Enoch wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 9:57 pm
Suen speaks hesitantly, almost stuttering, as he glances back at his sister.
"I...I don't know how to make illusions. I could try, but...it's dangerous. I could maybe ask the demons of this place to tell me the history of the city? Perhaps that would tell us what trials await us?" He casts his luminous eyes down onto the sand.
Sabit looks up as the raven flies overhead,
"I think our friend whose feathers smoke has probably learned enough for now. Save your strength for when it is needed, little brother. What word, Nutesh?"
Marullus wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2024 2:27 am
Looking through Carrock is a B3 Observation; I'll Help with my Cemetary-wise as he scopes the city outskirts (with a particular eye for the dead being buried or unburied...)
Carrock [1d6]=6[1d6]=5[1d6]=3[1d6]=1
With Grey-shade, that's three successes. [/ooc]
Telkomel is a ruin rather than a cemetery, and it feels important to apply Wises narrowly, so I will veto the Help. Even so, that's 3 successes against an open-ended obstacle.
The city is vast, far vaster than you can tell from where you stand; what you can see, which is already impressive, appears to be only the gate of the city. Behind the gate there is a crack in the cliffside that opens into a valley surrounded by cliffs, this is where the city proper is, and it fills the entirety of the valley.
Inside, you can see wide, empty thoroughfares and narrow alleys, filled with sand and devoid of either life or signs of the dead, and buildings made of the same ebon stone. Through Carrock's eyes, you can tell immediately that the stones are neither bricks nor small stones piled together, they are monolithic pieces of stone carved into shape and laid precisely next to and on top of one another to form buildings.
On the main thoroughfare into the city, near to the entrance, a half-collapsed arch, the only thing you see made of smaller blocks, each once perfectly shaped to form the arch, still stands over the street, imposing and regal, with symbols carved into the stone. The crown of the arch, now fallen to the ground, bears the figure of a man and a woman in royal regalia, the man holding a spear which points directly at what would once have been the highest point of the arch. A deep sense of unease creeps in as you look over the symbols and the carving.
Behind the arch is a dry pool, and in the pool a dry fountain, filled with sand from the long ages the pool has been dry.
The city radiates out from a central construction, several dozen meters tall, with stone after stone laid improbably on top of one other, hundreds of columns supporting each new layer, four stories tall, and capped with a gilded statue of mesmerizing beauty—a woman in strange dress, balancing on one foot, her arm outstretched, reaching off into the distance, standing on a sphere radiating beams of gold.
It is unlike anything you have ever seen in any city in the world, even pitted by sand, the skill of the maker is evident. Every shape is impossibly detailed and remarkably well preserved considering the age of this place, the yearning look she makes is still evident, and the flow of her robes would be utterly believable were it not frozen in gold.
Around this structure are several other impressive buildings, though not as tall, and none of them with anything nearly as impressive as the statue. Even so they are impressive, with ceilings over a dozen feet high, enormous pillars holding up prodigious stones to serve as the roof of each building, and the same uneasy symbols carved into them. The people of this place seem to have been obsessed with grandeur.
Along the far side of the valley, too distant for even Carrock to make out in great detail, there are hundreds, thousands of open cave mouths, most of them natural stone, and a very few bordered with the black stone of the city. Being out of the wind and elements, you can see that an even smaller handful of them still have remnants of wooden doors that once closed over the entrance. All around these caves grow small, stunted bushes, flowering with tiny white buds.
Studying the landscape, Carrock initially sees no sign of anything moving except for other birds and a few small lizards sunning themselves in the dying light. There appears to be no sign of mass graves, skeletons, or anything that would indicate this place had died suddenly.
As he is about to turn back, Carrock notices movement in one of the caves, something unfamiliar, skulking, as black as the stone in the city, twisting slowly over itself into the cave, where the shadows hide it.
VVhite-Crow wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2024 5:52 am
I would like to circle the outlaw camp into existence.
As an affiliation, you do not need to circle them into existence, you can simply visit them.
