved by modern scholars, however, tales told by explorers and natives local to the area describe them as being composed almost entirely of long segmented legs like whips, finely scaled tentacles that end in squat ridged claws, and feathery antennae that never seem to stop moving. Living legbeasts seem to be sessile, with each one taking up station in the ceilings of the furrows and never moving from this location until death. (Interestingly enough, while legbeasts don't travel away from their "spot," they do slowly turn in place, rotating either clockwise or counter-clockwise. An especially long pair of limbs held just above the surface of the ceiling thus marks out their territory, a border which newly spawned legbeasts cross at their own peril.
Protective Mittens and Other Safety Gear
Of course, if our time-traveling biologist happened to have their breakdown while wearing a pair of protective mittens, they'd be fine (so long as they were appropriately armored, of course). The mittens seem to masks their wearer's heat and scent signatures, making them almost completely undetectable to the legbeasts. Would-be explorers should be advised, however, that legbeasts are by no means hesitant to use their claws, however, even if their whip-like limbs detect something that turns out not to be food. (As such, crush-resistant clothing is advised.)
Flora, Fauna, and "Other"
Speaking of food, the legbeasts seem to depend completely on the growths of what the locals call the meatpod bush. When stimulated simultaneously by all three types of a legbeasts' limbs, the numerous thorny limbs of the bush contract to reveal a central stalk, which then vomits out a hot, stinky sack of what seems for all the world to be an animate hunk of meat. The "meatpod" is capable of leaping short distances through rapid contractions, and seems custom-made to be a legbeast's ideal snack appealing to its sense of touch, heat, and smell.
When not eating meatpods, legbeasts spend most of their time interacting with the plants, fungi, moss, and other vegetative lifeforms that make up the fecund abundance of the gardens. Though a difficult prize to recover, numerous scholars have made names for themselves by distilling this odd flora into all sorts of compounds.
Adventure Hooks:
Solving the "Gardener/Naturalist" Debate, Once and For All
A Timekeeper scholar named Hebbadon Floon is not only certain that the gardens of the Carnon Furrows were deliberately constructed, but they also have reason to believe that it was the legbeasts themselves who built them. To prove their hypothesis, however, (not to mention repair their somewhat abused reputation among their fellow scholars), Hebbadon needs undeniable proof.
That proof should be relatively easy to acquire (thanks to Hebbadon's...unofficial requisition of a Wonder that should facilitate communications with the creatures), but the journey to the lava plains will be full of peril, not to mention the atmosphere of the furrows themselves. As such, Hebbadon is seeking a group of adventurers to safeguard them over the course of the trip, with payment rendered in advice as to the most valuable types of flora found within the gardens.
War Comes to the Plains of Carnon
While Carnon's basalt plains are no strangers to blood spilled in ritual combat, or even small-scale skirmishes between tribes when times are desperate, war the likes of which has never been seen by the locals is coming. It seems that the Voivode of Bitterburning, the Apodektai of Tenth Wisdom, and the Edictor of Everlasting Light each had a dream of revelation.
In this dream, the leaders learned that if one were to view the Carnon Furrows from above, the pattern they create (when properly interpreted) will not only spell out the location of an ancient superweapon, but also give one mastery of it as well. As the peace between the three nations is an uneasy one, to bring anything less than overwhelming might to the lava plains is to risk one of the other nations decoding the clues first. Now the armies of three nations are headed to the plains, and it's quite possible the gardens beneath them may be destroyed forever,
Those Who Steal a Monster's Dinner Might Become One
In the last decades, a quartet of tribes has formed a more permanent settlement in the steppes close to the Carnon Furrows. Though they have their herds of scriggles and telleps, the land is harsh and food is often scarce. With the discovery of a fracture in the side of one of the underground gardens and careful attention paid to how the legbeasts interact with the meatpod bushes, particularly brave villagers have taken to regularly harvesting the legbeasts' snacks to supplant the bolster the communal larder when times grow tough.
However, it seems that sufficiently hungry legbeasts aren't quite as sessile as everyone thought, and some are now leaving their gardens to search for other forms of sustenance...
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*A more stoic or well-temporally traveled biologist might compare them to whip spiders.