Adventures in Libya, The Talus

[Professor Ali]

Greetings to all my friends,

Something very mysterious happened today in the desert, and my face was nearly blown off my head. It may be related to a new species of supernatural creature.

I should begin by explaining where I am. Hello from beautiful Libya. My new job at the university allows me to travel to perform research. An opportunity to investigate archeological sites in this country has very recently developed. I am sending this message from a hotel, but I will soon be returning to the field. It is only just today that I have been given permission to share some of what we are uncovering.

I can not express how much this country is different as a result of regime change. The most relevant change is that particular ruins are not accessible which were not even known as little as a year ago. The site in particular that I am here to visit was discovered by native farmers a decade ago, but these discoverers chose to keep their find secret from the older regime. The farmers demonstrated incredible discipline in keeping their secret for years, but when they decided the time was right, they leaked the news to specific trusted scholars in the European archeological community. An investigational team was quickly organized, and their preliminary search of the site was very promising.

The initial discoveries, however exciting, were also perplexing. The original investigators were completely at a loss in their attempts to translate or even identify the writing they had found on the ruin walls. Although similar in appearance to Sumerian Cuneiform, the alphabet was completely different. That is where I come in to save the day. If anyone anywhere in the world has a document which is untranslatable, Ali Ufuk translates it. After an initial meeting in Rome, I was soon flying into Libya.

These ruins once served as both a military and religious facility. I could go on and on for pages with many technical details about the site and the writing within them. The short story is this – I am successfully translating the writing. Mostly it is grain contracts and marriage announcements so far, but there are clues which indicate that the ruins date to the late Bronze Age.

It is my hope that this discovery will reveal the identity of the mysterious Sea People. While empires all throughout the Near and Middle East were collapsing, a mysterious culture was raiding all across the Mediterranean Sea. Many theories suggest who these raiders might have been, but know one knows. It is clear that these Sea People brought the military superpowers of the day to their knees and hastened the collapse of civilization throughout the known world. They were only stopped when they settled into a captured Egyptian port city, and the legendary Pharaoh Ramses brought the full military might of the Egyptian armed forces to bare on them in a single decisive battle.

Here is the part that is particularly interesting to the friends of good Professor Lazlo. I was at the village of Asdurf this morning, near the ruins. I was brought there to inspect a particular small statue which was the first artifact to be recovered from the site. It was a small sculpture of marble in the shape of a winged sphinx. The statue was to be carried to the University of Cairo for x-ray study, but I wanted to inspect it personally before it left.

When I arrived at Asdurf, however, I was told by a local guide that the statue was gone. Much to the embarrassment of my colleague who had been intrusted with it, the statue was missing. The archeologist was searching his tent for the missing statue, and the village was in chaos as men and women searched for artifact. Words like “thief” were being used, but I suspected that something else was happening.

I could feel the wrongness. It settled in my stomach. Whenever an unnatural creature is nearby, I always feel it. It feels like biting into a piece of wax fruit, just wrong. I gathered some armed guards whom we had hired from the city, and I lead them to my colleague's tent. Inside the tent, I could feel the wax fruit in stomach. The creature was very nearby.

My colleague told us that he had seen the most amazing thing. He said that he had seen a small white thing running between piles of equipment inside his tent. He thought that it was the statue. He had been drinking as was evident by the empty bottle of bourbon on his folding table, but I do not think he was drunk as the young guards seemed to believe. Then we all heard a rustle as a small creature moved away from the pile of equipment. The young men said that it was a rat, but they closed the tent entrance and tied it shut anyway.

I warned them to be careful, but even I could not have predicted what would happen next. Inside the dark tent, the young men cornered the creature under a large pile of luggage. I subtly reached to my belt and wrapped my fingers around the handle of my lucky hatchet just in case there was trouble. My colleague was digging through his luggage when we all heard that noise.

The noise was a combination of a wail like an air horn and a rapid thudding like a rattle. The young men covered their ears reflexively. I instead leaped away from the noise. After living in North America for many years, I have come to associate the sound of a rattle with a rattlesnake, and the rattle sound of this creature sounded to me exactly like a snake.

Then an explosion rocked the tent. Destroyed luggage was knocked in every direction, and all of the guards were knocked over. It seemed exactly like a grenade had gone off inside the tent. My colleague took the worst of it. He suffered a lot of deep cuts, his hand was very badly damaged, and he was dazed from the concussion. All of the equipment stored in the tent was either shattered or had bits of white marble shrapnel embedded in it. The wax fruit feeling was gone, but my ears were ringing instead.

After I sent the archeologist to the nearest hospital, I spoke with the guards about what they saw. They didn't see anything and suspect that a rocket propelled grenade was shot at the tent from somewhere outside. By the damage to the tent itself, I do not believe they are right. It seems to me that the statue was trying to escape and destroyed itself when it was found again.

I consulted a few paranormal informants I know from Europe. They say that they have reports of similar things from time to time. We have decided to call it a “talus” which means rocks, but we do not know its actual name. These taluses come in different sizes and they are found when the homes of summoners and dark magicians are raided. A talus is some type of rocky creature, perhaps elemental, which acts as a lookout for the magician, exploding as a defensive mechanism. They suggested that my ruin might be the ultimate source of these creatures, but I do not think that such a small creature would remain dormant for thousands of years and then so abruptly blow itself up. My hunch is that there was a thief, one who cleverly switched the real artifact with a talus sometime before I arrived at the village. It may have even been my presence which panicked the little monster so.

The moral of the story is to not touch small statues which do not wish to be touched. Tomorrow, I return to the ruins to search for more artifacts and for more signs of our summoner.

[Ron Caliburn]

So don't trust any small stone states, gotcha.

[Tms3]

Could it be a construct not unlike the Gullem form Jewish myths? if that is the case it could vary easily have lain dormant for thousdes of years en tell what it what guarding was destearbed it which case it was wondering where its master was

[Hannah]

Hey Professor,

the site you were at, did it have any connection to this?

Hannah

[Professor Ali]

Yes, a golem. I can not rule out this hypothesis. I did not feel a presence of magic energy that I would have expected from such a device, but it could have been there and I just did not notice. I will let you know if any matching evidence of golemancy is to be found at the dig site.

Hannah, you are very perceptive but not accurate in your guess. The Garamantes of your link may have been connected but very loosely indeed to these ruins. The Garamantes inhabited Libya between the years 1 CE and 500 CE. The ruins we are investigating are from the Late Bronze Age, between 2000 and 1000 BCE. A difference of at least a thousand and possibly more than two thousand years separates these two cultures.

[Professor Ali]

We had to move our investigation deeper into the desert. The thief who had stolen our artifact had planted, as it turns out, several other fakes in our dig site. We are now 90% certain that we know who did these things, but we do not know why. These fakes have contaminated the entire dig site, and all items found there will have to be vetted and carefully studied to determine if they are genuine or not before they can be seriously considered, a process which could take years.

I do, however, have good news. We uncovered a map in relief on one of the ruin walls. This item is definitely genuine, and it points to a location further inland which seems even more promising. We are certain that the thief has not seen this information as he fled before we unearthed it. We have moved our operations into the deep desert. Although a little more dangerous, we expect great things waiting to be discovered very soon.

It is ironic that far from human civilization, my smart phone has great reception.

[Gotham Witch]

Good luck, Professor. This looks intriguing. I hope no more setbacks or incidents befall your group, but such is the nature of the business.