[Scenario Seed] The lost Mayan city of K'àak' Chi.

[Catsmate]

A fifteen-year old Quebec boy named William Gadoury has found a previously unknown Mayan city. He's been interested in the ancient Maya for a few years and compared land maps to constellation patters, finding a correlation which others have missed. Then he noticed only two Mayan cities lined up to a constellation of three stars, which he believed meant an unknown city was in the southern Yucatan Peninsula near Belize.

The Canadian Space Agency provided satellite images of the area, taken after a forest fire in 2005, which revealed the presence of a 65m pyramid and around thirty other structures.
Based on the images, the city is believed to be one of the five largest in Mayan civilization. William has named it K'àak' Chi' or "Fire Mouth". Unfortunately no-one is likely to visit for some time, given the cost of an expedition.


Fascinating. And just dripping with possibilities. What weirdness could be lurking in the eastern tip of Mexico ready for an archaeological party to find? There's even a pyramid...
Perfect for a UNIT scenario or a group of freelancers sent to track the missing archaeologists. Perhaps there's intrigue within the explorers (as in Tomb of the Cybermen).

In the Whoniverse the Mayans get little attention compared to the Aztecs and Inca but they were visited by Monarch and the Urbankans, might there be some curious detritus still buried there? Perhaps a few of those nearly indestructible androids are still maintaining a hidden base...

Would such an expedition really be the first? Or could someone, Nazis perhaps or a Torchwood group including a co-opted Percy Fawcett, have been there first?


More here and here.

[misterharry]

It's fascinating and exciting that even in the 21st Century a discovery of such magnitude can still be made!

[Catsmate]

May 10, 2016 11:29:21 GMT misterharry said:

It's fascinating and exciting that even in the 21st Century a discovery of such magnitude can still be made!

Exactly! I think people believe that modern technology has filled in all the blank bits of the map but, hey there's still room for a lost city or two even with satellite imaging.

[Hedgewick]

That's an amazing story. And, as you say, Catsmate, the lesson we learn is that there's always more to discover and that we must not become complacent. As Gene Roddenberry wrote, "It isn't all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning."

[starkllr]

It's a fantastic story, and so true that there's so much we don't know however much we think we have the whole world mapped out and understood.

As for gaming and Whoniverse thoughts...

finding a correlation which others have missed.

Maybe others DIDN'T miss it. Maybe they've been made to forget it. Perhaps there is an organization that dates back to the time of the Mayans protecting that lost city (or protecting the rest of the world from what's buried there), just as the secret society in the Brendan Fraser version of "The Mummy" killed anyone who found the lost city of Hamunaptra.

Or, of course, it could be aliens, who mindwipe anyone who makes it to the city, and whose allies in various world governments endeavor to destroy any research that might lead other explorers there.

Or the city could be hidden by technological means (for any number of reasons). It could be future time travellers using it as a base of operations and hiding it via a "Brigadoon Circuit" (as in "Alien Bodies"), or any of the many other campflauge devices we've seen in the rebooted series.

[starkllr]

Another thought: forget about the lost city, what about the kid who found it?

There are myriad ways he (or a fictionalized version of him) could be used in a game. Someone like him would make a good companion for a Time Lord - smart, cusious, willing to look for "impossible" answers. He'd be a totally reasonable PC.

He could show up almost anywhere as an NPC. Torchwood, UNIT and plenty of national governments would surely find him useful as a scientific advisor. He could be used simply to provide useful information to move a story along; he could be used for comic relief (it would be easy to make him into a Wesley Crusher-type); he could be someone a PC team in a UNIT or Torchwood game has to protect (maybe he has to come along on the expedition to the Lost City that your PCs are leading; or maybe UNIT is afraid a foreign power will try to kidnap this young genius and the PCs are assigned as his security detail).

Maybe he's working (voluntarily or otherwise) for a more nefarious employer. Henry Van Statten? The Ratigan Academy? A sinister project similar to the one the Krillitane were working on in "School Reunion" ? The Russians/Chinese/whoever the most troublesome country is in your version of the Whoniverse? If he was kidnapped, the PCs will have to rescue him. If he went voluntarily (recruited to the Ratigan Academy on a full scholarship, say), they have to first convince him he's working for evildoers/aliens/evil pawns OF aliens, and THEN rescue him.

And that's all assuming he's just a normal (albeit really smart and uncommonly curious) teenager. What if he's not?

Maybe he's descended from the high priest of that lost Mayan city, and his "discovery" is really a piece of genetic memory that was awakened (how? why? by whom?). Or he heard the telepathic call of SOMETHING that's still alive in that lost city, and the star maps are just his cover story for how he knows where it is. Maybe he's descended from a Mayan-alien hybrid. Or he's the reincarnation of that long-dead high priest, and his original memories have just returned.

Maybe he's not the only one to hear the call of the lost city - he's just the only one smart enough to come up with a believable cover story (a story that will make SOMEONE ELSE go there, rather than him risking his own life visitng there!)

[Catsmate]

May 10, 2016 15:33:42 GMT starkllr said:

It's a fantastic story, and so true that there's so much we don't know however much we think we have the whole world mapped out and understood.

As for gaming and Whoniverse thoughts...

finding a correlation which others have missed.

Maybe others DIDN'T miss it. Maybe they've been made to forget it. Perhaps there is an organization that dates back to the time of the Mayans protecting that lost city (or protecting the rest of the world from what's buried there), just as the secret society in the Brendan Fraser version of "The Mummy" killed anyone who found the lost city of Hamunaptra.

Or, of course, it could be aliens, who mindwipe anyone who makes it to the city, and whose allies in various world governments endeavor to destroy any research that might lead other explorers there.

