Bridging the gap between Fantasy and Philosophy

Day 4

Brinsley walked down the side of small country road that ran through the woods, lamenting the decline of everything good in the world since the last time he had gone adventuring. The recorder he had was perfectly capable of reading brain waves and picking up an internal monologue, but he liked talking aloud occasionally.

“…three whole days in the woods and not a single encounter! Not even something as minor as a rabid raccoon! Fifty years ago I’d have at least ran across a bandit or two by now. This modern world is all well and good for the common folk, but there’s no excitement left in it. And the waste! Yesterday I came across a pile of trash on the roadside, not only had some idiot left it there, but it wasn’t even worth throwing away! I found everything I needed for a proper adventuring kit right there. I gave the old one away to a drifter, he can trade it to someone for a meal, and I certainly didn’t want it. Piece of junk didn’t even have a paper clip! But now I have a proper set of equipment and a perfectly functional if tarnished tea set.
Tomorrow I should arrive at what I’ve learned is called “the Tower of Doom” which will hopefully hold more excitement than this forest. The last town I went through had been properly terrorized, so at least I know there’s something worth investigating. That would have been a real disappointment, to get all the way out here and find out it’s really “Darchon’s House of Acupuncture” or something else like that.”

Day 5 – Morning

As morning broke, Brinsley was already on the move. He was invigorated by a sense of adventure he hadn’t felt in years, and the excitement had made it difficult to sleep in. The terrain had changed during the last afternoon, rolling hills and forest being replaced quite suddenly by a canyon filled scrubland. The path now followed the edge of an old riverbed, a 20-foot cliff rising on one side and the mucky remnants of the once-proud river on the other. Brinsley had enough experience with wilderness analysis to know that whatever had happened to the river happened recently. It reminded him of the beginning of his first adventuring career, when he and the rest of the Horizon Dancers had taken on the last of the big water pirates.

The sound of approaching military footsteps coming around the corner snapped him out of his reverie, and he quickly ducked behind a convenient shrub. The four troops that walked around the corner wore black armor and oversized helmets with narrow visors.  They looked so much like minions that Brinsley almost laughed, someone clearly had a fascination with painfully strong clichés. They were, however, equipped with advanced ceramic armor and some form of energy rifle, so as much as Volere Darchon seemed to care about preserving stereotypes he certainly wasn’t concerned about fitting in with his surroundings.

After they passed, Brinsley did some speculating about what that said about who this “Darchon” was. “Probably some absurdly rich Agricorp brat who read too many comic books and decided that an evil empire sounded neat.” The fourth plane, Technor, had been entirely buried under one gigantic city. One company, named Agricorp, managed the very basic infrastructure, and made ridiculous amounts of money off of it. “They do a good job, but like any group of hyper-rich people with a superiority complex, they tended to produce a large number of people with power and influence that’s significantly out of sync with their intelligence. Here on Arcania, we call them ‘nobility’ but there are a lot fewer of them and they already have kingdoms. Something about Agricorp breeds idiots at an alarming rate. At least the managers are still bright, and they know enough not to get angry when pipsqueaks like this get taken down.”

As he rounded the next corner, he stopped for a moment to take in the sight in front of him. The riverbed came to an abrupt end about a hundred yards further on, walled off by a concrete dam. Whoever had done the construction had done a remarkable job of designing the dam to very clearly express the message “Do Not Enter”. The smell of stagnant water wafted from beyond, indicating that an artificial lake lay on the other side. Rising up over the dam, probably from the center of the lake, was a huge black tower with four smaller towers coming out of it midway up. The central tower had a standard cone roof, but the four smaller ones each had a large skull with fires burning in the eyes, facing out. The whole thing was expertly painted to look like stone, but such a structure would have been impossible to keep stable without steel or something even more advanced. “Well, at least he has style” commented Brinsley “And the security seems well designed too. There’s a door in the dam with no guards on it, which would encourage would-be adventurers to sneak in, but I’ll bet anything that it’s an underwater tunnel with no branches, and that there is a security station on the other end. Time to go topside and do some scouting, it’ll give me a chance to brush up my camouflage skills.”

Day 5 – Evening

Moving carefully and stealthily, Brinsley had made it to the edge of the lake and found a small cave to hide in. It bore the signs of having been inhabited, but whatever had lived there had left some time ago, probably about the time the tower had been built. Brinsley was just able to fit, and he lay there silently recording his findings.

“The original landscape appears to have been a lake fed by two rivers and emptied by two more. All four rivers have been drained, indicating some upstream construction as well. The four riverbeds roughly align with the four small towers, and the doors in the dams are the only land entrances. The lake itself has been expanded to be almost perfectly circular and has been quite thoroughly trapped. What appeared to be water was revealed to be highly corrosive acid, and the only thing living in it is a type of genetically engineered carnivorous algae. In addition to being able to survive the acid, the algae has been modified to glow brightly when feeding, causing it to act as an alarm system as well.

“The riverbeds are patrolled regularly, but with enough variance to make them unpredictable. They appear to exist solely as a trap, as I have observed no traffic other than the patrols. All actual movement is carried out by air – the roof of the center tower turns out to be a hologram disguising a landing pad. The only magic in the place is a maximum strength anti-magic ward, the kind set up to counter everything, which is probably the most expensive thing in the whole tower. So “Darchon” seems to have something against mages. The final obvious piece of security is a grid of anti-air auto-lasers. It’s on a pretty sensitive trigger, as I found out about it when it took out a pigeon. Incoming aircraft don’t follow any particular route, so there must be a way for it to recognize friendly targets. If I had my old equipment, that would be my way in, but I’m starting over, and that means I’m going in through a riverbed tunnel like a rookie.”