Posted by: 
greatcleavage
Good afternoon, everyone. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Roy Greenhilt, and today I'm addressing you to tell you about the Empatheias-Shaarnath-Otherworld Collaborative Expeditions.
[The image behind him isn't consciously generated, which is why it is nothing terribly interesting -- just abstract idealizations of the island, the desert city, and the otherworld population as a whole. (For some reason Roy's mental images seem to picture the latter as stick people. Weird, huh?)]
The ESO expeditions are a collaboration between these three factions. To wit, Empatheias supplies the airships, Shaarnath supplies dunamis protection, and Otherworlders crew the ships and investigate anything they find. Working together, we can now vastly outrange the previous boundaries of surface exploration set by mounted Shaarnathians.
We've already engaged in a pilot expedition and not only did we demonstrate proof-of-concept, but we actually made some pretty exciting discoveries! For one, there was a preserved ruin tucked away in a cliff-face, concealed in a fairly narrow chasm. Not a ton of value in there, I admit, but where one exists we're likely to find others. And also...
[The image expands outwards as the hazy mental projections behind it disappear, replaced with a projected image of solid reality. Behind Roy, a massive figure of steel-grey metal lies on a Shaarnathian street, surrounded by officials and gawkers in spades. Despite how long it must have been out in the scouring sands of the desert, the metal is sleek, unblemished, and smooth save for one side of it, which looks to have been melted clean free of the whole. All in all, the piece resembles nothing so much as half of a massive avian head, wrought in iron. The empty socket, perched above the halved beak, stares blankly into the crystal as well.]
...Yeah. There's a lot more out there to find than we've even imagined. If you want to join in, if you want to help explore, now's the time. With proven results, we've got backing and political capital to burn.
[Roy figures he's made his point... which means he has to get into the last comment he has to make, the one that has abruptly drained all color out of the crystal.] Also. For those of you who knew Freya Crescent, I'm afraid she's gone. I'm sure her name is on the wall, but I figured I ought to be clear about that, since... well, she didn't come back with us.
Anyway. That's all I have. Let's... let's just do what we can to chart this world and look for answers. comments