Following Lorne's guidance the Crew locate what Lorne believes is an entrance to the Umbrance. It is not an easy path. After climbing up to a small cave entrance above the lowest turn of the corkscrewing road up the Mesa that the settlement of Torn reach sits on they find a network of narrow and treacherous caves.
The Crew demonstrate the will, stamina and athleticism to make the pilgrimage. Deep within the caves they find a deadly looking trap which Alya manages to disable and later will reset as they retrace their steps, ensuring the Umrbance beyond remains protected. Beyond the find antechamber with many inheritor burials and art, shard glass weapons and crafted goods left with the piles of bones. Beyond Lorne find a conical Umbrance the floor of the chamber is choked with bones, up to waist high in the centre of the chamber.
Lorne meditates in the space and opening his senses to the place he notices that
The walls of the Umbrance are marked with countless markings, at the low levels within your reach there are many markings but they thin and disappear entirely as you look up into the darkness.
On the walls 12 tall trapezoid figers are marked, little more than black shadows covered now in markings of reverence from a later time.
The Inheritor markings mark the tall figures The Crafter, The Producer, The Scout/The Hunter, The Artist/The Tattoist, The Warrior, The Elder, The Carer, The Navigator or The Pilot, The Storyteller (or perhaps this is the Tattoist, the marking are confused) , The Caretaker of the Dead and lastly the Exhile. (Investigate: These marks are clearly later so it's unclear if these where the original intentions of the first tall dark shapes)
The Umbrance looms above you. The tall tapered shapes stretch above you into the darkness. There narrow trapezoid shapes look down on you but where as the Umbrance of Dinoah might have been concerned parents these feel altogether
different. Shocked perhaps, a circle of peers who having discovered something and having gathered to look upon it, they realise something and step back.. In shock?
As you study the figures you can see that they are not solid. Not whole. Although faded it is clear they are not made from one piece but from jagged triangles, as if the figures are run through with fine cracks. Like broken glass that is broken but has not fallen into fragments, though it must surely do so.
In the centre of the chamber among the piles of bones Lorne wades in to find a strange mask.
Fitted over a skull. A Shardglass mask, ancient. Polished to a mirror shine the Onyx mask covers the top of the face and sides of the head. The mirror surface reflects a Smokey indistinct vision of you. There are no eyes. Anyone wearing it would not be able to see where they where going. The inside of the mask is as polished as the outside. It Is chill to the touch and despite the lack of eyes makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, as if you are being watched. It bears no inheritor markings that you can see.
Putting the mask on he is unable to see or hear much and feels isolated from those around him. The strange mask Is chill to the touch.
Jorus is reminded of Intrepid Angel's story of the strange cabal of Chibiva and reminds Jorus of this.
Jorus identifies the human skull the mask say on as ancient. He also identifies the bones on the bottom of the chamber as older than those on top, and those closes to the pedestal and lowest down to be the oldest of all.
Lorne feels the chill of the Umbrance in his bones and taking the mysterious mask with him leaves the Umbrance with the other
Once they make there way back to the surface the crew emerge from the caves into the night of Torn Reach, shooting stars streaking overhead.
Returning to the longhorn the Crew leave the planet.
Aayla investigate the nav data from the Tempest dust. Finding they have been given a Shard Glass fagment, that has been marked as a form of optical storage, like a very crude verion of the shard of Kelentar she integrates it with the ships Holo projector and LH-O incorporates the data into her Nav data and Aayla takes the ship to hyperspace and deeper into the Rift.