Secrets Revealed, History Explored
Discovery, Exploration
790
After several years, the town has grown into a small but stable settlement. At this point, Ager reveals the real reason that they were all here. On the highest level of the mesa he showed them the real and true reason he brought them all out beyond the frontier.
For once, Tashi saw something she had never seen before.
Ager was nervous.
Standing on the highest level of the mesa, next to the house Ager had designed and built. The community had helped, of course -- everyone loved Ager, even more after he insisted that a home for everyone else be built before a single stone were laid for his.
It wasn't obvious. Ager had long mastered keeping his emotions and thoughts in check. Strong, exubarant, willful, unstoppable; these were the words his friends would use to describe him. Those closer to him might say he was a force of nature, like a storm at sea.
Tashi knew that usually the only way to have an inkling into his true mood was to surprise him. She knew that well enough, she had spent the first few years of their life together being a source of constant surprise for him. Still, even then when she got a peek under the mask, it was like getting a peek at the sun after spending years underground -- a scorching fire of wrath kept in check by a towering will.
Tashi didn't know where it came from, his anger, but she loved him for it. Unlike so many she had known with similar rage boiling within them, Ager kept his buried deep, wrapped in chains, locked behind fortress gates. He didn't just lock it away though, it was the heart of a forge that drove him to achieve great things.
She had seen that anger unleashed, only a handful of times. Each time, nothing had been able to stand between Ager and his goals.
One of those times, the goal had been saving her from a terrible fate.
Seeing Ager nervous wasn't something she had expected to see. Ever. Especially not here, in the town he had built out in the wild. And on today, of all days!
It had only been for a moment, but she had seen the expression glide across his face before being chased away by a laugh. In the moment after telling a joke or the end of some story, while his listeners laughed. And in that moment she felt her self fall in love with him a bit more.
Even after all this time, he still had surprises for her too.
As he waited for the right moment to give his speech, Ager found his mind drifting back to that first night over and over again. The night after the Scout Auxilary had reached the mesa Ager had found himself at the strange door again. There was something about this door that spoke to him. Not like the beast inside that he kept under careful control. That voice roared with incoherent rage at every perceived slight or attack. Neither was it like his compulsion, whispers growing louder until his head felt like it was about to burst from the noise. That voice was a quiet murmer, and had been so ever since they had reached the mesa with their wagons. It had been quiet for longer than he could remember, and wondered at that for a moment. But no, this wasn't like his rage or his wanderlust. It was almost like a void in his head, sucking in his thoughts until all he could see was the platform and the sigil. Circling the platform, looking at it from every angle, trying to find any panel or button or anything missed by their first inspection. Picking up a small stone, he turned it over in his hands. "I know you want me in there, so why won't you show me the way?" he whispered to himself. Sighing, he tossed the stone onto the platform. It clattered across the surface, the strange metal sounding more like thick ice on a lake instead of metal. The strange pinging reminded him of a fight from long ago, where both sides employed weapons stolen from the ruins they both crawled through. As he turned to head back to his tent, he heard a metallic 'ting' as his foot dislodged something from the ground. Looking down, he realized that the stone he had picked up had hidden a small silver ring. Bending down, he pulled a small metal rod from a bag on his belt. Tapping a rhythm on the the end of the rod he prodded at the ring, letting the rod do its slow work. When it sang its little tune, he picked up the ring. The simple artefact had never let him down in the past, always warning him if something would hurt or harm him in any way. The ring was simple, two bands of metal that twisted around each other. It took him a few moments of staring at the ring to convince himself the two bands didn't shift and twist around each other -- it was only a trick of the starlight. Inspecting it carefully, he looked for any signs or symbols that would clue him into the purpose of the ring. Possibly just an unrelated cypher, left by someone in a previous age. But he had never really believed in coincidence like that before. That, and his compulsion to travel had come back. Skipping the whispers and going