Xianyin - the body!

Gam Saan Mine - Xianyin(#17151RM)

	Welcome to Xianyin. The Grey Maze. The Necropolis of the Lost. Essentially, a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. This city of the dead is modeled on the Qin capital Xianyang, divided into inner and outer cities. The circumference of the inner city is 2.5 km (1.55 miles) and the outer is 6.3 km (3.9 miles). The central tomb is located in the southwest of the inner city and faces east. The main tomb chamber housing the coffin and burial artifacts of the Lost Emperor is the core of the architectural complex of the mausoleum.

	A garrison of terracotta figures stands silent sentinel at the entrance to the outer city, locked in precise military formation according to rank and duty, in eternal vigil facing east. The figures vary in height according to their roles, with the tallest being the generals. The figures include warriors, chariots and horses.

	Standing similarly sentinel on the periphery of the inner city is a group of other terracotta non-military figures including officials, acrobats, strongmen, and musicians.

	In the very center and heart of the inner city is the Lost Emperor's tomb itself, surrounded by a lifeless garden maze where two large Imperial Guardian Lions, or Shishi (a traditional Chinese architectural ornament typically made of stone), stand watch at the mouth of the maze that leads to the tomb. The lions are presented in pairs, a manifestation of yin and yang, the female representing yin and the male yang. The male lion has its right front paw on a type of cloth ball carved with a geometric pattern. The female is essentially identical, but has a cub under the left paw, representing the cycle of life. Symbolically, the female lion protects those dwelling inside (the living soul within), while the male guards the structure (the external material elements).

	*** PLACES CONFIGURED ***
Contents:
Kokoro
Mr. Fu(#17798)

	*** Nightzone ***

Obvious Exits:
  Mine Shaft <MS>

	Mr. Fu watches as MoGui departs, but not before extending a blessing to the dhampyr. Anyone with any modicum of awareness would sense the little dragon's magic at work as he blesses Mo with the gift of Spirit SIght. "Don't wander too far in," mutters the dragon as he makes himself comfortable at the base camp. "And please handle any artefacts you recover with care."

Kokoro seemed for the most part oblivious when it came to the dragon's mystical blessing. Either paying so much attention to something else as to have missed it or, perhaps, having so little in the ways of magical awareness that she simply wouldn't have noticed to begin with. Off to a great start.

	The necropolis grows darker the further the pair get away from the base camp. They're on some sort of dimly illuminated path for now but without see-in-the-dark or some other source of light, they'll be at a loss for visibility soon enough. Mo looks over a shoulder, pausing as their environs grow darker. "You have ghost-flame, by any chance, or am I gonna go with Plan B?"

"I do, aye. Though I've only honed it enough to get myself by at the moment." She admitted, following which she gave example by drawing in a deep breath, closing her eyes and, with a centering exhale, gathered the vigorous energies that most suffused her body and focused it around her eyes and mouth. The infusion of the rampant energies of yang turning the latter portion of her exhalation into vividly red flames that flickered and licked at the air while when she opened her one good eye it had been overlayed by what to all the world seemed an eye of pure fire. It would. . . perhaps shine light enough forward to give MoGui something to see by as well, though assuredly it was a power of a more personal persuasion.

	Mo smiles when Kokoro sparks up her goblin-face with the shade-time flames of yang! His hands then come together in an appreciative clap of delight. "Outstanding!" exclaims the dhampyr, and then he draws closer to Kokoro to take advantage of her light-source. "I guess you'll be the caller for this little sortie." He then falls into step beside her, one hand reaching for his golden luopan and flipping the lid to the small compass-like device open. "I'll guide us with my luopan, yes?"

Kokoro smirked, the sight a good bit more frightful than it was even normally with those flames still burning from her mouth. Though considering Mo's disposition thus far he may very well have found the sight amusing. "Hah. That works for me." She agreed readily to both of his delegations. "Let's get this show on the road, then. Yeah?" She queried, though presuming the Dhampyr had no preparations of his own to make that he wished to stop her to complete the woman had already started to march on once more.

	Mo had his revolvers, and his messenger bag. Apparently? That was all the youth felt was necessary for an initial delve into the other side of the outer city. The path is faint. Uneven. And descending deeper into the earth. Descending further into the darkness. This will become apparent soon enough, as suddenly, they no longer see a path. Or a room. Or a cavern. They merely ... see. To the extent to which the goblin-flames lick out and illuminate a small patch of space, the rest of everything around them? Is just DARK.

