White Chain (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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daybreakacademy2019-02-04 11:01 am
peace_keeper) wrote in daybreakacademy2019-02-04 11:01 am
I will see you in Samura
Who: 82 White Chain and the Outlands Cosmology Class
What: Field trip!
Where: Dead Kingdom of Samura, The Outlands.
When: Early February
Warning: I hope you got a signed consent form from your legal guardian.
After weeks of talking about the voices of gods and the void between worlds and the King's Road and other such esoteric topics, it would not be surprising for even a studious student to still not have a good grip on what The Outlands were. They were a big place, after all. Far larger than the Earth, and far stranger.
Eventually, you had to just go there.
White Chain had been reminding her class of the upcoming trip for the last week, but it might still be surprising to see a large stone archway set up in the front of the classroom. It was covered in carefully carved runes, and would not have looked out of place in a wizard's tower or a crumbling dungeon full of goblins and beholders. It definitely looked out of place in a classroom.
Once the class was gathered, White Chain addressed them all with her hands clasped behind her back. "Once active, this gateway will lead to the dead kingdom of Samura. Samura was once a land dedicated to peace. A land of philosophers and poets. Such things rarely last, but Samura's end was not what you might assume. No one conquered it. No, Samura fell because of wars in neighboring regions. Refugees, seeking peace, continually fled to Samura until eventually there was not enough food and shelter for anyone. The result: Famine, riots, and collapse. Now, only ruins and bones remain. It is a somber place. It is also safe, and so an ideal place to first experience the outlands."
Each student was offered an emergency kit that included a signal flare, should they get lost, a lightweight emergency blanket, and a water bottle. She touched a rune on the gateway and a portal of shimmering light swirled into being before turning clear, and suddenly instead of seeing the blackboard behind the gate, you could see a starlit desert. "Are there any questions before we go?"
The Ruins of Samura
The first thing anyone noticed on stepping into the Outlands was that Samura was COLD. Breath fogged the near freezing air. The second thing anyone noticed that this was like no place on Earth. A desert of vividly purple stand stretched out to the horizon. Strange, alien trees remained here and there, stunted, twisted, and dead from centuries of drought and famine. Above, a sky impossibly dense with starts of a thousand vibrant colors lit the land almost as bright as daylight. The portal stood in the middle of what must have once been a beautiful plaza lined by building that looked to be almost as much sculptures of art as they were homes and businesses. Now, most of them were falling apart or just rubble, but a few remained upright.
The main street led away from the plaza towards a large cliff which appeared to have a waterfall flowing down it and the shapes of more buildings along the top. On closer examination, however, it became obvious that the "waterfall" was actually a sandflow, and that it was flowing up the cliff face. Indeed, there appeared to be an entire river of shifting sand that wound through the ruins of canals that criss crossed the ruined town.
Here and there, one could find bones. Human bones. Nothing lived here. Not anymore.
"Be cautious with the ruins. Some of them are quite fragile, and could collapse. We leave in three hours time. I will set of a signal flare by the gateway half an hour before we leave, and will leave the gate open until all students are accounted for. If you get lost, set off your flare and I will come for you as fast as I can."
What: Field trip!
Where: Dead Kingdom of Samura, The Outlands.
When: Early February
Warning: I hope you got a signed consent form from your legal guardian.
After weeks of talking about the voices of gods and the void between worlds and the King's Road and other such esoteric topics, it would not be surprising for even a studious student to still not have a good grip on what The Outlands were. They were a big place, after all. Far larger than the Earth, and far stranger.
Eventually, you had to just go there.
White Chain had been reminding her class of the upcoming trip for the last week, but it might still be surprising to see a large stone archway set up in the front of the classroom. It was covered in carefully carved runes, and would not have looked out of place in a wizard's tower or a crumbling dungeon full of goblins and beholders. It definitely looked out of place in a classroom.
Once the class was gathered, White Chain addressed them all with her hands clasped behind her back. "Once active, this gateway will lead to the dead kingdom of Samura. Samura was once a land dedicated to peace. A land of philosophers and poets. Such things rarely last, but Samura's end was not what you might assume. No one conquered it. No, Samura fell because of wars in neighboring regions. Refugees, seeking peace, continually fled to Samura until eventually there was not enough food and shelter for anyone. The result: Famine, riots, and collapse. Now, only ruins and bones remain. It is a somber place. It is also safe, and so an ideal place to first experience the outlands."
