room2/ToNorthFort
Dungeon23
2.1.2023 ROOM TWO : North to Fort
You walk together. The Sun is behind a fog which Clay explains is a permanent feature. The elders occasionally would tell of a time before it came. He tells you the past year and most your life has been like this, hunting rabbits and gathering vegetation for food.
He asks you a lot of questions about the world from where you came so you tell him.
Ground cars and flying machines…
“Machines?”
“Made of metal which you can climb inside of.”
“Like armour the soldiers used to wear. Giant flying armour. Strange. Did you use purple dust to make it fly?”
“No, they used refined oils.”
“Like animal fat?”
“From deep under the ground.”
“Your world is strange. If we knew how to make purple powder fly like in the song we could travel a lot faster.”
You have no idea how to achieve that. Clay says he will show you the powder when you next rest.
You tell him about cartoons and videogames. Internet and electricity which can be harnessed in a variety of ways. You strain your mind for the rudimentary knowledge of how you could build something to show him that. You regret not having paid more attention to learning about such things which you took for granted.
Clay likes the sound of electricity. You tell him about gunpowder, cannons and guns which is why people stopped wearing armour and building castles a few hundred years before your time. Clay says it sounds like the powder which explodes when it touches flame.
Up ahead you see the looming shape of a Tor. You both approach it cautiously. Landmarks such as this are the old journey-ways. The elders before the plague famine and war had ways to open the Tors so a person could step through one and out of another. Now those knowledges are lost.
The population of the world has been reduced by over ninety percent in a living generation. Most everything which once was known has been lost. Even knowing about many of the the things which used to exist to know about has been forgotten.
“We have forgotten what it is we do not know.”
The Tor are journey-markers for travellers. There is evidence of a small camp here, a stone-lined fire-pit recently used. The Tor itself is a blue-grey granite stone etched deeply with swirls and runic shapes, towering fifty feet high and ten feet in diameter at the base. Clay says they’re all a little different but all basically the same.
The day is growing dim so you decide to rest there for the night, making use of a small metal caldron Clay has in his pack. You do not know what sort of metal it is, never having seen naturally green metal before.
Clays pack is much your own pack, it contains a fur-lined animal skin hooded cloak, woven grass pouches for storing food items gathered along the way, a fire-making kit of wood and dry fluff, a sturdy knife of the same green metal. On examining the axe and sword you discover they also are of the same green metal.
Clay simply calls it ‘oren’, he pronounces it two ways, ‘awn’ and ‘orin’, the stuff which came from ore. “Perhaps that’s a knowledge which is not so difficult to learn again, if we can get some ore.” He seems pleased you have got him thinking in this direction.
You are woken from your sleep by a strange sound, an animal call you cannot identify. It is night-time and dark. The campfire is out. The Tor is behind you. Clay is nowhere to be seen.
Peering at you from the darkness are a set of glowing silver eyes. Fear strikes through you.
What do you do?
©2023 Ordo Octopia. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Post a Comment