Uriel 30, 1790 — A state-sanctioned expedition led by Dr. Malik Al-Ziyad reports the first exposed structures—towering obsidian pillars—at a depression deep in the deserts of Rebis, strengthening claims that Zauz, a Pneumatic Era metropolis which served as a perpetual extradimensional outpost, lies beneath the sands. The field team relies on techno-magical instruments under tight theocratic oversight.
A convoy of Diesel-punk transports crossed the crimson daylight of Yaldabaoth into one of Kenoma’s most forbidding deserts. Their target was an enduring legend: Zauz, the Obsidian City. The expedition was authorized by the Ouroboran Caliphate and escorted by military police enforcing arcane law. The mission carries more than academic weight. Zauz, if verified, would anchor Kenomitian history to a period of dizzying ascent that ended in catastrophe. The Pneumatic Era’s finale—the Angel Shower of Overlord Cthugha, God of Government—marks a pivot in the Caliphate’s eschatology. Any trace of that era raises doctrinal, scientific, and political stakes.
A convoy of Caliphate diesel-punk transports crosses the desolate Rebis desert under the crimson daylight of Yaldabaoth. Escorts ensure compliance with arcane law (Credit: Kenomitian)
Dr. Al-Ziyad serves as Lead Mystagogue for the Antiquities and Arcana Section, Emirates of Rebis. His team blends Altifanist and Luminist practitioners with corporate technicians from Mendes International’s Barqan Enterprises. Early days yielded little beyond silence. “The desert is noisy with wind and empty of intention,” one operator summarized. The team leaned on a Mendian Arcane Array, a field instrument tuned to Logomancy signatures and deep-time spellwork. When the transports reached a shallow sink, the tone changed. Shards of fused black glass peppered the surface. The air cooled without meteorological cause. “A harmonic fell across my readings,” Al-Ziyad said. “Then a grid.”
Mystagogues and technicians from Barqan Enterprises utilize the Mendian Arcane Array to tune into deep-time spellwork signatures at the site’s shallow sink (Credit: Kenomitian)
Team logs describe signatures consistent with Magical and Supernal workings. Analysts flagged ghostly residues and temporal anomalies trending in pulses, not wisps. “Trauma echoes, not Specters,” said a Barqan engineer. “Not hauntings, but a city-wide afterimage. They formed a grid that suggested a planned energetic grid rather than random remnants. “We are seeing an urban spell ecology, self-feeding through applied Will,” Al-Ziyad said. “It hints at machine-assisted rites—golemic labor, homunculi, or other delegated processes.”
At dawn, the MAA’s “ghost audit” returned a single high-intensity anomaly. The team categorized it as a Tzalmavet—an entity bonded to the Way of Magic of a deceased mage, reflexively casting during disturbances. The manifestation appeared as a crimson cloud of unstable numerals and thorns of script that formed and unformed a face. Al-Ziyad engaged under license using a Mendes artifact: a matte black vessel engraved with the Barqan sigil and bound to Death Magic. “We were permitted a brief, mediated exchange,” he said. “The content was fragmented and painful.” The entity denounced “the chaos inherent to sapient existence” and showed a three-sun-struck plain where each grain “was a frozen drop of Archontian blood.”
Dr. Al-Ziyad mediates a fragile exchange with the Tzalmavet—a logomantic entity appearing as a cloud of crimson numerals and script—using a Mendes artifact bound to Death Magic (Credit: Kenomitian)
Clerical observers argued the vision tied Zauz to the extradimensional sub-realms of Ubar and Irem: the iron megalopolis at the heart of an endless golden desert. “The parallels to Irem of the Pillars are unavoidable,” said a Luminist theologian. “If Zauz was its mortal reflection, doctrine must address the mirror”. Exorcism is required before extensive excavation. “A Tzalmavet’s persistence is a danger to personnel and to truth,” the presiding officer stated. “We will not build an archive from a haunting.”
By midday, the team began shallow trenching at flagged loci. Ten meters down, blades struck stone. Workers exposed a plane of flawless obsidian veined with light-drinking inclusions. Then an edge, then an angle too perfect for geology. “These were not columns,” Al-Ziyad said. “They were obelisks. Many.” The style is vertical and restrained. Several surfaces hummed at touch, each humming in a different sorrowful key. A surveyor described it as “music trapped in glass.”
First contact with the city’s structure: excavation blades expose massive, flawless obsidian obelisks veined with light-drinking inclusions, hinting at architecture “too perfect for geology.” (Credit: Kenomitian)
The structures encircle a collapsed basin. Initial mapping shows a concentric layout with spokes. At the hub lies the remains of a permanent dimensional portal to Ubar. The Tzalmavet’s vision of a desert under three suns and the ruined portal point to consistent extradimensional contact. “If Zauz existed in some form,” Al-Ziyad proposed, “this was it.”
Initial mapping of the Zauz hub reveals a concentric layout centered around the shattered remains of a permanent dimensional portal to the extradimensional sub-realms of Ubar (Credit: Kenomitian)
Opponents warn against overreach. “Obsidian is everywhere in volcanoes,” a skeptical geologist said by relay. “Glass does not equal city. We need inscriptions, not inferences.”
The team uploaded photographic and arcane records to the Mendes archive before dusk. High-resolution scans and annotated spell maps will enter a peer review queue shared with academic and clerical houses. “We invite critique,” Al-Ziyad said. “An argument that survives heat hardens.”
Independent observers emphasize the need for layered verification. Material analysis must confirm obsidian sources. Tool marks, if present, must match period techniques. The Tzalmavet complicates access. Exorcism protocols demand preparation and restraint. “A good banishment leaves no triumph,” the cleric said. “It leaves a cleared room.” Only then can archivists seek inscriptions, power routing glyphs, or civic seals.
Local nomads of the Wind Courts, long tellers of Zauz’s fall, watch warily. “We respect their sovereignty,” the commander said. “Our permit binds us to trade fairly and disturb lightly.” Oral histories will be recorded with consent, translated, and juxtaposed with arcane readings.
Zauz, if real, is for archeologists a chance to reconcile text with stone and spell with soil. Al-Ziyad frames the lesson plainly. “We inherit both brilliance and breakage,” he said. “Our instruments can hear across ages, but they cannot forgive the wrong door.” The team’s notes return repeatedly to humility. Machines and mages cooperate. Pride remains single.
The convoy’s lights blink against the red-tinted dusk. The pillars, black against black, hold their cool. “The city wanted to last forever,” the engineer said. “It will last as long as questions do.”
The Caliphate’s ministries will review the archive and set conditions for deeper excavation. Exorcists will attempt to quiet the Logomantic Tzalmavet within licensed bounds. Corporate partners will harden equipment for prolonged residence in corrosive grit and intermittent cold. If inscriptions surface, they could fix the city’s name beyond legend. If power routing glyphs match known diagrams, historians may trace a curriculum of civic magic. If neither appears, Zauz will remain a careful conjecture—an obsidian geometry with a grammar still unseen.
For now, the field report stands: a gridded Mana lattice underground, a ring of megastructures above, and a collapsed gate that once tried to sing order through chaos. Whether that song ended in correction or in error is a debate for councils far from the sand.
