"I, like many others, believed that a 10,000 cycle period of history need not have a singular answer, because surely it's a long enough period of time for many causes to converge. I often wonder when I changed my mind about that though... was it some curiosity I read about in the publication forums? I admit, there isn't really much "reputable" scholarship supporting the idea that over forty discovered extinct civilizations could have a singular cause.

No, it wasn't anything some unscrupulous or half-mad adventurer said to me. It was when I visited Arconia some eleven years ago (though I didn't realize it then and there). Which is hard to explain if you haven't been to the Monolith Fields present along the equatorial band. Firstly, nothing really works right near the monoliths, the clearest images of them are taken from space, because nearly all of the recording equipment we've used over the years in proximity to the ruins simply breaks or refuses to work.Then there is the voice. The voice that will come into your head if you touch the damned things. At first you don't hear anything, it's not like you pushed play on a vid... you touch the monolith, and nothing really happens, but little do you know that the voice is already worming within your subconscious. Inevitably, you take your hand away, and after a moment or two, you start to think "huh, guess the hype is just hype", but within ten minutes, never any less... you're trying to do something else... and you hear the voice.

And the voice isn't yours. It's no voice you've ever heard before in your life, and somehow you can understand that it isn't speaking your language, but your brain translates it anyways, it's as if... as if you are forced to understand. Some of my colleagues even complained that it hurt, like a headache that wouldn't go away. For most people the message goes something like this, "We are Arconian, look upon us and be haunted.".

I have been to Arconia three times in my life, and I don't know how many times I've touched a monolith... several dozen I'd expect. I can't say I recommend doing so, it's ruined most of my professional and personal relationships... because I don't hear the voice when I touch the Monoliths anymore... I hear the voice all the time... I'm almost having a conversation with them. So... what can the madman tell you about his talks with ghosts? They were murdered, the whole sundering wasn't some coincidence and it wasn't some simple mistake... it was a crime.

The Arconians built their monoliths as a eternal epitaph... not to be remembered for who they were or what they believed in... but to their anger and their rage. That's why your brain can translate their alien language... because it's fundamental. The voice isn't speaking to you... it's speaking to that "lizard brain" submerged somewhere within that grey lump we think of as "us", and it's telling it to be afraid and very angry.

I'm leaving now. I have to find more answers, but I need to tell you what the voices finally told me... after I asked it what it wanted for the thousandth or ten thousandth time..."

"Each of us was a world unbound. Our divinity beyond reproach. All that you are is a mere shadow to our glory. Yet we make this plea. Avenge us."