Firmament 1310 — Furnace of the Sky

A huge black cauldron sits in the waves of glass. It has filled with rain water over time, effectively forming a raised lake. A wizard’s campsite sits next to it, inhabited by Anna Rutledge (she/her, level 5 wizard) and her four animate statue companions (level 4, stats from Only Monsters Here). Anna is an admirer of otherworldly technologies and is interested in finding more — she arrived via the megastructure elevator-pool and knows how to operate it.

So far she has (correctly) determined that the cauldron is a device that would convert organic matter placed within it into a fuel. She does not know how to activate it, and is wary of doing so.

Anna is deathly afraid of spiders, and so has not ventured past Nemon in 0612. She would offer rewards of spells and money to any bringing news of findings further into the firmament. An opportunity to analyze the Metallic Skeletal Giant for a week would reveal how to operate the cauldron to her. It does not need the fuel this cauldron would make, but contains a similar device in miniature. The cauldron once served its ancient enemies. Awakened it would emit a fiery pink and golden glow visible even through the illusions hiding the firmament, like a misplaced sunset.

The animate statues carry her gathered treasures (as Magic User II, &treasure):
600 coins
600 coins in trade goods — 200 coins worth blessed water, 300 coins worth of incense, 100 coins worth of preserved fruit
A Copied Codex
3 magic items — A Philtre of Expansion, the staff Egron, and a Silvered Skull