Amarach's Home · 7:36am Jan 31st, 2021
Recently, I've been enjoying a ponyfinder campaign run by the lovely Ether Echoes. It is set in a world where alicorns were once quite common, but centuries ago they "went away," and the land fell into ruin. All the player characters are heroes seeking to uncover the alicorn's ancient legacy, to learn why they vanished, and perhaps to end this age of darkness and bring about the return of their harmonious rule.
My character, Amarach, was pitched to the GM as an "unemployed pagan goddess." She's technically an alicorn: she has wings, she has a horn, she has broad hooves, and she's immortal. There are even statues of her, scattered around the old ruins. But she doesn't have godlike powers, nor does she know why the other alicorns vanished. The local villagers actually consider her a bit of a crank, a lunatic who lives alone on top of the mountain near old castle.
This is a description I wrote of her home, to help set the tone for the campaign.
At the base of the mountain rests a statue; before it, one hundred fields.
Each field is an absurdity. They are enclosed by walls of pink marble, squares one hundred paces on a side, two paces thick, three paces high. The space within has been filled with fertile soil, level to the top of the wall, that crops might be conducted within. Such earth must have come from far away, for the soil about the mountain is rocky and barren.
Travelers mock the fields. Decry them as proof of decadence. Enough marble to build a palace, enough labor to employ a thousand haulers for a dozen years, all used to decorate a garden built in inhospitable terrain, as though the creators could not simply have walked a mile from the mountain to the nearby plains. They look at the statue that watches over the fields, and call her a tyrant and a fool.
Nothing but weeds grows within the boxes. Nearby villages have, at odd times, tried to restore them to function, but their soil is filled with strange metal debris that breaks plows and slices open the ankles of the unwary. But let it not be said that peasants are not industrious. Whenever a scrap merchant passes through the area, the fields fill with holes, and a little bit more of the metal debris is cleared. Perhaps one day, it will all be gone, and the fields will be worked once again.
Sometimes, ponies ask Amarach what the fields were for. She explains to them the concept of a greenhouse, that the debris was once metal frameworks that supported walls of glass, that these fields might grow crops year-round. She says that each of the hundred fields grew a different crop, including many that are no longer found in the Isles, and that no longer have names.
Villagers, locals, guests in her home, all tell her she must have been quite wealthy and powerful, to expend such treasure upon her garden, and to have statues made of her overseeing it.
“Treasure,” she corrects them, “is what came out of the garden. For there was a time when we had marble, and we had metal, and we had glass, but we did not have food.”
Then she tells them that the statue isn’t of her, and walks away.
Up the slope, just beyond a cliff of speckled stone, rests the Village of Clay and Iron.
One-hundred and ten kilns, one-hundred and thirty-two smelters, two-dozen forges, more buildings than exist in any of the nearby settlements, all packed onto one small section of the mountain slope. They are packed in, side by side, rows and rows of clay bricks and stone-banded walls.
Their construction is crude, compared to the fields below. Clay bricks are roughly shaped, some of the buildings are not quite geometrically perfectly, but lumpy or oblong. There is no pattern to the buildings, no neat rows. They are tossed amongst each other like refuse, like the empty shells of cracked nuts, tossed to the floor of the inn during a night of revelry.
Perhaps stranger, no two are the same. Every kiln is different from every other; different proportions, different designs, different configuration of the doors, vents, and fireboxes. So it is with the smelters, and with the forges. Below the cliff, the fields have largely resisted the weathering of years, but the Village of Clay and Iron is overgrown. Grass grows out of fireboxes. Roots split kiln walls.
When people ask her what it is all for, Amarach says that once, she forgot how to work earth and metal, and had to learn how to do so again.
It took a long time, and many tries. There was no one to teach her.
Midway up the mountain, at the point where the trees block the view of the Village, and the fields look like the squares of a gameboard, there is a small waterfall. Beneath that waterfall is a wooden wheel, no more than a pace on a side. Flat wooden protrusions, emerging from each spoke, catch the water where it falls, and thereby compel the wheel to turn.
The wheel’s existence, its location, is common knowledge. Dozens of locals have seen it. Amarach pays them, with services, with favors, sometimes even with gold, to come and look at the wheel. To remember the wheel. She makes them draw the wheel, to be certain they have seen it properly.
The wheel, she says, is extremely important. More important than armies, more important than kings. The wheel, she says, is for the future. Fortunes will be built and destroyed by the wheel. It will make and break empires.
And so, people ask her, what is the wheel for?
She doesn’t know. Long ago, she swore to herself that she would never let the wheel be forgotten, that she would preserve it against all that was to come. She promised herself that when future generations basked in the glory of the wheel, it would be her they had to thank, and that for this deed they would remember her name.
