The Golden Skeleton in the Crystal Coffin at Cueva de los Tayos (Inspiration from Modern myth)

Over at Skeptoid there's a new article on the "mystery" behind the Cueva de los Tayos and the Lost Metal Library....a fun read about a modern myth turned into something literally Too Good to Be True by UFOlogy and von Daniken, as usual. What's fun about this, though is that the descriptions von Daniken used to hype the location of an ancient cave with a lost trove of alien lore sounds like a fantastic setting for a D&D, Call of Cthulhu or Numenera game. From the article, this quote stands out:

"...von Däniken wrote of fabulous discoveries almost beyond description. The cave itself was cut and polished with advanced machinery to perfect right angles and smooth surfaces. They found furniture made of plastic and gold. There were countless fantastic artifacts and treasures, including lifelike statues of humans and animals, rooms plastered with precious stones, and a golden skeleton in a crystal sarcophagus. And at the heart of the cave, the metal library itself — consisting of thousands of metal and crystal plates, 96x48cm, precisely etched in an alien language and recording 250,000 years of history — and guarded by an elaborate system of active laser beams."

I really want to drop that description in to a game soon, and explore the nature of that golden skeleton, in it's ancient immortal sarcophagus of crystal, protected by an "elaborate system of active laser beams."

Maybe the only problem with von Daniken was he hadn't discovered RPGs? I sometimes feel like UFOlogy in general is a grand an elaborate LARP in which everyone willingly engages in self deception.