straight for a deafening roar, he knew he was going to put the ring on. "Okay. Well, Tashi, hope you still love me after this" he sighed, before putting the ring on his right index finger. After several moments of nothing happening, Ager relaxed a fraction. When nothing happened after five minutes, he relaxed a bit more. "Heh. Well at least you're not activated by putting you on. What about... Hrmmm, okay, let's give this a shot. One, two, three!" And on three, he pulled the ring off his finger and threw it to the other side of the platform and dived to the ground. When nothing happened after a minute, Ager got up and retrieved the ring. "Okay. Well, two down I guess." After pondering for a moment, he lowered himself to the ground and sat cross legged on the ground. Slowly, one by one, Ager worked through his list of numenera tests. As Luna climbed higher into the sky he worked through his long list of activation words and phrases. When Lux peaked over the horizon, he started on mental commands. As the moons shared their light, Ager slowly worked through the list he had built over his long lifetime. Touching, tasting, licking, singing; he tried a hundred different ways to activate numenera that he had encountered in the past or heard of from friends. Eventually, he reached the end of the list. Not uncommon, but a worthwhile start to figuring out the ring. He knew it was more than just a ring. He had heard many stories and legends about how people had found numenera in the past. Stumbling into an ancient dust-filled chamber. Breaking open a stone to find something hidden within. Pulled from the body of a downed enemy. A thousand different ways he knew from experience, friends, and legends. But he had never, ever, ever heard of someone finding one under a random rock the way he had. Sighing to himself, he started to get to his feet. Putting his hand on the ground, he started to push himself to his feet. As he did, he paused and looked at his hand with the ring, resting on the ground. "Ah, fuck it. At least she's safe in the Beyond." He put his hand with the ring on the platform. He realized when he did that nobody had put their hand on the platform until now. Everyone, even the leader of the scout company, even himself had been too unsettled by the platform and the sigil. He was potentially the first person to touch the platform in thousands, perhaps even millions of years. The thought sent a shiver down his spine. Nothing happened for a few moments. After a full minute, nothing was still hapening. "Okay. It was a long shot. I guess you won't open if I wish real hard, will you?" He was about to remove his hand when he felt something shift deep within the platform. He expected the grinding of ancient machinery like he had heard so many times in the past when opening an unexplored ruin. Something that showed how old the ruin was, or how much power lay within. The platform opened in complete silence. It started with the sigil, which despite being made of a material harder than steelglass suddenly flowed like water. It disappeared as if sucked into invisible drains, or like a puddle evaporating in the desert. Once the sigil was gone, the center of the platform started to melt. No, not melt, move. Starting slowly, the center of the platform shifted and folded into itself. Seams formed, outlining squares and rectangles of material that slid, shifted, and rotated seemingly into the remaining platform. Ager couldn't tell if the material was being absorbed, or somehow moving through the remainder of the platform. After a deceptively short few minutes, the last parts of the platform disappeared into the rim of material surrounding the hole leading into the ground. A ring of bronze-coloured material marked a circle nearly as wide as the platform that it had swallowed. Within the ring was a pit with sheer edges that disappeared into the dark below. A staircase of metal platforms sticking out from the wall wound their way down as far as he could see. "Okay, so that's how you open. How do you close, I wonder?" Thinking back to what he had said and done when the platform first reacted. Reaching his hand to the bronze ring, he paused for a moment, thinking about just how weird his life was. Here he was, a nobody and a noble of two different kingdoms, playing about with unknown technology and basically talking to himself. "Yeah, lots of stories for your kid one day, Ager." he said as he placed his hand on the bronze ring. He felt a tingle in his hands, a sign of the power in the ring. He raised his eyebrow at that, the first sign that whatever this ruin was it was not dead. "Well, here goes nothing: close?" Again, it took a few moments but the process he had watched the process that uncovered the hole work in reverse. The platform and the sigil rebuilt themselves. Laughing to himself, Ager went back to his tent, feeling deep in his bones that this was something special. This was what he was here for.
