RPG Blog Carnival – Archaeology of the Sea of Stars

In support of this month’s RPG Blog Carnival “Archaeology and Anthropology” (hosted by the Beneath Foreign Planets) here is some discussion about what lies buried in the Sea of Stars.

Many of the lands of the Sea of Stars are built on, sometimes quite deep, archaeology, when the Sunderingtore the world apart, cities were buried, mountains grew when none had been before, oceans boiled away, the world changed and many cities and settlements were lost not only to the visible world but soon to memory too as the dragons exerted their control and moved displaced people to places where they could best serve, often leaving their homelands and the things that ties their stories and legends to actual places behind.

This means that there are many places to explore, excavate, and recover (or loot) artifacts (in the archaeological sense) from in the Sea of Stars.  Some of these are stumbled across by accident, others by following local legends, and a few archeologists (and even a few treasure hunters) use only ancient maps and old books and try to deduce where ancient lost cities were and locate their ruins through research. 

The dragons, as a whole, are not particularly interested in archaeology, valuable things retrieved perhaps, but the past does not interest them, it is the present and the future that they have their eyes on, so getting financial backing for such exploration will usually have to come from other sources.  Groups such as the Scholar-Wizards of Borusa, the Kingdom of Eosiant, and others are genuinely interested in learning about the past and if some of the items recovered turn out to be useful magically or valuable, that is just a bonus.  Of course, those who are really just tomb robbers with a veneer of respectability will hope that whatever they can loot will make up for whatever the “expedition” cost them to organize.

Though one of the problems of digging up the past is that there are elements of the past that the dragons do not wish to be known, that is, information about the slain gods that ruled before the dragons overthrew them.  When relics of ancient temples are recovered, one must be very careful in how they are handled and who is informed about the discovery.  There are those who are very interested in knowledge of the gods and will pay handsomely for such information, equally, there are agents of the dragons who will stop at nothing to see such information is seized or destroyed, who do you wish to take your chances with?

So, there is information, perhaps including secrets, artifacts from past, and (hopefully) wealth to be found if one is willing to carefully explore the ruins and actually map out and take notes.  Those who simply smash and grab will get less of value and are far more likely to stir up guardians, attract the unbound and have curses rain down upon them.

Image the Palace of Minos, found on Wikimedia Commons and has no restrictions on use.