<div class="floatleft">(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v181/Kittenpeeler/Mummys%20Mask/Half-Dead%20city/Artwork%205.png)</div>The rest of the day was filled with a flurry of activity - examining silks from Katapesh (so the merchant says), drinking in the Tooth and Hookah, eating Mystery Meat On A Stick outside the temple of Abadar, avoiding a dogfight in the Tooth and Hookah, getting conned by unscrupulous chicken salesmen, and then some drinking at the Tooth and Hookah.<br/><br/>Come morning, some of our group were already up and awake, ready to hustle out to find who knows what! others were more reluctant, though the smell of coffee thick enough to cut with a knife and the toasted sesame bread and camel cheese coming from below might have spurred them up (if only to have their woes into a convenient wastebasin). After getting it all together, they trudged together towards the eastern half of the city. Here, a great wall separated the living from the dead, nearly twenty-five feet high, stucco and brick, interspersed with stone columns.<br/><br/>The gateway is already open when they get there, a great many footprints (and pawprints) are about. Two guards stand to either side of the portal, dressed in folded linen tunics and kilts, their heads shaved bare, skin glistening with the oils applied to keep away the biting flies that buzz in from the Veins in the cool of morning. The keystone of the gateway is marked with the silver spiral of Pharasma, and as they draw closer, most of the bricks of the wall are adorned with a number of blessings and prayers, in many languages, to gods known and some probably forgotten.<br/><br/>when they step beyond the gate, an odd hush falls on them. The thick walls block much of the sound from the living city, and what sound remains is further muffled by the accumulated sand and dust of centuries. Only the entry plaza has been cleared to any degree, a tall black basalt plinth rising from the battered flagstones, the Ancient Osiriani hieroglyphs on its faces nearly erased through erosion.<br/><br/>Following the map leads them deeper into the necropolis, until even the slight din of the wakening city vanishes, leaving only the dry scrape of windblown sand, the buzzing of flies, and rarely, the squall of a seabird flying to or from the river. The hush seems appropriate, for stretching around them are ruins. Open-faced buildings, doors hanging on ancient, sun-burned leather hinges, empty windows. Once-fine shops and houses now have sunlight beaming through their fallen roofs, at least where they haven't been engulfed by heaps of blown sand. The only life they see are hard, scrubby desert plants growing in the cracks of old masonry, the scuttle of lizards and insects, and occasionally - jarringly - voices of their fellow explorers coming from within a building, or from a few streets over.<br/><br/>The sketched map is easy enough to follow, leading them to the far east of the ruin. There, a rectangular stone mausoleum sits alone in what appears to have been an actual cemetery, rather than just tombs of convenience. The trunks of a few dead trees poke out of the sand around the tomb, and a hot breeze whistles through their desiccated branches. A set of massive stone double doors is affixed to the northern side of the structure, beneath a facade bearing the weathered likeness of an Osiriani man. Unlike most of the buildings with closed doors they have seen, there is no blessing to Pharasma on these. Rather, ancient Osiraini hieroglyphs scroll down from the top of each slap, disappearing beneath the sand that is heaped around the crypt, including those doors.<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">You are here</div><div class="spoiler_body">(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v181/Kittenpeeler/Mummys%20Mask/Characters/placemap01.png)</div></div>