The Old Folks' Home

Many fantasy worlds feature the ruins of a lost civilization, and tend to imbue these relics of the past with a great deal of gravity, referring to their bygone builders with lofty-sounding names such as "the Ancients". On Whiteleaf, with its constant emphasis on social evolution and progressive development, reverence for the past is a relatively uncommon trait, certainly present in numerous individuals and organizations, but not common across culture in general. With the populace of the Empire at large tending to be disdainful of the past (at least those parts of it which haven't been successfully glorified and glamorized by the nation's bards and scribes), sites of historical importance frequently have less than respectful names in the local parlance, and a typical example is the cliffside dwelling sarcastically referred to as the "Old Folks' Home".

Situated a thousand feet above the village of Spiderburg, whose inhabitants are responsible for the name, the OFH has long since been plundered of anything valuable by thieves and treasure-hunters, leaving it as not a valuable ruin complex for adventurers to delve, but simply as a local curiosity. Occasionally visited by archaeologists and archivists who consider it inherently valuable to the cause of knowledge (and who bemoan the extent to which bratty children from the vicinity have tended to vandalize it, even more than the aforementioned plunderers had already done), the city is carved into the stone cliffs using techniques which have been lost, but aren't considered important enough to be worth rediscovering (anyone who wants to build into a rockface will generally think first of consulting dwarves or gnomes, rather than trying to learn anything about an ancient race of humans who likely independently invented a technique only slightly different than these underfolk). Not much is known about the Old Folks themselves, or the Anansazar as they seemingly called themselves, according to a handful of translations from some of the few writings they left behind. No evidence has been found that they were a particularly important civilization, with ancient magic or other sources of power...the only real enigma of large significance is the question of how they fed themselves, as there's no proof of them having performed agriculture in or near the cliffside city.

Still, most querents suspect an answer as simple as regular trade with some nearby farming village (now entirely lost to time), and few indeed have guessed that in fact the Anasazar did have a secret that would be worth much to the modern world. Even more remarkably, the Old Folks aren't actually lost to time, but merely hidden from casual observation; those who have plumbed the ruins so far never found them, because they did not know what to look for. Those seeking wealth, power, knowledge, or simple amusement will never discover the secret ways by which the residents of the OFH departed the material plane, but those gateways can indeed be opened again...if ever a traveler were to visit the location with the right attitude, enabling them to discover the key to unlocking those hidden ways.