To Sir Hyades of Edin:
As you requested, the company has finished digging up what’s left of the Temple of St. Rakhmet. I’m not sure what you were expecting to find here, but there’s nothing particularly interesting in these old ruins. As you can imagine, the volcano charred most of the scrolls too badly for us to read. You’ve paid us well, so I’ve included them in this package anyway. Hope they were worth the cost.
As for the rest, there’s a few inscriptions left and some statues. Locals say there used to be a mural in the main hall. Smythe thinks he’s found it. If he’s right, though, it’s been caked with ash for so long that there’s no way we’ll be able to salvage it. I can already hear you telling me to carve out the whole wall for you regardless. Not to worry. The structure won’t survive, but we can do it. We’ll need a few elephants and a bigger cargo ship if we’re going to ship it to you, though. I like to think I’m an honest man, so I’m warning you here and now that it’ll cost at least thirty times as much as bringing that old obelisk from the Khonsoth excavation.
Not sure why you don’t just come look at it yourself. It’d be a lot cheaper. I’m not complaining, though. You’ve kept us fed and happy for some time now. Hope one day you’ll consider letting us know what all of this is for.
Anyway, here’s the full report on what we found:
1,941 copper coins.
378 silver coins.
83 gold coins.
5,219 pottery fragments.
134 partially intact clay vessels.
2 completely intact clay vessels.
219 petrified corpses.
11 broken pillars, of which 1 has an inscription.
25 intact pillars, of which 3 have inscriptions.
1 golden idol resembling a phoenix.
1 broken stone altar.
1 golden disk resembling the sun.
1 wall potentially decorated with a mural.
79 charred and generally damaged scrolls.
2,102 charred fragments of what is probably paper.
3 intact statues.
9 broken statues.
57 snake skeletons.
108 petrified snakes.
It’s a short list. A lot of the items we usually expect were nowhere to be found. No pendants, no tools, no weapons. Honestly, someone probably beat us to this place. The temple’s huge, but there was less coin to be found than even at the smaller Khonsoth site. No sign of who it was, but we’ll ask around the nearby camps and villages. I’ll let you know what we learn.
Sincerely,
John K. Graves