Distracted by one of the staff for a moment, when she looked back Tashi had lost track of Ager. She found him again, stepping up onto the table that had been set up as a buffet table of food and drinks. As everyone had eaten a while ago, only a few empty glasses and plates were on the table now. Standing on top of the table, Tashi saw Ager's trademark grin slowly spread across his face. It was a grin that changed so much depending on who looked at it. She saw the adventurer driven by rage and something in his past to help everyone. Most thought they saw pride and a hint of arrogance, the grin of the rogue who never loses. The powerful saw the grin of a rebel leader, the common man the grin of a hard worker who shared their pain. Somehow that grin was different to nearly every person who saw it. Ager cleared his throat, and the conversation on the mesa died away as everyone turned to Ager. "Friends! Companions! Family!" he boomed from the table. Looking through the crowd, when his eyes met her own he spoke again. "My love. "You have all followed me here, from the homes and lives you had before. We have faced hardships and danger. You have built new homes for you and your families, built the foundation of new lives out here beyond the edge of civilization. I cannot tell you just how much it means to me that even with my reputation. All I can say is thank you, your belief in me has humbled me like nothing I have encountered before." The crowd cheered and raised their glasses to Ager. "But I would not have brought you out here just because this land is new. I would not have brought you out here just because there was nobody here already. Honestly, I don't know why most of you followed me, but here we are. And I'm here tonight to tell you that while there are many ruins and places to explore outside our walls, that's not why we're here either. "By now all of you are familiar with the ruin on the west side of the mesa. Some of you have even taken a few pieces to use in your homes. Looking at you, Jonas!" The crowd laughed. He has them in palm of his hands, Tashi thought to herself, whatever he is about to reveal, these people are his. He is better at this than some who have trained their lives to be leaders and rulers. No wonder -- Ager spoke again, cutting of Tashi's train of thought. "There's a secret I've been keeping from you --" "More than one, eh, Ager?" yelled someone from the crowd, and everyone laughed. Ager laughed, and raised his glass to the unknown speaker. "Yes, yes, you have me there. I am a man of many secrets and mysteries, this is true. I tell you now that most secrets I keep because I have encountered many things in my travels that I felt too dangerous for other people to know about. Sometimes the only way to the world safe is to keep its secrets." "But not all secrets. Some secrets I keep until the right moment. Trade routes and secret paths, who will pay more and who'll sell cheaply; things I kept close to my chest until the right moment. These are secrets I've shared with you, and made a lot of shins." Again, the crowd roared in approval. "This is a secret like a secret trade route, but also like a powerful numenera hidden within an ancient ruin." Jumping down off the table, Ager started walking towards the synth platform. "Many years ago, I came to this land as part of the first expedition to see what the mists had hidden from our eyes for so long. That expedition came here, and built the walls that now help protect our town. They learned how to open the doors we now use as storerooms and workshops. They went out into the wild, and searched nearby ruins to see what they held. The brave men and women of the Royal Scout Auxilary helped lay the foundation for the town we have built, so to them -- a toast!" Ager lifted his glass, and the entire town raised theirs with a cheer in response. "However! However," he continued as the cheer died down, "there is one thing they never figured out." Now standing next to the platform, he lifted a foot and stomped hard on the platform. A few of the nearby villagers took a step back, a little nervous of the platform and what it could do. "This platform, hides something wondrous, friends. The underground structures we use for work and storage are all part of something larger. Each of them shares a common feature -- each of them only goes so far before ending in hard stone or a dead end corridor. None of them contain anything other than empty rooms and drained cyphers." "When I was here last though, I discovered something amazing." Bending down, he placed his hand on the platform. The nearest villagers took another step back. "I learned how to gain access to the rest of the ruin." He paused a moment, before looking up at the crowd. He looked into the eyes of everyone who had followed him here. A handful showed their nervousness, but the rest were filled with a drunken excitedness. "Open" And after a moment, the platform began to fold away again, like it had so many times before as Ager waited to explore what lay below. Stepping forward, he raised his hands to the crowd. Behind him, the platform continued to shift and melt and slowly revealed the hole. "Underneath us is a ruin, but unlike any I have explored before. I don't know if it's a ship, or some buried city. I have not reached the edge and had to turn back. For all I know this ruin spreads beneath all of the Ninth World, hidden to humanity until now. "Within this ruin are great chambers, no two alike. I found a forest, with ancient technology or magic that makes it seem as if you were outside on a mountainside. In another, I would have sworn I walked the coast of a great ocean along rocky shores. The great chambers are filled with wonder after wonder. "That's not all, though -- there are smaller chambers with just as much wonder as the grand ones. Ancient armories, hospitals, workshops, forges, and so much more rests beneath your feet. Technology to make us safe, that will make us strong. "This ruin contains our destinies, and not only in the way you think. We can all benefit from this ruin, and none of us has to set a single foot within. We can send out the call for adventurers. For archeologists. For any glaive, nano, jack, or delve that wants to explore the newest and greatest ruin since the Jade Colossus. Like so many other towns who found themselves sitting on a great ruin, we have an amazing opportunity here. "Those who want to, can explore the ruins. I control this door, and will close it every day at sundown to ensure any dangers stay locked within. Every morning I will open it to those who wish to explore the wonders contained within. And for the rest of us, we will prosper and thrive -- safely, here on the surface. "Like the town that we built in the Steadfast, I hope I've shown you all that you don't need to go into dangerous places in order to profit from them. We can supply those who come to explore. We can feed them, give them a place to rest, build or repair their equipment, or offer them healing when they are hurt. When can charge them a handful of shins to enter the ruins, or require that they share a portion of their haul with us. We can pay them to make areas of the ruin safe so we can make use those areas for our own purposes. The crowd was silent. Tashi saw that smiles and grins and greed was winning out over worry and fear. "So, I leave this to all of you. Do we open this ruin to the world, and grow fat and strong from both those who come to plub its depths and from those depths themselves? Do we send a message to the world, or do we keep this to ourselves? Ager raised his glass to the sky. "I say we tell the world about what we have, and stay safe while others take the risks to make us rich?" The crowd was silent for a moment while everyone struggled to fully understand what Ager had just told them. There was only one way that this would go, Tashi thought. Ager knows his trade far too well. Still so much I don't know about this man and his talents. He still has so many secrets and mysteries for me to uncover. Tashi grinned to herself as the crowd erupted with cheers and shouts of "Let them come!" And how I love him for that.
