ohh !! is this the kinda thing where the previous civilization left behind something that needs to be maintained or it'll cause a great amount of damage, like a nuclear reactor? loving this so far

Essentially! Ancient things that they had used for who knows what? (knowing who made these ruins, probably for horrible things) that have been left decaying for longer than time can recall. Things break down, even if those things were built to withstand thousands of years of decay. Particularly with these more dangerous sorts of obelisks or weapons of mass destruction, its the tough job left to the local tribal people and chiefdoms to manage. In this case to keep an already water scarce region from getting smothered by salt.

Though there is also just scavenging, lots of quality metal alloys and rare metals that are normally hard or impossible to get or make for the average draconic community. So husking and skaving also have a lot to do with stripping ruins down to the roots for those valuable metal alloys and materials.

oh that's fun !! thank u for explaining, i figured they were also taking stuff they found while there, it's neat that it's a combination of scavenging and preservation

I mean they didn't build it for people with weird, silly stuff like biological functions.

Or at least they didn't build it caring for what may happen to the meat sacks