Each student was offered an emergency kit that included a signal flare, should they get lost, a lightweight emergency blanket, and a water bottle. She touched a rune on the gateway and a portal of shimmering light swirled into being before turning clear, and suddenly instead of seeing the blackboard behind the gate, you could see a starlit desert. "Are there any questions before we go?"
The Ruins of Samura
The first thing anyone noticed on stepping into the Outlands was that Samura was COLD. Breath fogged the near freezing air. The second thing anyone noticed that this was like no place on Earth. A desert of vividly purple stand stretched out to the horizon. Strange, alien trees remained here and there, stunted, twisted, and dead from centuries of drought and famine. Above, a sky impossibly dense with starts of a thousand vibrant colors lit the land almost as bright as daylight. The portal stood in the middle of what must have once been a beautiful plaza lined by building that looked to be almost as much sculptures of art as they were homes and businesses. Now, most of them were falling apart or just rubble, but a few remained upright.
The main street led away from the plaza towards a large cliff which appeared to have a waterfall flowing down it and the shapes of more buildings along the top. On closer examination, however, it became obvious that the "waterfall" was actually a sandflow, and that it was flowing up the cliff face. Indeed, there appeared to be an entire river of shifting sand that wound through the ruins of canals that criss crossed the ruined town.
Here and there, one could find bones. Human bones. Nothing lived here. Not anymore.
"Be cautious with the ruins. Some of them are quite fragile, and could collapse. We leave in three hours time. I will set of a signal flare by the gateway half an hour before we leave, and will leave the gate open until all students are accounted for. If you get lost, set off your flare and I will come for you as fast as I can."
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"Towards Samura's end, the rivers themselves started drying up. It was a gifted runesmith who figured out how to make a new kind of sand that flows like water. Barges used to ride these rivers of sand, shipping in supplies from distant lands to save the ailing kingdom."
She folded her arms and stared out into the horizon. "It was too late, and the secret of flowsand was lost as Samura fell into ruin. I will admit, I was sad to see it go, but there was nothing I could have done."
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Look, she needs her hands, they're very important.
"I wonder what this place sounded like, before it all faded away. If more of the magic sounded like this." The flowsand, sounded like water metal water if that makes sense. Probably not, but those were the sounds she could feel in her head as she got close. "Or if it was as chaotic as Earth sounds every day."
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White Chain shook her head ruefully. She may have slightly misunderstood what Maya meant by what Samura sounded like. "Sadly, violence is inescapable."
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"Are all the Outlands the same. Not, identical, but do they all have the same air, the same... feeling. Or is what I'm getting here just because this place is dead and faded?" Maya explain your powers before asking complex questions about magic.
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So then for her actual question: "That is more or less accurate. Not only is everything dead here, but the tales of Samura's fall have spread so far that any life that could have grown here has been willed away. Maybe in a few thousand years when even the tales of Samura have died, it will be able to be reborn as something else."
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That's lying Maya.
"If this place is what you say, wouldn't telling us a story with a hopeful resolution give this land a chance to revive. Instead of telling us how dead it is, tell us how it could be revived?"
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She hesitated. "...It's possible that could have some small effect, if the tale of rebirth reached enough people. It is difficult for me to tell lies, however."
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And ultimately, for humans, all hope WAS a lie. All mortals had the same fate, in the end, no matter how hard they worked to put it off.
White Chain decided not to share this bit of wisdom at this moment, for politeness' sake.
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Maya was well aware of how far hope could take you- everywhere. Having no hope lead her to places she never wants to be again, and no matter how unrealistic hope is, humans needed it. Just the idea, that maybe, just maybe, things might work. "It doesn't matter how powerful you are, if you can't see a way to fix things, what good is all that power?"
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She closed her eyes, searching her memory for the right words. "Humans are foolish. They lie, they believe in false hopes and devote their lives to the most trivial of things. But because of this, humans are also the most powerful beings in the universe."
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Maya wouldn't claim to have the sunniest outlook, but she also fought so hard because the darkness she'd faced, both mundane and magical, needed to be faced. So here she was staring down an angel, over the value of a lie. And what one's belief is. "Human history is nothing but humans deciding to tell common sense off and do the impossible. If you believe that's the case, then if a human decided this place were to revive, who are you to say otherwise?"