Statue Sunk at the Seat of 1000 Steps

From far away, above the mangrove and lilybark willows, all that's visible is a hand, but as approached via yard-tall steps, what's revealed is the patinated enormity of a massive man, seeming to either slowly rise or slowly sink.

Deeper: In truth, it is quite still.

The statue, whose nose and mouth remain above the wreckage of the swamp's waters, is majorly encased in earth.

Painters and artists across the land have tried to conjecture what remains below the ground but excavation is nearly impossible or has proven to deter any wannabe workers. For a hundred yards and a hundred yards again going back nearly a quarter-mile, block-cut walls waterproofed with tar at their seams have been built lower and lower into the swamp to hold back water from the next ring in, creating a gradually descending ampitheatre that ends about 450' from where the statue is now.

Contemplations or prayers receive impunity and cannot be interrupted nearby, making holy visitors abundant in their capacity. Minds fill with depth, though too, the nearer the statue is approached, the greater the unquenchable vertigo that trends feet to clumsy, knees to sinking, and the urgency to plant foreheads to ground in a deep bow a difficult force to press past.

It fades on touching the thing.

So who's trying to make money off of this? [3d4, details following]

• 3 This is the body of the Gaelthane, rebuilding itself year by year
• 4 This is the body of the Gaelthane, being unearthed by invisible (see: galactic) forces
• 5 The Grain Group, a heritage center
• 6 The O'Brennan's Harp, an evolved creature of the underearth
• 7 Peter Goyle, whose family owned the land before it flooded
• 8 Pasil & Moore, inheritors of vast sums
• 9 A working force of revenant undead—no money necessary
• 10 What's Due isn't trying to make money, but clear-headed cult-like residuals are
• 11 The city of Drek's Landing
• 12 The city of Plath

Details on rolls:

3. The Gaelthane's body is reconstituting itself of shreds collected via the waterways. This process has slowed significantly as result of it being dug out by curious geologists over the last three-hundred years, a group calling itself "Society of the Past".

4. Efforts by Pilot, the great and most distant ring, to connect with the creature known materially as the Gaelthane have invoked its reconstitution. If the body is explored, a blinking beacon will be found deep in its guts, a powerful summoning radio technology connected to the orbiting worldcraft so many miles up in the sky.

5. Rich merchants have terraced the landscape around the hand and have been building out the landscape in similar rings, planting on each a golden crop called brickwort, claiming it's a natural bounty that used to be farmed in the area. Seeds were found and cultured, contained in the statue's open mouth, and the group believe there are other statues buried nearby; that this is an ancient farmland silo of a dead society.

6. The Then Popolos know as Brennan's Harp considers the evacuation of soil around the Statue Sunk at the Seat of a Thousand Steps a sort of people's penance for what happened to the land. The Harp has histories on an electronic tablet. 1 on d6 chance that the powerful stoneworker is onsite. 5+ it is moving about constructing new terrace humming powerfully.

7. And he's had a heatlhy shot at digging it out with these walls but once he discovered that the statue had an interior accessible through the mouth (totally flooded), he's been in Drek's Landing trying to rally funds and engeers to get inside, and deeper.

8. A married couple, Clinchin Fold and both having just fulfilled a stint of 30 years on the Foundation, the Clinchin Fold council. They trapped the memory-ravings of an elder patient who had lived the best parts of his life underearth as a riddle, "At the foot of the hand is a passage to warmer land." They both abhor the cold. All this work has been recent, the last ten years.

9. Animated by the charging faculties of Carga the Electric Lord, this aspect of him is not buried but being made from the earth so that itrises and admits his claims over the north shore of Corrhéo. A simply huge ode to vanity. 1 on ad4 chance he's inspection the creation as the undead toil on. A scale model in brass about 15' tall is kept in an armored mausoleum nearby.

10. The interrogative force has taken the statue over from local cults as veneration had bordered on the obscene—circles of fire-flinging and drums and other orgiastic fervor—but too, the spot is a hot area for the Rot-ridden, many of whom come here to die. On the outer ring of these steps, some of those same rabid types are still out, crying the end of the stars, and a fair number have removed their right hand and had it shrunk in honor of the deified statue that they call Modd.

11. A duplicate exists in the harbor of Drek's Landing, but with the advance of the Silt-Salt Sea, has been buried. 1d4 magistrates or officials hold office in a near house, with a 2d6 contingent of guards and 1d10 official staff. This is considered a historical post, and a quiet one.

12. City of inventors: the Plathians hold the statue in awe, having found metalworkers capable of opening its shell and revealing the cogs and mechanisms contained within, proving the thing a titan of moving parts that lacks only an energy source for invigoration. 1d100 berrylmen farm the exterior for the jelly-like extrusions and a similarly sized force of industrious labor export the seeping water and mud as the dig carries on under the watchful eye of Su-mayor Elaine of Rails, who channels air herself.