As he waited for the right moment to give his speech, Ager found his mind drifting back to that first night over and over again. The night after the Scout Auxilary had reached the mesa Ager had found himself at the strange door again. There was something about this door that spoke to him. Not like the beast inside that he kept under careful control. That voice roared with incoherent rage at every perceived slight or attack. Neither was it like his compulsion, whispers growing louder until his head felt like it was about to burst from the noise. That voice was a quiet murmer, and had been so ever since they had reached the mesa with their wagons. It had been quiet for longer than he could remember, and wondered at that for a moment. But no, this wasn't like his rage or his wanderlust. It was almost like a void in his head, sucking in his thoughts until all he could see was the platform and the sigil. Circling the platform, looking at it from every angle, trying to find any panel or button or anything missed by their first inspection. Picking up a small stone, he turned it over in his hands. "I know you want me in there, so why won't you show me the way?" he whispered to himself. Sighing, he tossed the stone onto the platform. It clattered across the surface, the strange metal sounding more like thick ice on a lake instead of metal. The strange pinging reminded him of a fight from long ago, where both sides employed weapons stolen from the ruins they both crawled through. As he turned to head back to his tent, he heard a metallic 'ting' as his foot dislodged something from the ground. Looking down, he realized that the stone he had picked up had hidden a small silver ring. Bending down, he pulled a small metal rod from a bag on his belt. Tapping a rhythm on the the end of the rod he prodded at the ring, letting the rod do its slow work. When it sang its little tune, he picked up the ring. The simple artefact had never let him down in the past, always warning him if something would hurt or harm him in any way. The ring was simple, two bands of metal that twisted around each other. It took him a few moments of staring at the ring to convince himself the two bands didn't shift and twist around each other -- it was only a trick of the starlight. Inspecting it carefully, he looked for any signs or symbols that would clue him into the purpose of the ring. Possibly just an unrelated cypher, left by someone in a previous age. But he had never really believed in coincidence like that before. That, and his compulsion to travel had come back. Skipping the whispers and going straight for a deafening roar, he knew he was going to put the ring on. "Okay. Well, Tashi, hope you still love me after this" he sighed, before putting the ring on his right index finger. After several moments of nothing happening, Ager relaxed a fraction. When nothing happened after five minutes, he relaxed a bit more. "Heh. Well at least you're not activated by putting you on. What about... Hrmmm, okay, let's give this a shot. One, two, three!" And on three, he pulled the ring off his finger and threw it to the other side of the platform and dived to the ground. When nothing happened after a minute, Ager got up and retrieved the ring. "Okay. Well, two down I guess." After pondering for a moment, he lowered himself to the ground and sat cross legged on the ground. Slowly, one by one, Ager worked through his list of numenera tests. As Luna climbed higher into the sky he worked through his long list of activation words and phrases. When Lux peaked over the horizon, he started on mental commands. As the moons shared their light, Ager slowly worked through the list he had built over his long lifetime. Touching, tasting, licking, singing; he tried a hundred different ways to activate numenera that he had encountered in the past or heard of from friends. Eventually, he reached the end of the list. Not uncommon, but a worthwhile start to figuring out the ring. He knew it was more than just a ring. He had heard many stories and legends about how people had found numenera in the past. Stumbling into an ancient dust-filled chamber. Breaking open a stone to find something hidden within. Pulled from the body of a downed enemy. A thousand different ways he knew from experience, friends, and legends. But he had never, ever, ever heard of someone finding one under a random rock the way he had. Sighing to himself, he started to get to his feet. Putting his hand on the ground, he started to push himself to his feet. As he did, he paused and looked at his hand with the ring, resting on the ground. "Ah, fuck it. At least she's safe in the Beyond." He put his hand with the ring on the platform. He realized when he did that nobody had put their hand on the platform until now. Everyone, even the leader of the scout company, even himself had been too unsettled by the platform and the sigil. He was potentially the first person to touch the platform in thousands, perhaps even millions of years. The thought sent a shiver down his spine. Nothing happened for a few moments. After a full minute, nothing was still hapening. "Okay. It was a long shot. I guess you won't open if I wish real hard, will you?" He was about to remove his hand when he felt