Field Journal — Entry #001
Dr. Bob Voss
Expedition Beta-69 | Subsurface Level 3 | Unnamed Desert Site
Image courtesy of Pexels
They don’t match any known script.
Not Cuneiform.
Not Shrata
Not Elamite.
Nothing I’ve ever seen in all my years of exploring..
Unusually, these towering pillars hum a low, almost imperceptible vibrations that ripple through the stone and into my bones.
Whatever built this place wasn’t human.
The carvings on the pillars show tiny monkeys in intricate poses.
My first thought was folklore, but Barbara identified it immediately: the Grokette, surely the Grokette!!! a sign that we were near our target. Grokette is the ancient ritual dance where monkeys offer bananas to their masters, then kneel in submission receiving their masters well earned pat.
While I’m glad to finally see the Grokette carved in stone, there’s something about these images that unsettles me.
This isn’t just myth anymore..the Grotor Book of the Elements is proving itself as real history once again.
But even so… there’s something darker lurking beneath the surface.
Barbara’s sensors spike again. She says she can feel the artifact’s power, but it’s fractured, weak... distorted.
Normally her detection is razor sharp, a beacon in the darkness. Here? It’s like the temple itself is fighting her, suppressing every pulse. the monkey's protecting their long gone masters.
A beetle crawls across the cracked floor a trivial thing, except for the shadow it casts. To any casual observer, it’s nothing unusual.
But Barbara notices something off.
The shadow of Ra the sun god falls in the exact opposite direction from every other shadow in this chamber...but not the beetle, it's shadow casts to the east.
The artifact lies hidden here, somewhere in the temple’s silence and some how the shadow of this beetle holds the key.
END - Field Journal — Entry #001
