🧭 BURIED LORE

The lost gold, buried caches, pirate loot, and tall tales hidden in legend and history — uncovered from the comfort of your couch.

Buried Lore is a virtual, armchair treasure-hunting experience. You "search" a place, a stylized map fills with legends, and you open richly written dossiers that keep documented history and folklore plainly separated. It's a single, self-contained web page — no installation, no internet connection, and no real digging required.

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What it is (and isn't)

Buried Lore is a storytelling and curiosity experience, not a guide to real-world treasure hunting. It's meant to be enjoyed from your couch. It does not send anyone out to dig, trespass, disturb land, or remove property — and it never reveals real dig locations. The treasure here is the tale.

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✨ Features

• An engaging welcome screen with a clear, up-front disclaimer.
• Search by place — type a town, state, or famous region (e.g. Arizona, California, New Orleans, the Outer Banks) to surface the matching legends. Anything uncharted shows the full collection.
• A stylized parchment treasure map with numbered pins (illustrative — not real coordinates).
• Full dossiers for each legend, including:
  • The story, told in two vivid paragraphs
  • Documented History vs. Folklore & Rumor, clearly labeled
  • Cast of Characters and Key Happenings
  • Theories & Open Threads (unsolved mysteries you can flag)
  • Where to Explore Next — related places you can jump to with one click
  • The general region and a list of sources
• Ask the Archivist — a Q&A inside each dossier that answers from the legend's own records (works fully offline).
• The Field Journal — a sidebar that tracks your whole expedition: regions explored, legends uncovered, saved finds, and a "threads to follow" to-do list. It saves permanently in your browser.

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🚀 Getting started

This is a single HTML file. There is nothing to install.

1. Copy the full code into a plain text editor (TextEdit on Mac — set Format → Make Plain Text first — or Notepad on Windows).
2. Save the file as buried-lore.html (make sure it ends in .html, not .txt).
3. Double-click the file. It opens and runs in your default web browser.

That's the entire process — no Node.js, no npm, no Python, no build step, and no network needed.

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🌐 Putting it online (optional)

To share it with a public link:

• Netlify: go to app.netlify.com/drop and drag buried-lore.html onto the page. You'll get a live URL in seconds.
• GitHub Pages / Vercel / any static host: upload the file (rename it index.html if you want it served at the site root).

Because everything lives in one file, hosting is as simple as putting that file somewhere on the web.

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🛠️ How it works

• Built with plain HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript — no frameworks or libraries.
• The interface is rendered from a small in-memory state object via a render() function.
• All legend content lives in a JavaScript array (FB) inside the file.
• Searching matches your query against each legend's regions keywords.
• Your journal is stored in your browser's localStorage under the key buried-lore-journal, so it survives page refreshes and reopening the file. (If storage is unavailable, the app still works — your journal just won't persist for that session.)

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✏️ Customizing & adding legends

Want to add your own legend? Open the file in a text editor, find the FB = [ ... ] array, and add a new object. Every field is shown below:

{
  id: "fb-example",                  // unique id, no spaces
  title: "The Example Hoard",
  category: "Buried Cache",          // see categories below
  era: "1800s",
  location: "Springfield, Illinois", // the legend's home region
  regions: ["illinois", "springfield", "midwest"], // lowercase search keywords
  teaser: "A one- or two-sentence hook that makes the hair stand up.",
  story: "First paragraph...\n\nSecond paragraph...",   // \n\n splits paragraphs
  documented: ["An established fact", "Another fact with a date"],
  folklore:   ["A rumor", "A colorful tall tale"],
  figures:    [{ name: "Someone", note: "who they were" }],
  events:     [{ event: "A happening", note: "what & when" }],
  speculations: ["A theory about where it went"],
  relatedPlaces: [{ place: "Nearby Town, State", why: "why it's worth exploring" }],
  mysteries:  ["An open question still unsolved"],
  area: "A sentence describing the general historical region.",
  sources: ["A source", "Another source"]
}

Available categories (each has its own icon and color):

Category	Theme
Buried Cache	Buried gold, silver, and coin hoards
Lost Mine & Minerals	Lost mines, gems, and mineral lore
Pirate & Coastal	Pirate loot and coastal legends
Lost Payroll	Lost convoys, payrolls, and treasuries
Historical Oddity	Curious mysteries that defy easy labels

You can also tweak colors at the top of the <style> block (the :root CSS variables) to change the whole palette.

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📚 About the legends

The built-in collection features well-known legends drawn from documented history and folklore, including the Beale Ciphers, the Lost Dutchman's Mine, the Oak Island Money Pit, Blackbeard's lost hoard, the Lost Confederate Gold, Forrest Fenn's treasure, Jean Lafitte's plunder, Captain Kidd's coastal cache, the Lost Adams Diggings, and the Saddle Ridge Hoard.

These are legends. Buried Lore deliberately separates what is documented from what is folklore so you always know which is which — but it makes no claim that any treasure is real, findable, or accurately located.

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💻 Browser support

Works in any modern browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge), on desktop and mobile. The Field Journal appears as a sidebar on wider screens and as a slide-in drawer on phones.

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⚠️ Disclaimer

Buried Lore is a fictionalized, virtual experience for entertainment and curiosity. It is not an invitation or guide to search for, dig up, or remove real-world property. Please do not trespass, excavate, or disturb any land, site, or artifact based on anything in this app. Always respect private property, public-land laws, and protected and cultural sites. Enjoy the hunt — and leave the world exactly as you found it.

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📄 License & credits

This project is yours to use, modify, and share freely. The legends are based on history and folklore that have long been part of the public record.

Made as an armchair adventure. Happy hunting — from the couch. 🪙