The Butcher Block

In the south of the Big Charry region, about a half a day over land from no place special, where no roads go, there is a tree by a cliff.  In this tree, spiraling up and around, are 43 giant blades, like slightly tapered meat cleavers, stuck and now growing into the trunk.  The tree itself is a sequoia, big and old and likely to live longer than people remember its here.  You can climb the blades or the handles, which look and smell of red cedar, from the base of the tree to the top of the cliff or vice-versa, but there's no indication of what might have been the direction of the travel or why.

Folks who study these things, especially folks who adhere to the Reasoners' beliefs, have made this tree a place of pilgrimage in the days since the first map accurately placing it came out of the region with trustworthy corroboration.  The irony of any place meriting pilgrimage from the usually iconoclastic Reasoners is, well, lost on most of them, they are a ferociously dreary and literal minded bunch, but there's some call for it.  Those who study such things agree that this is what those underground could do, but not how they ever did things.  Transmutation of matter was the basis for just about everything those underground did and as much a part of their methods as subterranean existence and relentless need for animal protein.

Reasoners believe that the butcher block was created by a human being with the use of the methods of those below, a possibility which excites them beyond all entertainment of the many alternate explanations that could have put 43 identical blades in a tree as a stairway.  They have taken to hiring folks to keep an eye on the tree to prevent explorers from trying to take the blades or hurt the tree.