[Quest] What Once Was Lost Shall Now Be Found (Liandra)

[Gossamer]

Timestamp: TBA By Liandra Location: Riverfall and Plunge Pool Bay Status: Closed Purpose: Gnosis Challenge Since the Djed Storm in The Spring people had been hard at work dredging the Plunge Pool Bay and working on the port rebuilding it since the tsunami's hit the interior. With the new dock structures in place and the Harbormaster's Office rebuilt, they'd turned towards working on the bay itself. Many people were employed in the bay cleanup, which was a painfully slow process. Debris had to be removed by hand from the underwater structure of the bay, silt taken out bucket by bucket, giant logs broke up underwater and towed back out to sea. It was a long painful process, but one that occasionally yielded some interesting treasure. Because buried in the bay itself were things some of the Rivarians had never seen before, or better yet things they'd only heard of from legend. For many of the artifacts the dredging had unearthed in the bay were from their Valkalah - the city long lost to them. Some of the volunteers were handing their finds over to Tivan who was a big Akalak of the Antiquities Society. Others were keeping them as mementos for their effort in hauling sand and silt out of the bay making it passable for ships once more. Liandra was there that morning, having decided to give some of her free time, and she herself hauling buckets onto barges to get taken out to see and dumped far away from the Bay. On her fifth trip from hauling buckets of silt up from the bay floor to the barge, she unearthed something unusual. It was a lantern made of Lapis Lazuli, filled with holes and of a unique design. She'd seen some of these in Riverfall. Once lit they cast patterns against the floor and walls from their perforated bodies. It had such an odd design Liandra couldn't tell how it was lit or what it was designed to burn. It didn't look like an average oil lantern. In fact, it was so unusual once she'd wiped some of the grime and filth from the bay bottom off it, she could tell it had a slight glow all of its own.

[Liandra]

Liandra smiled as she hauled the second bucket of black, filthy, slimy silt, up to the surface, toward the barge. She saw several other Akalaks diving down below, and many of them were giving her jealous glances. They may have stronger bodies, tougher physiques, combat prowess, but in Laviku's embrace, she was the dominant one. Many of them had just enough time to get their buckets half full of gunk, before they had to escape for air, and that was in the shallower sections. She surfaced next to the barge, and climbed over the low slung edge, slipped her way over to the growing pile of muck, and tipped her bucket over, her nose wrinkling at the sunpowered stench. One of the blue men, his hair in tight, tiny braids atop his head, shook his head chuckling to himself, "You're making us all look bad ya know? Can I borrow your gills for a bit?"

Liandra smiled at him, sidled over, then playfully punched him as hard as she could in his pectoral. And it was like hitting a boulder. Stifling the pain in her hand, "Only if I can borrow that cute hairdo of yours!" She turned, shaking her hand when out of view, and went back to work. A few trips down below later, she was in a deeper section of the bay, her dismay evident at the coral growths drenched in the black gunk. If her people could cry, she would have right there, her heart breaking. How long would the world be cleaning up the effects of this storm? How long until it happened again? She picked a nice, pink coral growth, looking like a bubble half formed, and made that her starting point. She dug the heavy bucket into filth, dragging it along, just above the normal sand, when it caught on something embedded into the floor. She figured it was just a rock or something, so she set about to filling it up, scooping absentmindedly, until the metal handle tinked against the foreign object. That was no stone! She tossed aside the bucket, began scooping and scraping away the muck and sand, until she saw a brilliant blue winking up at her.

She began pulling, kicking with her webbed feet, yanking, straining, grunting, until finally the sand set it free. Swirls of mud and dust filled the water around her as she tumbled backwards, foot over head. After the water cleared, she looked down in her hands to see a somewhat familiar sight. It was a lantern, much like those that shed seen back in town. But it seemed different... There was no place to hold oil, or light a cloth or anything. She began rubbing her hand over the lamp getting the gross off of it, her eyes capturing the beautiful blue and the sparkles that reminded her of the stars in the sky. Once it was clean, she noticed that it seemed to glow a bit. "Oooo shiny!" She held it up above her head, looking through it into Syna's light, filtered by Laviku's domain. She fiddled with it, sticking her fingers in the grooves, her eyes and digits seeking anything out of the ordinary. If it glowed on it's own, there must be a reason as to why or how? She wondered if anyone in the city would know more about this? She heard people had been gathering items for the Antiquities Society, perhaps they could shed some light on this? She began wondering who made the lamps that were there now. "What are you?" she asked the lantern.