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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ConnorSB" data-source="post: 1254259" data-attributes="member: 14273">"Discovery"The beetlepack was heavy against Kel’s small frame, pressed as it was into his back, but the small reptilian man dealt with the weight as best he could. The beetle’s bright eyes lit up the tunnel better than any torch, and the heat radiating from them kept his neck scales toasty hot. With his pick in front of him, he crawled on. He would push the pick forward, find a place to catch it on, and pull himself forward with it as leverage. The passageway was barely a foot high and an inch more than that wide.The rock around him was wet with the damp, and Kel could smell rank mold growing there. He clawed at the wall beside him, and his claws came back black with the stuff. He put them in his mouth. Not quite ripe. He would try again in a week. Things do take time to age.The tunnel wound on for a few dozen more feet, and then Kel emerged into the central cavern. He looked up at the spiral tower that rose parallel to the north wall. The central elevator, recently made faster by its steam-powered engine, was encircled by two sets of stairs, a double helix that rose away from the floor like some grand web. From afar, the steel thing looked fragile, a crisscross of metal struts, but up close Kel knew he would see the familiar buttresses, cables, and ornately carved supports that held the thing up. It was an amalgam of talent: the airy design was elfin, the metalworking dwarven, and the intricate, strong construction was, of course, kobold.The stairway, the whole cavern, was abuzz with activity and sound. E team, the dwarven blast specialists, was just changing shifts. Sooty, smiling dwarves amiably ascended the stairs, waving to their friends from the new shift as those descended. Towards the ceiling, tethered kobolds rappelled down the walls, tending to the mold farms that grew in the highest part of the cavern. So carefully did they tend the mold, that it was not touched by reptile claw until the day it was harvested. Mold Farm Beetles were, of course, free to scuttle across it, leaving their nutrient rich droppings. From their deep purple color, Kel thought at least three of the patches ready for extraction. Purple Proxim, as the mold was called, was a prized commodity. Ground, it made an excellent spice. Cooked, it was a delicacy fit for dragons. A pound sold for thousands of gold pieces, and the central cavern’s ceiling represented at least a hundred pounds of the stuff.Harvest day would be a joy, as it always was. The whole mine would congregate in the central chamber, and as the mold was harvested, bits would be missed, and they would waft down, sparkling in the darkness. Upon a signal, the darkness would be illuminated as every worker released a scarab into the air. They would flit about, gorging themselves on the mold particles. The cave would sparkle like a kaleidoscope, and then the beetles would fall, killed by a fatal reaction between the mold and their stomachs. The beetles would writhe on the ground as the reaction transformed them, bloating their hard flesh with gas. It was disgusting to watch their chitinous exoskeletons break apart. But that night, the workers would feast on their gas-bloated forms. Bloated beetle was a rare meal, and so it was much enjoyed.Lost in his musings, Kel didn’t notice when another kobold exited the tunnel he himself had emerged from.“Hey, boss.”It was Roc, one of Kel’s subordinates and the Vor’tek Mine’s finest tunnel scout. In his youth Kel could have matched Roc, but all that changed five years ago. The day of the collapse. But Kel knew he would need a successor, and so had set about training Roc, a quick study. In no time at all, Kel was Scout Supervisor, and Roc his best employee.“Roc. Anything to report?”“Actually, yes, boss. I found this.” Roc held out a stone tablet. It was covered in fine runes, like tiny spider webs.“Where did you…”“In the far caverns, past the Unstable Section. I could show you.”“No, that’s all right Roc. Was there anything with it? Anything interesting about that part of the cavern?”“Well, there’s a whole wall of the stuff. Some stouts (that was slang for the dwarven day laborers of the mine) were digging a line towards that silver vein the stone swimmers sensed last week, and the found a cavern. The far side was this wall covered with these runes. This was at the front of it, this tablet, inset into the wall, but clearly marked and easily removed. Once they found the wall they went looking for me. I had them remove the tablet and seal off the tunnel, at least temporary.”“Good. Keep it sealed until I tell you different. I think I know someone who can read these runes. They look draconic. Do you have the stout’s names?”“Of course.”“Have them at my office in the morning. Take the rest of the day off.”Roc grinned.“Oh and Roc…”“Yes?”“Keep this quiet. I don’t want anything to happen until I know what that wall is. And tell one of the mold farmers that the tunnel you just came through,” he pointed to where they had emerged, “will be ripe in about a week.”“Yes boss. Thank you.”***Kel took the train into the city. It was a beautiful thing, bent iron cars in the shape of beetles, wheels inscribed with kobold scripture, pushed by eight iron golems cleverly hidden in its bowels. It was primarily a shipment train to bring the smelted metals from the mine into the city, where they could be worked and sold. But it also held a few passengers, and Kel was one of them.The air bit him with cold, and so he had wrapped himself in a beetle wing cloak. The cloak was set with fire beetle eyes. Their heat radiated through the cloak and onto the lizard man. As the train crested the final rise, he saw the city before him.Seacliff, Jewel of the Sea. It sprawled before him, spacious. There were the dual ports, miles to the left and right. Between them, the land rose and jutted out into the sea, a peninsula that ended abruptly in jagged cliffs, which fell straight into the sea…</blockquote>

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