something shift deep within the platform. He expected the grinding of ancient machinery like he had heard so many times in the past when opening an unexplored ruin. Something that showed how old the ruin was, or how much power lay within. The platform opened in complete silence. It started with the sigil, which despite being made of a material harder than steelglass suddenly flowed like water. It disappeared as if sucked into invisible drains, or like a puddle evaporating in the desert. Once the sigil was gone, the center of the platform started to melt. No, not melt, move. Starting slowly, the center of the platform shifted and folded into itself. Seams formed, outlining squares and rectangles of material that slid, shifted, and rotated seemingly into the remaining platform. Ager couldn't tell if the material was being absorbed, or somehow moving through the remainder of the platform. After a deceptively short few minutes, the last parts of the platform disappeared into the rim of material surrounding the hole leading into the ground. A ring of bronze-coloured material marked a circle nearly as wide as the platform that it had swallowed. Within the ring was a pit with sheer edges that disappeared into the dark below. A staircase of metal platforms sticking out from the wall wound their way down as far as he could see. "Okay, so that's how you open. How do you close, I wonder?" Thinking back to what he had said and done when the platform first reacted. Reaching his hand to the bronze ring, he paused for a moment, thinking about just how weird his life was. Here he was, a nobody and a noble of two different kingdoms, playing about with unknown technology and basically talking to himself. "Yeah, lots of stories for your kid one day, Ager." he said as he placed his hand on the bronze ring. He felt a tingle in his hands, a sign of the power in the ring. He raised his eyebrow at that, the first sign that whatever this ruin was it was not dead. "Well, here goes nothing: close?" Again, it took a few moments but the process he had watched the process that uncovered the hole work in reverse. The platform and the sigil rebuilt themselves. Laughing to himself, Ager went back to his tent, feeling deep in his bones that this was something special. This was what he was here for.
Distracted by one of the staff for a moment, when she looked back Tashi had lost track of Ager. She found him again, stepping up onto the table that had been set up as a buffet table of food and drinks. As everyone had eaten a while ago, only a few empty glasses and plates were on the table now. Standing on top of the table, Tashi saw Ager's trademark grin slowly spread across his face. It was a grin that changed so much depending on who looked at it. She saw the adventurer driven by rage and something in his past to help everyone. Most thought they saw pride and a hint of arrogance, the grin of the rogue who never loses. The powerful saw the grin of a rebel leader, the common man the grin of a hard worker who shared their pain. Somehow that grin was different to nearly every person who saw it. Ager cleared his throat, and the conversation on the mesa died away as everyone turned to Ager. "Friends! Companions! Family!" he boomed from the table. Looking through the crowd, when his eyes met her own he spoke again. "My love. "You have all followed me here, from the homes and lives you had before. We have faced hardships and danger. You have built new homes for you and your families, built the foundation of new lives out here beyond the edge of civilization. I cannot tell you just how much it means to me that even with my reputation. All I can say is thank you, your belief in me has humbled me like nothing I have encountered before." The crowd cheered and raised their glasses to Ager. "But I would not have brought you out here just because this land is new. I would not have brought you out here just because there was nobody here already. Honestly, I don't know why most of you followed me, but here we are. And I'm here tonight to tell you that while there are many ruins and places to explore outside our walls, that's not why we're here either. "By now all of you are familiar with the ruin on the west side of the mesa. Some of you have even taken a few pieces to use in your homes. Looking at you, Jonas!" The crowd laughed. He has them in palm of his hands, Tashi thought to herself, whatever he is about to reveal, these people are his. He is better at this than some who have trained their lives to be leaders and rulers. No wonder -- Ager spoke again, cutting of Tashi's train of thought. "There's a secret I've been keeping from you --" "More than one, eh, Ager?" yelled someone from the crowd, and everyone laughed. Ager laughed, and raised his glass to the unknown speaker. "Yes, yes, you have me there. I am a man of many secrets and mysteries, this is true. I tell you now that most secrets I keep because I have encountered many things in my travels that I felt too dangerous for other people to know about. Sometimes the only way to the world safe is to keep its secrets." "But not all secrets. Some secrets I keep until the right moment. Trade routes and secret paths, who will pay more and who'll sell cheaply; things I kept close to my