Sidebar: of the Unthalu and the Gates
Sidebar: of the Unthalu and the Gates
Once upon a time, three hundred years ago...
Our heroes found an old place that some call a barrow. A stone archway set into a steep slope leading down and in. The archway has writing on it across the lintel and on either pillar, which Balius believed to be that of the lizardmen. Samus scoffed at even considering that the lizardmen might have a written language, but Balius persisted in puzzling out the strange markings. He manages to get something like: "56th year of King Thahrgahthu, Long he (may) bright/shine/glitter." on the left side, "Gate to Home (of?) Thahguth" on the right side, and "Five House/Family, Five (hearts?), One bright/shine/glitter people (lizardmen?)" across the top.
In time he would come to understand the language more completely. Across the top it reads:
Five Tribes, Five Hearts, One Shining People.
Down the left column it reads:
Fifty-sixth year of King Thargathu the Fourth, long may he shine.
And down the right column it reads:
Stoneheart Gate to Kaguth.
Balius came to know that the lizardmen name themselves Unthalu, the Shining People. Their communications with the noble or priestly caste of that race were strained by time, duress, and prejudice.
Later the group would find more gates that Balius found to differ in the right column only:
Rising Heart Gate to Kaguth.
Brilliant Heart Gate to Kaguth.
Entering the archway led to a stairway leading down to a chamber and a great blank wall. Blank to some, but not to Samus' keen eyes. To him, there was a tracery of glowing lines. Within those lines a nexus. That nexus seemed to call out to a necklace Samus wore, looted from a lizardman noble that he had felled in battle. When the central stone of the necklace was touched to the nexus of the wall, the wall blazed with light and it became possible to step through into another place.
Our heroes never quite got the handle of how to control the gate. The destination was often not what was desired. Perhaps worse, the gate seems to become dormant after being used for a period of about four hours - very distressing when the destination was not a place you wanted to be.
They found there to be a network of these gates - at least three of which were spread amongst the highlands to the north of the Haraivan cities. A map of sorts was found hidden away with the belongings of the deceptive Kiltana Gorkana, who was responsible for tricking the party into working to free the imprisoned being the lizardmen named Zhanthark. Kaguth appeared to be a central point in the network. Three hundred years ago, Kaguth was a ruins and the site of the confrontration that left our heroes entombed in stone. In the current age, Kaguth is somewhere within the city of New Gorkana...
