Good morning all. It looks like the rian has backed off for a few days and the sun has a hope of shining. That’s always nice on a Monday. It makes me feel better about starting a new week anyway. So why don’t we just jump in and start with a new prompt then? Everyone have their fingers wiggled and warmed up? God, lets wake up the brain then. Start your timers.
I think this fits very well with a story I’ve been thinking about for a while. It is starting to take shape in my head and peep through at odd moments. I think this will go very nicely with what I’m thinking about, so this will get copied into a specific story file for later use. It will no doubt be very different when it arrives in final form, but it is useful. I love when that happens.
Monday, March 22nd: The ruins hinted at past glory.
The ruins hinted at past glory. Even in their dilapidated state, they were magnificent. A veritable forest of stone towers rose up pointing delicate fingers to the sky. From the distance they could see archways for windows but no sign of glass. He reminded himself that the odds of those towers being delicate was slim. Those who built in this region did so on a massive scale. As he and the rest of his team moved forward he tried to estimate the size of the towers.
It was a pointless exercise as he had no true reference points to guide his numbers. He had no idea exactly how far away the settlement as it was currently called stood. No one, at least no one in the last thousand years, had walked this road before. If there were signposts, he couldn’t see them. There were no mile markers.
‘Although I think we might have to upgrade it from a settlement to a city.’
He wasn’t certain exactly what the size difference was. He did know that given just the towers and the buildings they were no doubt attached to, this new place could potentially have housed more that ten times the number of inhabitants as the last settlement they passed through.
‘Unless it is only one building,’ he thought, giving up on the estimation of distance. ‘Maybe it is all one massive structure.’
He tried to picture what sort of massive building it could be. It was bigger than any cathedral or temple he had ever seen or even heard about. ‘It could be ceremonial.’
At a distance there was no way to tell if the space was used on a daily basis or only on occasion for some strange ritual or rite. There was the possibility that once they arrived they might be able to figure it out. Perhaps there would be spaces for gardens or tools or evidence of long ago cook fires. Finding such things wasn’t his job though. He was strictly the find and map sort of person.
But he wondered and the wondering kept him thinking as his body moved along the overgrown road bed. He and his team slowly wound their way up mountain, edging closer and closer to what he couldn’t help but think of as a city. The rest of the team speculated as well. Most seemed to think it was a castle.
He wondered if they should look for defensive fortifications along the road. He also wondered if the towers would be safe. In his estimation ruined towers didn’t always stay upright.
Ten til Midnight 