Or the city could be hidden by technological means (for any number of reasons). It could be future time travellers using it as a base of operations and hiding it via a "Brigadoon Circuit" (as in "Alien Bodies"), or any of the many other campflauge devices we've seen in the rebooted series.

I like that! It reminds me of the plotline in The Dying Days where the UK government had tampered with data about Mars to hide the true conditions there, as discovered by the Britihs Mars missions in the '70s.

Maybe the city was missed not due to the jungle but some form of shrouding device, as with the island of Salutua in The Eye of the Giant. Who's responsible? The Urbankans? Well they do have the knack of duplicating people with androids and think of the long term...

May 10, 2016 16:37:29 GMT starkllr said:

Another thought: forget about the lost city, what about the kid who found it?

There are myriad ways he (or a fictionalized version of him) could be used in a game. Someone like him would make a good companion for a Time Lord - smart, cusious, willing to look for "impossible" answers. He'd be a totally reasonable PC.

He could show up almost anywhere as an NPC. Torchwood, UNIT and plenty of national governments would surely find him useful as a scientific advisor. He could be used simply to provide useful information to move a story along; he could be used for comic relief (it would be easy to make him into a Wesley Crusher-type); he could be someone a PC team in a UNIT or Torchwood game has to protect (maybe he has to come along on the expedition to the Lost City that your PCs are leading; or maybe UNIT is afraid a foreign power will try to kidnap this young genius and the PCs are assigned as his security detail).

Maybe he's working (voluntarily or otherwise) for a more nefarious employer. Henry Van Statten? The Ratigan Academy? A sinister project similar to the one the Krillitane were working on in "School Reunion" ? The Russians/Chinese/whoever the most troublesome country is in your version of the Whoniverse? If he was kidnapped, the PCs will have to rescue him. If he went voluntarily (recruited to the Ratigan Academy on a full scholarship, say), they have to first convince him he's working for evildoers/aliens/evil pawns OF aliens, and THEN rescue him.

And that's all assuming he's just a normal (albeit really smart and uncommonly curious) teenager. What if he's not?

Maybe he's descended from the high priest of that lost Mayan city, and his "discovery" is really a piece of genetic memory that was awakened (how? why? by whom?). Or he heard the telepathic call of SOMETHING that's still alive in that lost city, and the star maps are just his cover story for how he knows where it is. Maybe he's descended from a Mayan-alien hybrid. Or he's the reincarnation of that long-dead high priest, and his original memories have just returned.

Maybe he's not the only one to hear the call of the lost city - he's just the only one smart enough to come up with a believable cover story (a story that will make SOMEONE ELSE go there, rather than him risking his own life visitng there!)

Hmm, the product of a long term plan (whose?). Maybe he, or an ancestor, happened to play with the wrong fob watch? Or could whoever is behind the lost city have an opponent, with a long term plan of their own? (I'm reminded of the mutiny and counter-mutiny aboard the Dahak in Weber's Empire from the Ashes series with both factions having millennia long plans in motion. Just move the main base from Antarctica to Yucatan).

Have some of the Urbankan androids running the lost city decided to abandon their purpose? After all Monarch is gone these 34 years. Why do they need a human child? Are they deliberately trying to attract attention from humanity? Are they trying, circumspectly, to bypass certain parts of their own programming? Or are they constrained from leaving the city?

Or is Monarch really gone? He wasn't killed so perhaps he's escaped and is behind these events...
The Urbankans didn't have FTL travel so maybe he's communicating by light-speed mechanisms.

[Catsmate]

On the subject of the Maya, and specifically what destroyed their civilisation, even before the conquistadores arrived in 1517, there is some interesting new research.

The Mayans flourished from around 250CE until about 800CE; after 850CE they began to abandon their great cities, one after another. So, in less than 200 years, their civilisation had slumped to a fraction of its former glory; while there would be later isolated resurgences, the might and grandeur of the Mayan heyday was gone. Exactly what caused this collapse has been the subject of much debate amongst archaeologists and historians.

• Of course this is the perfect opportunity for truly academic time travel (paging Dr. Maxwell...). Just add the PCs to the mix to complicate matters; academics annoyed by the "amateur interlopers" (and wondering what they're doing there), curious locals, and plenty of potential for disruptions to the timeline.
• There's also plenty of scope for a "save the libraries" adventure or two; almost none of the Mayan written records survived the colonial European influx. Of the thousands of Mayan books only four are now known to exist; on the orders of Catholic priests the Spanish burned the Mayan books

Now in all probability, as with the fall of the Roman Empire, the Maya weren't eliminated by any one, single, cause but by multiple factors. However new research into climate records, mostly from the analysis of cave formations, shows that during their boom period the Mayan lands received relatively high rainfall, providing for excellent crops. Those records show that, starting in about 820CE, the region was ravaged by 95 years of punctuated droughts, some of which lasted for decades. It seems seems that this period of drought, which correlates well with the abandonment of the Mayan cities, was the primary cause. Large scale crop failures, changes in seasonal cycles of plant and animal life, famine and civil unrest probably followed.

Now not all the Mayan cities fell during the 9th century; in fact some flourished. It was mostly those cities located in the southern portion of their territory (modern day Guatemala and Belize) that were abandoned. In the Yucatan peninsula to the north urban centres actually increased in number and size, at least partially from population displacement, though even there a decline is visible (mainly from the examination of calendar inscriptions on monuments supplemented by other data).

The Maya had a detailed knowledge of mathematics and astronomy; their pyramids and temples were aligned with the precession of planets and the solar equinoxes. They had the only known written script in Mesoamerica, a strange looking set of characters known as Maya hieroglyphs.

• One of the numerous 'lost languages' archaeologists would be very interested in being able to translate.
  

Lots of possibilities for adventures there, in an environment not much touched before by Doctor Who.