The light cast by Kokoro's Goblin-Face, slowly trace back and forth across the path as, even with its ability to grant her own eyesight enough of a boon to see in pitch darkness, she finds herself as limited to the rays of light cast by her mouth and eye as her companion on their journey into the depths of the necropolis. And that, indeed, is enough to have the woman stepping forward with more caution, the light from her eyes narrowing as she looked on with confusion. "Stick close. . . I'm definitely starting to see the why you were taking your time getting through this place. . . or rather, I'm getting to not see it. I've never had issues with the dark after I was taught this technique."

	"I haven't learned to summon the ghost-flames yet, but it's on my li-" Mo said before suddenly going quiet. He'll lower the volume of his voice a little, glancing down at the faintly luminescent markings on his luopan. Brow furrowing, he shuts his eyes for a moment, stopping in his tracks and reaching out to keep Kokoro close. "Hnh. Does that sound a little funny to you?"

	Mo strains to listen. "Sounds like ... water?"

"Water. . .?" She questioned, straining her ears to hear whatever trickle, at least hopefully it was a trickle, Mo had picked up on. Her gaze sweeping the area once again to try and at least give the man more of a chance to catch sight of what he'd heard. She definitely wasn't having luck on that front so far.

	Mo nods. "Definitely water. Or whatever passes for water down here." Looking back to the luopan, he re-orients Kokoro's bearing. "Ok, thataway. Let's go."

Kokoro ended up taking Thomas' word for it, which, perhaps surprisingly, didn't seem to be something she had any real issue with doing despite how standoffish an impression she gave off. Once pointed in the right direction the woman carred on forward. Illuminating gaze focused true, all the while thinking somewhere in the back of her mind that she was never really going to get used to the sensation of having a warm eyeball.

	 Oh well, at least it didn't hurt anything.

	As they change heading, they will indeed begin to hear a growing rush of water - or whatever passes for water in the place - but with the limited visibility from Kokoro's ghost-flame, the source of the sound was not yet evident. Yet. Then something comes into Kokoro's ghost-flame view! A corpse! Or the remains of one, the flesh long since sloughed off, leaving nothing but a pile of bones, and a small knapsack.

Kokoro didn't normally mind deceased company, though personally she preferred it when they could talk. . . then again she knew enough to not -quite- discount the possibility of the dessicated remains possessing just such an aptitude. Whatever possibilities it held, though, something it didn't provoke was any real concern from the woman. Caution, certainly, as she took a moment to sweep the body for any probable cause of death from afar before indeed checking what area was visible around the fallen person for any other hints. "Progress, at least." She muttered. "Hopefully we make more than this one did."

	The skull looks like it was subjected to blunt force trauma, on top. Other than that, the remains look largely undisturbed. A nod from Mo. "Too right, let's see what they left behind eh?" And then the reckless youth is making to reach for the knapsack by the remains.

Kokoro stepped forward alongside Mo, personally not seeing any reason to stop the man. Afterall, it wasn't like the corpse had corpsified itself by bashing its own head in with its gear. . . hopefully not, anyway, that'd just be disturbing. And besides, she was certainly curious to see if the dearly departed had died going into the inner city or if something had caught it coming out, the contents of the bag could very possibly answer that.

	Mo reaches down to snatch up the bag, and then there's a sound!

	Something's about to crash down atop the knapsack. And Mo! Kokoro's got enough body awareness to feel the incoming projectile before it strikes and can easily sidestep.

	Mo is blissfully unaware, and entirely consumed with retrieving and examining the contents of the knapsack. "Man, looks like this fella's skull got bashed in, eh?"

"Get back!" Kokoro barked once she felt the impending possible doom from above crashing down towards them, the woman herself taking a swift step aside, her gaze immediately flicking up to try and illuminate whatever was coming down, both to give Mo whatever extra forewarning she could while also getting a good luck at what was about to hit them!

	Mo blinks at Kokoro's warning. "Wha?" Then the dhampyr looks up at a rather large stalactite falling from the darkness. Right at him. He pulls the knapsack free from the corpse and tries to sidestep.

	The youth manages to step out of the way - barely. The falling rock flies dangerously close to the youth as Mo's foot catches on one of the corpse's bones, sending the youth tumbling backwards and away from the crashing impact!

	The remains that littered the ground? The bones are now *pulverized* into an ashen powder by the falling rock. CLOSE. CALL.

"I'm starting to understand why this place doesn't get a lot of visitors. . ." Kokoro observed mostly under her breath as she looked at what remained of what had already been remains. Her attention swiftly turned towards Mo, the woman taking some purposeful steps over to him and kneeling down to inspect the youth. "You uh. . . you doing okay there, buddy?"

