Generations (House Item)

Book Text
A report on the massive bones found throughout the Bonemire and one possible explanation for their origins.

Prepared by the archaeology sub-team, Drednever Expedition.

The Overrealm has many remarkable features. Every sky island visited so far by the Drednever Expedition has provided such a wide variety of objects for study. Our team of archaeologists has sub-divided into specialty groups. Our group, led by Drab Dreadful, is responsible for exhuming organic matter. In areas where flora is not abundant, we concentrate on remnants of fauna, such as bones.

It can certainly be argued that calcified bone deposits are not quite the same organic matter as, say, leaves. Still, in the Bonemire, we have many more bones than flora, so our work is never done. Our research is still somewhat confined to the local area of our most unfortunate ship. Though there are somewhat friendly indigenous creatures, our numbers are too small to risk getting into any altercations with the others. Drab packed some camping supplies and off we set. Our task: identify the large bones scattered throughout these islands.

It is impossible to travel to any of the Bonemire's islands without seeing these massive piles of bones. Jutting up from the strangely colored landscape are enormous rib cages, vast lengths of vertebrae and gigantic, elongated skulls. The sheer number of these skeletons is staggering. They are much bigger than any remains we have encountered in our travels to date.

Fixing the age of the bones is usually the first thing a team like ours will attempt. That's because we usually have some idea as to what it is we're looking at. The whole Overrealm is a bit out of our league, so to speak. Traditional methods of determining age have proven useless. Instead, we must revert to ancient methods that are often feature wildly inaccurate guesses. Rather than using scientific process of gasseoodigitating the age of nearby artifacts, we looked for wear patterns on the exposed bones.

Wind and weathering will take their toll on exposed organic matter. Many of the bones were exposed to the elements, rather than buried beneath protective layers of stone and clay. Unfortunately, our team has only recently begun gathering data on the local wind and weather. This meant that all we had to go by was instinct. Did these bones look old? Sure enough, they did. That is hardly the basis for quality scientific analysis. It is a small wonder that Drab went insane.

The first notion we had that anything was amiss with our team leader is that he would spend much of his time staring at a vertebrae or rib bone. Just staring, not measuring or using a glinxiter or anything. Drab scribbled furiously into his journal, but refused to share his research. The rest of us muddled along as best we could, carefully excavating and documenting bone fragments. It went on like this for quite a while.

We were starting to feel as though Drab might need to return to the base for some rest, when he finally stood straight up and began dancing. "I've solved it! I've solved it!" he crowed, waving his hands in the air as though he just didn't care how close he stood to the edge of the island. When he calmed down slightly, he propped open his journal and showed us the painstaking flow chart he'd been scribbling.

"These large bones are the remains of the current droag!" he explained, jabbing a grubby finger from point to point along his dizzying chart. It was colorful and intersected with bold, slashing lines. "Note the configuration of the tails? See the splendid points where the nasal bones fuse together at the tip?" Drab held his journal in front of himself, sighing in ecstasy. "This, my friends, explains it all." We stared at him, jaws dropped. He had truly gone mad from this endeavor.

"But, sir," said Gimber Gearsmacker hesitantly, "the droag...are kind of short. How do you..."

"Size is ephemeral," Drab responded dismissively.

"Without a way to age the fossils, we can't say anything conclusively," I said. "Have you found..."

"These massive fossils are from their ancestors," said Drab, his eyes narrowing. What ensued was a lively debate concerning how many generations it would take for a creature to shrink so much.

Drab remained adamant in his theory. "You are seeking to discredit me!" he exclaimed more than once, waving his journal in the air like a cleaver. The atmosphere in the Bonemire isn't what we're used to. Drab waved his journal so energetically that he stood on the island's edge flailing for a moment before he disappeared over the edge. His research went with him. While we remaining team member don't think these bones are the droag's ancestors, we aren't really sure what they are.