Lore IV: The Insecure One ( Architecture )

Before Inse

Overall Nature:

The world was richly and diversely cultured before the days of Inse, and the united lands featured unique architecture representative of their many people, who at this point in time, had long ago achieved mutual tolerance for each other. Peaceful interaction and interrelations thrived, and such influences carved its way into the structures of the time.

Remodeled metal and mineral forms, advanced ferrofluids, supremely refined stone and both modified and natural land forms were complemented by the progressions of alchemy, and sorcery filled all remaining gaps and created new fields upon which to expand the possibilities of their world.

General:

Zealot temples to different worships stood among smaller monuments of dedication, and the residencies of the scientifically and magically inclined were clustered both together and separately; no true thoughts were ever given to the natures of these divisions and unities, as such lacked significance in a world where the residents themselves understood their interdependence, and embraced their coexistence.

Trading stations, commercial transport docks, leisure facilities, etc were all communal and varied in style. While most structures were based on the ground, an intricate network ran beneath it, as well as above it, suspended among the air faring vessels of the time. 

Monuments:

The products of collective, nationwide efforts, monuments were built as both memorial landmarks and icons of milestones, and stories of how new breakthroughs in technology and new contacts and blessings from gods alike were celebrated through their constructions.

These monuments stood at sanity defying heights and scales, and even spanned great lengths over the lands. To enable this in the already occupied dense and clustered land, and even air, spaces, the structures were built within fractures of realities from the world’s true one, allowing monument and city to exist on the same plane without obstructing each other despite being built in the same place. The genius of the magically and/or spiritually inclined, they transformed the world, over years and years of hard work, into its own monument of success, its diverse cities spreading across the lands featuring commemorations upon commemorations. 

Significant and/or Functional Structures:

  • Air Terminals/Maintenance Docks:

Very common across the lands, terminals were often suspended at great heights by jets or magic, but were also built rooted to the ground by traditional, high-rise, metal stands. These allowed for the production and maintenance of air vessels and the ferrying of passengers and cargo alike.

  • “Hope”, The Monument to Greatness:

Not entirely true to the humility of its name, Hope was an 8000 kilometer long, 3000 kilometer wide and gradually sloping 0-1800 kilometer high stone-mix monument that stretched over the lands. Existing between realities in a masterful balance of magical and spiritual prowess, it stretched all laws of the speculated and known, combining the far extremes of every trade into an icon of the conquered impossible. Declared “Hope” by the world for the possibilities within reach it suggested for their future, it stood primary as a testament of power and well-deserved pride.


 

After Inse

Overall Nature:

Unable to come to terms with the massive loss and destruction, survivors of Inse’s arrival ceased to be able to cooperate as before, and while an uncertain mutuality and coexistence remained, attention skewed primarily towards self-preservation.

Scavenging and looting commenced, and any structure or building bearing versatile or valuable materials were stripped down to remodel and construct either transports or temporary shelters for the road.

The diverse and unique cultures of the people’s architecture were hence mostly broken down and blended into the clustered patchwork of their land and air vehicles. The land’s architecture on the other hand, revisited and diminished over the ten years past, came to resemble ruins of basic, almost indistinguishable frameworks of metal and stone.

General:

Zealot temples and places of worship were initially left untouched, with significant relics protected and carried along in times of travel in order to preserve them. Small, simple alters were built as the traveling persisted, and trailed along the paths of travel in clusters to allow worshipers to place their relics in appropriate shelters in times of stillness. After years of unanswered prayers and no spiritual contact however, the majority of these lesser followings ceased to upkeep their altars, leaving the lands specked with dismal little shelters. Taken as temporary homes by travelers, these little altars were soon stripped of any excess materials, and eventually, even the surviving temples met the same fate.

Meanwhile, the communal amenities and facilities of the ground were the first to meet with looting and destruction. While their ruins still resemble some semblance of their former uses, the majority sit in states of varying decay, used as temporary shelters and parking grounds. The underground network, only partially looted towards the surface sectors, remain open even after all the years past, but the state of their lowest levels are unknown. Given Inse’s increasingly unpredictable turns, to venture underground would prove too great a risk.

Monuments:

Having been built within fractures of realities from the world’s true one, the world’s monuments saw what can only be described as existential deletion upon Inse’s arrival. As the world had been ripped from its realities, it left behind these monuments, which consequently, also claimed everything they had been built over, leaving behind patches of bare land. 

Of the few that had not been balanced between realities, these were eventually broken down over the years for the materials they were made of, and in the case of pure stone structures, came to serve as way points for aerial navigators. Their intricate designs and daring formations remained here and there across the lands, but under the accelerated decay experienced when Inse’s gaze was elsewhere, came to loose their color and detail.

Significant and/or Functional Structures:

  • Air Terminals/Maintenance Docks:

The disabling nature of being outside Inse’s gaze ultimately caused every suspended terminal and dock without a physical support to come crashing down, destroying the buildings beneath it. These massive ruins lie where they had crashed, portions of them missing from being looted for the parts. Those with supports on the other hand, had gradually deteriorated over the years, and while most of the stands remain upright, the terminals themselves at their tops are in varying stages of decay. Also completely looted and torn up for resources, they stand as empty, sky-high shells, avoided for fear of their inevitable collapse. 

  • “Hope”, The Monument to Greatness:

Now known only as the desolate and empty Hope Path. Having been balanced between realities, the act of Inse ripping the world from its own reality both combined and cancelled out those the Hope monument overlapped. Instantaneously destroying the cities it spanned over and all within it, Hope was virtually erased from existence in the next instance, taking with it all traces of anyone having ever been there. All that is left behind is hence a 8000 by 3000 space of empty flat land, desolate and unnaturally void of sound. While some do use it to travel when Inse’s turn crosses it, most avoid it for the fear the nothingness would ultimately drive them mad. 

Author: Issabel Andrew

Coherency is not guaranteed

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