Xenoarcheological ruins

The furthest southern reaches of the planet have generally been considered uninhabitable. At first, the raging, perpetual storm around the pole, known to sailors as the Vulterstrom, prevented any voyages close to the geographical pole, and in the Mapmakers' Guild's first map of the whole world the south was simply drawn in as impassible. The landmass in the center of the storm would not be discovered until two centuries later, when Selestei decided to sail straight through the Vulterstrom instead of going around. When a research expedition finally made it, it discovered strange and exotic ruins. At first, the ruins were simply blamed on Kingsland, but soon enough this explanation fell out of favor as the few monstrosities of Kingsland that ranged beyond the city were ruled out as possible explanations. The ruins were thereafter considered to be most likely of alien origin.

The prospect of studying these ruins soon led to talk of establishing a permanent base for research. The Vulterbase was nominally created in the mid-eighth century, though it wouldn't be for another century until the base saw real activity. Unfortunately, this was right around the time that the first Dark Pentad disciplines were being recognized. A few institutions decided to punish their newly-minted Pentad scholars by assigning them to the Vulterbase, which, because of the base's limited population, led to it becoming one of the densest concentrations of Pentad degrees in the world. In the chaos of the Goats on Boats Affair in 891, the Vulterbase's discontents revolted and declared themselves independent from the academic community. Attempts were made, first diplomatically and then militarily, to reconcile the Vulterbase to the academy, but all such attempts were repelled by the alien technology they had developed based on their research. When the dock became infested by Ravenous Squid-Trees in 939, the base was written off and the researchers left to their devices.

Enough records of the ruins themselves are available to the interested for their nature to remain a topic of interest. On the surface, there are multiple different buildings in a roughly symmetrical layout. Some of them rise two or three stories up, with one tower near the center going up several stories, but more interestingly, all of the buildings go deep below ground level, and the lower stories all connect to each other in a labyrinthine fashion. Explorers who have made it back out claim that the ruins keep going further down, with no lowest level having been found.

Though the squid-trees have rendered the Vulterbase inaccessible, the Panark Fleet still checks in on it from afar every now and then, since the Vulterstrom makes it invisible to the Taurus. On the night of the new moon, an eldritch green light can be seen shining from where the base is in the depths of the storm. The main hypothesis for this is that the rebels assembled something, either from leftover technology they had lying around, alien miscellanea scavenged from the ruins, or something they dredged up from a ship that sank trying to suppress them. Most think it's an energy reactor of some sort, since they wouldn't survive long without one, but nobody can explain what kind of reactor would produce that light. Moreover, the light is only faint at the long distance Panark observes from; at the base itself it must be incredibly bright. Less popular is the theory that it's a lighthouse of some sort. This theory is less popular because nobody really thinks the Vulterbase rebels care enough about the rest of the world to stop their ships from running aground. They'd probably welcome it, because they could scavenge the parts. There's also a fringe theorist who keeps ranting about "chromatic aberration this" and "sociophysical effects that", but Dr. Christophy gets annoyed when you call him a fringe theorist.

Citations: Chromatic aberration / The Panark Fleet / Taurus Research Station

Thunder Bumble does a run through the Vulterstrom every so often, since just because we're not the shiniest zeppelin in the Ulgravian fleet doesn't mean we can't kick a little windstorm's ass here and there. Kain, you might be interested to know that Yasser's Yells runs a "Pentad Special" where you fly right above the Vulterbase. It's a discounted ride because a lot of people fall off in the storm, but I think you'd be fine.

Citations: Yasser's Yells