Creating the Theme/Initial Brainstorming

Hey!

After doing a little bit of reading, there were three different theories as to why those chambers exist. One of them was that they were used as storage by farmers way back when for vegetables or other crops. It might be interesting to make an ARG that investigates what actually happened to the farmers that built them... Because a lot of them that exist seemed to have been abandoned and them a forest grew around them. It would be serious and possibly paranormal? Just another idea.

Howdy there folks,

Was reading an article on this place in the Worcester Telegram. Apparently in 2006, a group of developers wanted to buy/build over it, but the land was bought out by the town of Upton. That could probably play a part in the story with the hero/villian on either side of the monetary exchange.

www.telegram.com/article/20120414/NEWS/104149854

Also, in that same article there were a few more theories that I think would be fun to build off of. I'mma just post a few quotes that really caught my eye.

"The stone landscape marks waypoints on Pratt Hill, perfectly aligned for viewing from the Upton chamber a mile to the east, that line up with seasonal constellations. Some researchers say the region is, in essence, a large astronomical calendar."
- (Astronomical calendar could be pointing to some spooky even or other)

"She noted in an article that archaeologists James Mavor and Byron Dix, whose study of the site was published in the 1980s, found the chamber and Pratt Hill alignments corresponded exactly to the sky of 710 A.D."

"Inside the dark chamber, Ms. Wetzel said, “You can see when you stand in here your pupils dilate. If you were here at the setting of the sun and looking out to the hill, you could see stars more easily than standing outside."
- (I dunno, this just sounded spooky and fun)

"The Upton Historical Commission brought in investigators this winter to try to determine the chamber's age using ground-penetrating radar. Although some surface anomalies were found, the results were inconclusive."
- (The "Some surface anomalies" is delightfully vague)

"Doug Harris, Narragansett Indian tribal historic preservation officer, said ceremonial stone groupings such as those on Pratt Hill connected by sight to the Upton chamber have been identified throughout the Eastern United States and several are clustered in a line from Upton to Grafton."
- (I like the whole "in a line from Grafton" thing)

Also, apparently this place is a spiritual location for the Narragansett tribe, as described by Doug Harris, a Narragansett tribal historic preservation officer, “In our tradition, stones are called virtuous grandfathers. They are the spirit energies that precede humans,” he said. “Most (stone) groupings are related to the setting sun or view of setting constellations. From the viewing point of the Upton chamber as a vector, you have a view of all the stone groupings on Pratt Hill.”

Anywho, so there's an infodump of a whole bunch of stuff I found. It would be pretty cool to do something at least partially rooted in Native American myth, etc.

Some of the things I found theorized that the hives were built by pre-Viking explorers from Europe, since they have some sort of Celtic construction style. Maybe link it to a ritual to summon an ancient god or something, when the stars align or whatever? That would fit with the astronomy stuff.

Yeah, I actually really like the seed.

We could actually go with some ANCIENT war, and have ancient magic weapons or something for them to find.

I'm not too sure about that though, they would have to do a lot of traveling. We don't know of any caves that are really close-by, they seem pretty scattered.