chest until the right moment. These are secrets I've shared with you, and made a lot of shins." Again, the crowd roared in approval. "This is a secret like a secret trade route, but also like a powerful numenera hidden within an ancient ruin." Jumping down off the table, Ager started walking towards the synth platform. "Many years ago, I came to this land as part of the first expedition to see what the mists had hidden from our eyes for so long. That expedition came here, and built the walls that now help protect our town. They learned how to open the doors we now use as storerooms and workshops. They went out into the wild, and searched nearby ruins to see what they held. The brave men and women of the Royal Scout Auxilary helped lay the foundation for the town we have built, so to them -- a toast!" Ager lifted his glass, and the entire town raised theirs with a cheer in response. "However! However," he continued as the cheer died down, "there is one thing they never figured out." Now standing next to the platform, he lifted a foot and stomped hard on the platform. A few of the nearby villagers took a step back, a little nervous of the platform and what it could do. "This platform, hides something wondrous, friends. The underground structures we use for work and storage are all part of something larger. Each of them shares a common feature -- each of them only goes so far before ending in hard stone or a dead end corridor. None of them contain anything other than empty rooms and drained cyphers." "When I was here last though, I discovered something amazing." Bending down, he placed his hand on the platform. The nearest villagers took another step back. "I learned how to gain access to the rest of the ruin." He paused a moment, before looking up at the crowd. He looked into the eyes of everyone who had followed him here. A handful showed their nervousness, but the rest were filled with a drunken excitedness. "Open" And after a moment, the platform began to fold away again, like it had so many times before as Ager waited to explore what lay below. Stepping forward, he raised his hands to the crowd. Behind him, the platform continued to shift and melt and slowly revealed the hole. "Underneath us is a ruin, but unlike any I have explored before. I don't know if it's a ship, or some buried city. I have not reached the edge and had to turn back. For all I know this ruin spreads beneath all of the Ninth World, hidden to humanity until now. "Within this ruin are great chambers, no two alike. I found a forest, with ancient technology or magic that makes it seem as if you were outside on a mountainside. In another, I would have sworn I walked the coast of a great ocean along rocky shores. The great chambers are filled with wonder after wonder. "That's not all, though -- there are smaller chambers with just as much wonder as the grand ones. Ancient armories, hospitals, workshops, forges, and so much more rests beneath your feet. Technology to make us safe, that will make us strong. "This ruin contains our destinies, and not only in the way you think. We can all benefit from this ruin, and none of us has to set a single foot within. We can send out the call for adventurers. For archeologists. For any glaive, nano, jack, or delve that wants to explore the newest and greatest ruin since the Jade Colossus. Like so many other towns who found themselves sitting on a great ruin, we have an amazing opportunity here. "Those who want to, can explore the ruins. I control this door, and will close it every day at sundown to ensure any dangers stay locked within. Every morning I will open it to those who wish to explore the wonders contained within. And for the rest of us, we will prosper and thrive -- safely, here on the surface. "Like the town that we built in the Steadfast, I hope I've shown you all that you don't need to go into dangerous places in order to profit from them. We can supply those who come to explore. We can feed them, give them a place to rest, build or repair their equipment, or offer them healing when they are hurt. When can charge them a handful of shins to enter the ruins, or require that they share a portion of their haul with us. We can pay them to make areas of the ruin safe so we can make use those areas for our own purposes. The crowd was silent. Tashi saw that smiles and grins and greed was winning out over worry and fear. "So, I leave this to all of you. Do we open this ruin to the world, and grow fat and strong from both those who come to plub its depths and from those depths themselves? Do we send a message to the world, or do we keep this to ourselves? Ager raised his glass to the sky. "I say we tell the world about what we have, and stay safe while others take the risks to make us rich?" The crowd was silent for a moment while everyone struggled to fully understand what Ager had just told them. There was only one way that this would go, Tashi thought. Ager knows his trade far too well. Still so much I don't know about this man and his talents. He still has so many secrets and mysteries for me to uncover. Tashi grinned to herself as the crowd erupted with cheers and shouts of "Let them come!" And how I love him for that.
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