By Chester Seaton, News

16/2/282-Rumors and speculation continue to swirl around the recent recovery of the famous explorer Uriah Farringdon Oke, who disappeared during an expedition into the Deadlands of the western continent. The Colonial Marshals who took Oke into their custody have been reluctant to share details on Oke’s condition, but new reports are shedding some light on what happened during his ill fated expedition.

Sources close to the personnel of Fort Faulkner tell us that the Professor exhibited signs of madness when he was brought in. During his waking hours they say he is prone to babbling on about various mysterious things.

“Most of it is incoherent raving,” said a doctor who claims to have performed the initial examination of Oke. “However, he became particularly lucid when he would describe ‘The Living City.’”

According to the doctor, who wished to remain unnamed (and whose references check out, we can assure you), Oke and his team had stumbled upon a ‘great, mechanical city’ in the heart of the Deadlands. At the center of this city lay, ‘a monumental forest of gargantuan trees, blackened and burned by some unimaginable inferno.’

Experts in both archaeology and anthropology have begun requesting transcripts of the doctor’s report. So far, however, the doctor has only sent a copy to Veronica Trenum.
Trenum, an expert in Pre-Alchemical Rift culture, was reluctant to discuss her thoughts on the doctor’s report. She did offer one, mysterious statement on the matter.

“If the lost city described in Oke’s rambling are the result of an actual experience and not some tragic devolution into insanity, and if the city is what I think it is, it could very well change everything we think we know about Pre-Rift history and the practice of Alchemy. If it exists and we could get to it, the knowledge contained within would completely alter the course of our world.”

While Trenum would offer no further insights into what she believed this lost city might be, former colleagues were more than willing to offer their theories.

“There exists, in certain interpretations of translated Pre-Rift writings, the myth of a colossal city in the sky,” said Professor Alex Congate. “This city was believed to be the Capitol of a nation of ancient alchemists whose hubris led them to take to the skies and rule the world below, only to eventually be toppled and come crashing back down to earth. A ridiculous notion, to be sure, but one with a lesson to be taught. That’s why we call it a myth.”

It is perhaps prudent to note that Professor Congate is a well-known rival of Doctor Trenum’s, and came under investigation for a fire that consumed most of her notes during an expedition several years ago.