Cyclopean Masonry and Making Civilizations Feel Forgotten and Ancient

Last week: The Strata of Civilizations

Many fantasy games do a poor job of suggesting the passage of time. They merely assert it, or give it the thinnest coat of narrative veneer. The “present” of the fantasy world already feels “old” to the modern-day player; how can we better communicate that the “present” of the game world sits on top of a much older past?

Think about cyclopean masonry. To a modern observer, without some specific training, these ancient walls do not look much different from other ancient walls. But to the classical Greeks, they were so strange and different that they were attributed to mythological forces, rather than the humans who built them. What can we add to games to inspire similar wonder?

The Walled City of Rosargy

No one who lives in Rosargy today knows who built its incredible walls. No other city has walls like them. They show no sign of wear from the elements and require no maintenance. Powerful monsters and terrible magics have left them unscathed. 

The city’s four perfect, imposing gates stand at the points of the compass rose. There are no handles, knobs, or keyholes. Bas reliefs on the doors plainly show supplicants speaking before the doors, and the doors opening in response. But no one today speaks the language they spoke, or knows the words they said.

So getting into and out of Rosargy is difficult. Massive dirt ramps allow carts to trundle up and over, while pulleys and lifts and ladders of all shapes and sizes allow access for individual travelers. In peaceful times, the walls are more of a nuisance than a benefit. But the occupants are reminded of their value when peaceful times end.

Torsten the Thresher

It’s still possible to find remnants of the ancient war golems who served Archmage Aristaios in the Patient War. Buried underneath layers of undergrowth or sunken into the seabed, huge ancient granite monstrosities, still as any other stone. But once upon a time they walked the earth and fought great battles. We know this is true because we can observe Torsten the Thresher.

Torsten can be found near the village of Ukaleq, in a secluded river valley full of stitch-weed and gabble groves. Scholars theorize that a great fortress must have once been here. There are no ruins of this fortress. There is quite the opposite, no trace of civilization. For Torsten is still here, smashing his enormous stone club into a huge crater in the ground. Scholars believe that Torsten was ordered to attack a structure at this location, but never ordered to stand down. The scholars speculate that Archmage Aristaios died while Torsten carried out his assault, and with no command to cease, Torsten simply continued to follow through on this final orders into perpetuity.

Visitors are understandably terrified of Torsten, but the people of Ukaleq village love him. For countless generations, they have dragged the tough stalks of the gabble trees to “Torsten the Thresher,” as they call him. The slow and methodical rise and fall of his club, powered by magic, is far more productive than any conventional threshing method. The villages do not fear this weapon of war, for his presence has been as consistent and indifferent as anything in the world, since long before their ancestors came to this place. If the villagers have any concern at all when it comes to Torsten, it is the worry that the hole he has dug with his massive blows will eventually destabilize the ground on which he stands, and tip him over. They seek the help of dwarven architects to reinforce Torsten’s footing and ensure he can continue his vital work for generations to come.

The Pleasure Palace of Queen Léontine

There were elves once, in this land. Perhaps there still are, but no person who walks these roads has met them in person. Their ancient works remain, although time and circumstance have changed them to such a degree that the humans here scarcely recognize the purposes they once served.

Take, for example, the Pleasure Palace of Queen Léontine. What no person today knows or understands is that this elven queen once called this place her home, many centuries before men set foot here. Her magic was great, and the barriers between worlds were thinner and more porous in that age. She traveled back and forth between this world and the fey realm of the fairie courts, which in that long-ago time were friendly to the elves.

To ensure she could readily attend the social season of the fey lands and rulership of her domain in this world, she worked powerful magicks on her pleasure palace, allowing it to phase between worlds on a timely schedule, without the need to cast the spells each time herself. Would-be suitors – whether magically compelled or completely willing – guarded the palace from intrusion in both realms. For many human generations, she reigned and reveled in this way, living in both worlds.

Exactly when and how is lost to history, but at some point Queen Léontine died, or disappeared, and her palace fell into disuse. The guardian suitors left or died, and the first humans to wander this land attempted to settle in the disused palace. But its strange travel between worlds made it dangerous to these intruders, who unexpectedly disappeared with the palace's transition. Folklore stories sprung up about the cursed place and the people who disappeared after lingering too long in its glamoured halls. Over time, without servants to maintain its beautiful gardens, it fell to ruin; the delicate glasswork structures collapsed; and eventually everything was so overgrown that the structure of the palace itself was no longer  even visible.

But the magic remained, and the palace and the land it resided on continued to shift between worlds, albeit more slowly with each passing millennia. The palace phases into the real world approximately once each century. In three out of four of its appearances, the ruin’s arrival is barely noticeable; a heavily overgrown mound that appears in the wilderness, swapping places with largely similar terrain, then disappears again months later. But in one out four appearances, it phases back to our world from a fey court with a dangerously severe difference in air pressure, relative to the modern world. In these instances, the arrival produces a tremendous booming noise, audible for miles around, followed by terrible storms and tornadoes. The guardians are gone, the splendor faded and overgrown, and Queen Léontine no longer walks those fabled halls; but its magic still dominates the lands she once ruled.