MuseMart » Written Role Play
The Barrens
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Gumshoe
The Duck"I miss...
Yes, I miss the old days. Back before.
The days when the city thrived, when people were happy - more or less. Happier than they are now, anyway. When every new day wasn't just a struggle to survive.
And I miss...
Yes, I miss the seasons. Winter holds special memories. Snow. It's been so long since I've seen snow. White, pure, cold snow. Frozen water, falling from the sky... The festivities of the solstice. And fall, with the changing of the leaves. Oh, to have trees with leaves again.
Ah, I miss...
Hmm. I miss Magic. To think, we had spells. We could speak aloud, gesture a bit, get very serious... and we could bend nature itself to our whim. We could hold the light of day in a glass sphere, and use it to light out streets at night. We could heal all but death itself. So it seemed, anyway. Magic... you could use it to talk to someone a city away, if you had the coin. And with magic, you could even go there. A day's travel in a second. A week's travel, if the portal was big enough.
And that's what got us here. Wherever here is. The biggest gate in the world, that's what they said it would be. Whole crowds of people could travel from one end of the known world to the next with our gate, and they could take as much with them as they pleased, and all at a reasonable cost. Well, it worked. It worked better than they'd hoped.
Oh, the festivities they put on before the first travelers would use it! The priests blessed it (fat lot of good it did us), the city elders lauded it, the common folk ogled it. And the Mages preened. Oh, how they were proud of their creation. It had taken them years, they bragged, but they'd done it. Arrogant bastards.
When it came time, the city square was packed to the gills. Everybody crowded in, sure that there would be some great display of magical whatsis. Flashing lights, or something. Nevermind that it was the same damn thing as every other gate, just bigger.
The Mages didn't disappoint. They gave us a show, full of fireworks and speeches and the sorts of tricks you'd see at a carnival. It was all very festive. Right up until the moment they tried to make it work. It was a trade caravan, or most of one, that would go first. Complete with carts and animals, they all gathered onto the ornate stone platform and looked excited. Except for the animals... now that I recall, the animals had looked nervous.
The Mages gathered round, said all they had to do was one simple spell and that would be it. We'd be the travel center of the known world, and we'd be rich. They did the spell. As far as anybody can remember, there was a bright flash of light. Most can't even remember that much. All we know as that it knocked everybody out, put them sound asleep. When we came to we were here, buildings and all. The whole city and everything in it transported gods know where.
We called it The Barrens, because that's what it is. Barren. There was no vegetation, no animals. Just hard, blasted earth as far as the eye could see. Well, that's not strictly true. Sometimes there's rocks, or the things we call ironwood. They look like dead trees, all gnarled and twisty. No leaves. And charred looking, like they've been through a fire. But they're tough... so tough, you'd wear your ax out before you managed to cut one down. I know, because we tried.
There are mountains, of course. Off in the distance. They look as dead as everything else. The few scouting parties we sent out went as far as they could before running out of food and water. They turned back, with nothing to report but more ironwoods and what they thought was a dried up river bed.
What's more, there's no magic here. The Mages tried hard, those first few days. But nothing they did worked. Those globes? The ones we used to light the streets at night? They never came back on. And so here we are, in The Barrens. And here we're likely to stay."
An uneasy silence descended on the classroom as the old woman finished speaking. The children, the for the most part, looked interested. It was always nice to hear stories about the time before. They were interesting, filled with the wonders of magic. But by the same token nobody wanted to be the first to ask a question. That would mean they had to stay here longer, when they could be outside doing something else.
The teacher glowered at them. Ask a question or else, her expression said.
This wasn't the first time they'd had an old person in to talk about life before, of course. By now the students knew that there were a certain set of questions you were expected to ask. One boy, sitting somewhere in the middle of the class, remitted under the teacher's gaze. "Um," he started. "How old were you when it happened?"
The old woman smiled, folding her hands on her lap. "Why, I was just a young girl. Younger than you, I think."
The teacher, foreseeing a litany of boring standard questions, decided to liven things up. "Elsa, why don't you tell us about the Split?"
"Ah, the Split." The old lady nodded knowingly. "It was some weeks after we'd first gotten here. It was a big panic, then. All of our farmland was gone, left behind when the city transported. So there was little food, no source of water. By then we were digging the wells, of course, but none of them had hit anything. A lot of people figured they never would. Some wanted to stay and make due with what we had. The city was shelter, and something familiar. Others wanted to strike out into the wilderness, make for the mountains and hope they found something better.
There were fights about it. It got ugly. Those that wanted to leave needed to take supplies with them, those that wanted to stay also needed supplies. Eventually a bunch of people all got behind a man named Eskal Garpin. They sat down with the city elders, and came to a deal. To avoid trouble they could have some supplies, but they didn't get as much as they wanted. And then they left, all hundred and twenty eight of them, out into the unknown. The Garpin Expedition, we called them. We all expected them to come straggling back a few days or weeks later, out of supplies and desperate. Begging to be forgiven for their stupidity." She trailed off, then, eyes focusing on the middle distance.
"And did they?" the teacher prompted, even though she knew the answer.
"No," the old woman shook her head sadly. "No, we never saw sign of them again. Such a waste. We sent a few scouting parties after them, of course, just to see... but they couldn't go far."
"Thank you, Elsa," the teacher smiled. "I think that will be all for today. Next week we'll be going over magic, how it was used and some theories on why it doesn't work anymore."
With a general commotion, the students spilled out of the classroom and onto the streets of the city. The teacher watched them go, shaking her head. Such a different world they lived in. Would they ever know the world that Elsa had known? "Thank you," she said. "I know they may not appreciate it now, but it's good for them to know where they came from."
"Oh, you're welcome. And trust me, Agatha, I remember being in school," Elsa smiled wryly. "Funny you should bring up the Garpin Expedition, though," she added with a tilt of her head. "I've heard talk they're thinking of sending a determined search out into the wastes. To find out what happened to them."
"I'm not surprised," Agatha replied. "In fact, I heard Henry was behind it."
"No surprise there," Elsa said with a chuckle. "He's been itching to head an exploration party every since that survivor from Foraker's group came back babbling on about seeing something... a building, somewhere out in The Barrens, wasn't it?"
"That's what they say, though as I hear it the poor man died before they could get anything specific out of him. It's always a tragedy when a group doesn't come back."
Elsa nodded again, eyes once again becoming unfocused. "Yes... it certainly is."
Posted 2 years ago #
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