Public findings released by Rhine Labs, based on an expedition originally financed by Dragon Logistics.
What Was Found
Deep beneath Terra, in an ancient buried city sealed under crystal and cooled magma from Titania’s last great eruption, an expedition backed by Dragon Logistics uncovered a structure unlike anything built by current hands: a Sarcophagus.
The Sarcophagus is a machine left behind by the civilization that occupied Terra long before the current settlements were founded. It appears to be a form of medical preservation device — a chamber built to keep the sick or injured safe until a cure could be found. Its walls carry murals apparently meant for visitors: long-eared elves and bearded dwarves standing before great sealed coffins, a dragon wreathed in mushrooms, another wreathed in forest greenery, and something vast and many-legged rising from below.
Inside, the expedition found the sealed remains of the old civilization’s people, still resting where they were placed — along with a handprint panel that responded to at least one member of the party, hinting that the mechanism inside may recognize certain individuals in ways not yet understood.
The site is powered by an energy source far beyond anything currently produced on Terra. Rhine Labs has confirmed the installation is genuine, ancient, and still — in part — active.
The Beast Within
Sealed deeper inside the same complex, the expedition encountered a hostile creature the party has taken to calling the Dragon Swan — a crystallized, serpentine horror capable of turning flesh to glass-like stone with a touch, lulling its victims into a helpless sleep, and raising the vitrified dead to fight at its command. Several dwarves and elves trapped within the facility had already fallen to it, entombed in crystal alongside the ancient dead.
The expedition fought the creature off and resealed the afflicted remains it had raised. The Dragon Swan itself was subdued rather than destroyed, and has since been handed over to Rhine Labs, where researchers are now studying it under controlled conditions — hoping to understand both the creature itself and the process that created it.
Why Rhine Labs Is Talking About It
Rhine Labs has chosen to make these findings public rather than keep them quiet, consistent with the institute’s reputation for openly publishing its research. Officially, the announcement is framed as a demonstration of Rhine Labs’ scientific leadership: proof that Terra’s ancient past still holds discoveries worth investing in, and that Rhine Labs is the institute equipped to make sense of them.