"Curious. I wonder what wards them off?" Van looked around. It thought about the possibility that the creatures staying away was the result of the smoke from the cookfires. There could be some form of irritant in the grass that such enlarged creatures were sensitive to and the grass runners burning it had unintentionally protected them. Van didn't verbalise this thought as it didn't want its arson happy party member to get any funny ideas. But the more it thought about it the more unlikely it seemed. The grassrunners had been here a long time, there was no way they wouldn't have noticed something as obvious as that. The idea that Van could have some kind of incense burner that would keep those vile things from drinking its internal fluids again was unfortunately just wishful thinking.
"There must be something in the ruins keeping them away. I'm sorry, as you might have guessed the ruins are why we've come to your fine village. I hope we are not transgressing by investigating them.,"
"Could be I suppose, could be. Maybe the Gods are just looking out for us? Don't matter much as long as we can sleep easy at night."
She looks in what is probably the general direction of the ruins.
"I just figured the lot of you where passing through. The greenhouse portion of the ruins is open enough, but we sealed off all the doors to the underground part. Someone messing around down there could make the greenhouse stop working, or worse let loose all the Precursor contraptions on the village. Don't gain nothing from letting an adventurer loot it and we could lose everything...so it ain't a smart gamble on our part."
Come to think of it an adventurer would have no reason to publicly mark an unlooted ruin right? If they allowed looting the adventurer that marked it on the map would have just looted it themselves.