Xenolithic Crater

The Xenolithic Crater is a wide, ovaloid crater at the heart of the Burned Canyons, covered in wild and unique rock formations.

Appearance
The crater spans roughly 10km across on the short axis and 22km across on the long, and at its deepest point sits 500m below neutral elevation. Most of the rock is a dull ivory hue, and very hard to the touch, but excavation reveals that most of the rock is filled with intricate, winding hollow tubules, resulting in the stone being both very light and very hard, quite bone-like in structure and appearance. Several samples have been salvaged and are undergoing research to manipulate into potential armor and shielding.

The most notable feature of the locale, if it is possible to pin down one, is a series of titanic, gray-white conic protrusions from roughly one-third up the long axis of the crater, running in pairs along roughly half the length of the crater. These protrusions range from 100m to 750m in width at the base, and arc upwards to dull points nearly a full kiliometer upwards. Each pair curves slightly inwards towards the long axis of the crater. These formations are what inspired the name of the locale - due to their pairing and slight inward curvature, they look like a row of gigantic, alien ribs.

West of those, towards one of the points of the ovaloid, is a large basin-like structure most notably defined by huge slabs of the bone-like rock sticking out at jagged angles from the ground, though much denser than the samples excavated from the rest of the crater. The monolithic slabs range in dimension from a couple square meters to hundreds, towering in the sky at seemingly random angles.

Traveling east down the long axis, passing the "ribs", one reaches a pair of wing-like curved 'plates', extending approximately two kilometers outward and arcing up roughly fifteen to twenty degrees from the ground. The base of the plates appears to have fused with the existing ground, and is what supports the gargantuan monoliths in the air so steadily. The plates are roughly a meter thick, and are so broadly cavernous that they can be entered from the base, subjecting explorers to a winding, unearthly maze. Extreme caution is advised upon entering, as there lurk manikins within, albeit twisted and more serpentine than humanoid as a result of becoming trapped within the spindly caverns of those eldritch plates.

Along the east edge, the slope up to the crater's edge (and the Burned Canyons beyond) is covered in gigantic, tubular rocky structures, varying in diameter from a couple centimeters to dozens of meters, scattered in all directions, like stair steps for some hulking titan. At points along the edges, these tubular structures jut out of the ground, making travel across them quite the perilous hike at points.

The spaces in between the major natural phenomena listed vary greatly in geological composition, but generally includes a myriad of small, "shattered" structures of the white bone-like mineral protruding across large swaths of land, ranging wildly in size and structure.

Phenomena
The ruins, on the whole, is very quiet and desolate, save the occasional errant manikin or two roaming the grounds. As mentioned above, the tubular tunnels within the two broad plates towards the middle of the ruins contain several manikins of strange, serpentine form, likely made that way from being trapped within the caverns for so long.

Towards the northern side, about a third of the way west, is a series of four giant "gash" marks on the ground, surrounded on all sides by a black, metallic "wall" of sorts, the metal similar in composition to obsidian, but more brittle. These gashes are roughly half a kilometer wide by ~10-15 meters across each, and lead deep underground to various subterranean chambers and chasms that each possess an unexpectedly high density of manikins and shades. At the very bottom of these crevasses is a series of thin tunnels filled with a strange, deep violet liquid, oily and viscous in nature, and extremely corrosive. Testing has revealed that it acts as an almost perfect magical resistor, and seems to "absorb" magical energy resisted; whether or not that energy can be discharged or not is still under study.

Field Notes
Coming soon...