#avoalet: the fountainfields

[phoenixiancrystallist]

Forspoken Photo Dump 50: Avoalet; The Fountainfields, Part 3

[cruelfeline]

Cliffedge Cavern is a particularly memorable point of interest in Avoalet's Fountainfields.

It's initially not quite clear how to get inside this cave: there's a small entrance, but it's not quite big enough for Frey to comfortably crawl through, and besides: it's blocked.

Some brief observation of the resident Breakbeasts gives us a hint, albeit a morbid one: the teratornis have all flocked around this hole in the rock above. There's an adult skeleton there, but they seem to congregate around the hole more than anything else. Once Frey dispatches the corrupted vultures, we're able to safely drop down into the cavern itself. There, we are greeted by a single female Broken; she is easily eliminated. The only other occupants are a pair of children's skeletons. One perished next to their doll.

Frey and Cuff have a unique dialogue in this place: commenting on how they were just kids, with Frey asking why there were no adults here to help them.

The story of this place could be interpreted in so many ways. At minimum, one gets the impression of these two children hiding in this cave, barring the crawlspace entrance to try to prevent anyone from following them inside. Or perhaps, an adult ushered them in and barred the entrance after them: the last act of a desperate parent... maybe the skeleton found up above?

The Broken woman may have fallen in afterwards...or maybe she is their actual mother, compelled to return even in her corrupted state, only the memory of her hidden children driving her.

Perhaps she had been here with them all along, watching them slowly starve until the Break came and turned her, leaving her to wander next to their skeletons for eternity. Until Frey arrives to end this grotesque suffering.

No matter what one imagines, it's horrible. Two small children wasting away in a protected cave that ultimately became no more than a tomb. A Broken woman the only adult with them. And a flock of corrupted vultures circling overhead, drawn by the scent of decay wafting up from that hole.

Why does Frey want to leave Athia? Because it's filled with horrors like this.

[phoenixiancrystallist]

Forspoken Photo Dump 49: Avoalet; The Fountainfields, Part 2

[phoenixiancrystallist]

Forspoken Photo Dump 48: Avoalet; The Fountainfields, Part 1