But she doesn’t remember why she swore such an oath, and she doesn’t remember what the wheel is for.
The villagers think they understand perfectly. The poor woman is mad.
Near the top of the mountain, just below the rocky crag that is the summit, one can find the Copper Forest.
It is like the Village of Clay and Iron, though far more recent, having been constructed within the last century. Weeds have grown around it, but the trees have not yet reclaimed the land, and some of the original buildings still stand. Under shelters of thatch and wood rest the verdigris forms of dozens of enormous copper stills, all connected by twisting knots of metal pipes.
The function of the Copper Forest is within living memory. Old ponies tell stories told to them in their youth, that every still produces something different. That there is one that makes cider stronger, and one that enhances wine. There is one that makes potions that cure infections, and another that makes fluid that slaughters rats. There is one, they say, that produces nothing but clean drinking water, condensing it from the empty air, and one that produces the elixir of youth, that restores vitality to those who drink it.
Perhaps it was once so, but none of the stills yet function. Corrosion in the copper has eaten holes in the pipes, and in many of the vessels. Sometimes, young locals eager to make a quick return will attempt to steal pipes, or entire stills, and to sell them to scrap merchants visiting the villages.
Amarach is fiercely protective of her most recent project. Not all thieves who go up the mountain come back down.
And then there is her home itself: a fortress against nonexistent thieves, a citadel both garrisoned and besieged by ghosts, a vault door of the finest steel forged to protect her trash. Where she locks away those things that no one wants or remembers.
The only path up the crag is blocked by a thick gate, and a sign written in many languages that warns guests to shout for her to let them up, and not to attempt to enter uninvited. This is good advice, for both the path and the cliffs both are rigged with a variety of deadly traps: metal things that snap, seemingly solid rock faces that give way, pits full of spikes hidden beneath the soil. Amarach enjoys her privacy.
Atop the crag, one sees four A-frames, surrounded by trash and assorted debris. The frames themselves are new, and in a contemporary style, made from wood from the mountainside and thatched with local straw. But these are only a cover, a cap, erected to replace older buildings that have long since collapsed. Beneath them is the original structure, dating back to the days of the dia, dozens of underground chambers, arranged in neat rows.
And what is in these chambers? Books that nobody can read. Stone sheets, carved with indecipherable illustrations. Piles of gemstones that appear to have melted, piles of gold that collapse into grey dust when disturbed. Intricate metallic devices that have turned to piles of rust, and boxes of seeds that have turned to piles of rot. Staves that aren’t magic, blades that aren’t sharp, immaculately preserved glass bottles whose contents have turned to dust.
Amarach lives in the A-frames. Everything in them is dedicated to preserving the vaults. She has a woodshop, so she can make braces to prevent the vault ceilings from collapsing. She has a forge so she can make metal braces to support the sagging doors. She studies alchemy, so that she can guard their contents against the ravages of time.
Few locals have seen the underground chambers. She is afraid for them, afraid a guest might hurt them. But a select number have won her trust, and been allowed down below.
At a glance, they know that she has already failed in her mission, her purpose long lost. What were once vaults for treasure are nothing more than a monument to ruin.
Nice art. Sorry I couldn't spare the time to read the post, too tired. Tommorow, my friend.
5445026
Same tbh
What a cool character idea, and a superb description of her home and projects! Hope you've been having fun with the campaign.
Noice work, Jax.
The last guardian of a legacy already lost. Fascinating concept. Glad you're enjoying the campaign.
:D
Yo, this is sweet. When I write character bios for a campaign I just use a bulleted list. Way to go above and beyond.
I feel you could have convinced them to let you play any kind of character you wanted with introductions like these! This reminds me, I need to go back and finish Celestia's Raiment and it's good to hear from you again.
Someday, a hundred mares will invent the candle.
media1.tenor.com/images/25be3b5611d83ebbe50c43860947b602/tenor.gif?itemid=8603282
Then somepony discovers the electric guitar and all hell breaks loose
I like this. It gave me quite a rush.
This is spectacular. Is there any chance you will write more of Amarach? It doesn't have to be about what happens in your campaign nor does it have to be a full posted story.
The character and the whole idea is fascinating and intense and stuff, but the bit about the wheel? That's some powerful words. Even by your standards.
5445382
I think I might. :)
Ah, glad you've been enjoying that game. :)
As for the text you've shared, fascinating; thank you very much for sharing. :)
...Now I quite want to play in this game, just from that, despite already being in an RPG group and not having time for being in two at once even if everything else worked out. Oh well. But good job doing that tone-setting, I'd say. :D
Lovely.
5445186
Yeah, I'm guessing The Wheel was meant to be part of a primitive hydroelectric power plant; THAT would certainly be something worthy of remembering for ages yet to come.
5605349
Bingo.