	Mo gives a smile, coughing and waving a hand to scatter the cloud of pulverized bone ash that the crash generated. "Oh, yeah. Totes ok. I got the knapsack!" He raises the knapsack into the air triumphantly, then huddles close to try and take advantage of the ghost-flame, "Let's look inside, yeah?" Off in the distance, they can still hear the everpresent rush of "water".

Contrary to Mo's needs, Kokoro briefly glances up in the direction of the water, something about it seeming to beg her attention. Not being able to put a finger on why, however, she promptly looked back down again and instead gave into her more easily sated curiosity. They'd almost become paste to match the corpse's dust. May as well find out what they'd gotten out of it, yeah?

	Mo holds the knapsack up to Kokoro's face a she opens it, the better to get a gander of the contents inside! A beetle will crawl up and out of the bag first, black and shiny and clackety-clickety before the insect falls to the ground and makes tos curry underneath the pile of rocks and bones and ash.

Kokoro pulled her head back as the bag was opened and a beetle made its way out, namely to make sure that if it was of the pinchy variety she wasn't going to suddenly have an extra accessory on her nose. Then, scowling a bit, she'd lean forward again, though not quite as close as she'd been before. "Okay, either we find a torch or I'm making one first chance I get. I'd like to cut down on the whole having dead people's possessions opened in my face."

	 And here she'd only tried it the once. Some people were just finicky, it seemed.

	Inside the knapsack? Two things. One, wrapped in cloth, is a small jug. Made of brown glass, it holds some sort of liquid, as evidenced by the sloshing sounds it makes when jostled. Two, an unopened pack of cigarettes, marked as "LUMINAL KOJO" on the pack. Mo brings the knapsack down so he can peer into it too. "We got some loot!" The youth was easily excitable on his best nights, doubly so when in Lara Croft mode. Endearing, or annoying? YOU DECIDE!

"What we -got- is a hobo." Kokoro corrected. . . though she didn't seem -too- terribly disappointed by that distinct possibility, especially not if that jug contained what she thought it did. And of course there was only one way to find out. Reaching in, she'd take both cloth and jug. After which she proceeded to close her mouth and eye tight to keep the flames away before opening the jug at a decent distance from her face and trying to waft any fumes towards her nose.

	The contents of the jug are scentless - opened up? It appears to be a liquid suspension of some sort. You could almost swear you see little bits of ... light? ... held in the liquid. Like infinitesimally tiny stars. Mo reaches for the pack of smokes and tears it open, pulling a cigarette free. The paper is black. He rummages a zippo from his messenger bag and looks as if to spark up. "Does it smell good?"

Well. . . that definitely wasn't what she was expecting. Opening her eye the woman brought the jug closer to peer inside and then found another sense finding something it wasn't expecting. Lights? In liquid? Okay, weird. "It doesn't smell like anything. . ." She admitted with some confusion, then looking over towards Mo to find him about to light the cigarette, something clicking in her brain about the general oddity of the situation that quickly had her capping the jug again and then holding a hand out to try and get the man to stop. "Woah, woah, hold on. Something ain't right here. Starting to think this wasn't a hobo. . . or at least not a regular one. If you're gonna light that uuh. . . do it away from your face, I guess? I don't suppose you've got any ways of detecting mystical magical stuff, do you?"

	Mo was ABOUT to flick the zippo to life, having tucked the cigarette between his lips. But then Kokoro puts the kibosh on it! At her question, his brow furrows, "I mean, like dragon lines, and dragon nests, and such. Places of power." A pause as he sighs and pulls the cigarette free from his mouth, "Objects and 'stuff.' not so much." Then he sparks up the zippo, and sets the tip of the cigarette alight. Holding it away from his face.

	The cigarette takes the flame as Mo burns a cherry onto the tip, then snaps the zippo shut before tucking the lighter away. Off in the distance, the sound of rushing water continues. A sigh from the dhampyr as he holds the unsmoked cigarette between his fingers - but then? Something curious! The smoke emanating from the cigarette? Its luminous, after a fashion. It's hard to tell, at first, because there's so little of it. But as it slowly burns? The smoke gathers and glows like the dawn. Soft light, but better than nothing?!

Well, there was definitely a theme to the objects they'd found. A rather remarkable one, all things considered, or at least that's what Kokoro thought as she stared up at that glowing smoke, its luminous trails reflected in her eyes. "Yeah, definitely not a regular hobo." She decided, then holding the jug out towards Mo so he could get a better look at it, a little shake of it given to stir the tiny lights inside just to make sure at least one of the tiny stars was visible through the brown glass.