Altered Lore

The Screed

4 min read

The Screed

Overview

The Screed (renamed “Sofia” on September 17, 393 AC in honor of the City of Scholars’ destroyed soul) is the Expeditionary Corps’ first forward outpost established in 393 AC, located approximately 580 kilometers from Arkaster and 75 kilometers from Cais Adarra. The site encompasses a circular crater structure roughly ten kilometers in diameter containing the ruins of an ancient human city and the Crow’s Eye chasm at its center. Following the renaming, the outpost was entrusted to the Bravos for protection and the Muna for provisions.

Geography

The location appears as a tall hill worn down by time. After several hours of hiking across rugged, sparsely vegetated slopes, the land dips into a vast crater with steep cliffs reaching nearly 200 meters in height. Geological surveys revealed no consistency in soil composition or erosion patterns between the carved-out hill and its surrounding environment, suggesting the formation may be the result of Alteration or a quirk of The Tumult. The crater does not appear to be volcanic or meteor-formed.

Ecosystem

The Screed is an ecosystem unto itself offering rudimentary protection against The Tumult. Surveyors have likened it to a lid covering a cauldron. The terrain includes former pastures, scattered woods, and terraced slopes reinforced by human hands. The area around the Crow’s Eye consists mostly of gently sloping plains and low valleys, with vegetation becoming denser near the crater walls, including thickets and small groves. The largest tree in the Screed is a massive willow where the Muna established their Farm.

Ancient Ruins

At the base of the cliffs within the circular basin lie overgrown ruins of an ancient human city shaped like a keyhole. The outer rings served as warehouses, hangars, gardens, and recreational spaces rather than residential zones. The upper city, built along the crater’s inner wall, descends toward the central chasm via natural and artificial terraces accessible by steep stairways and narrow paths.

Notable archaeological features include:

  • Stone blocks polished smooth like marble with extraordinary precision
  • Elevator carts running on monorails
  • Robotic pseudo-Automata lacking central processing units, with external power channels
  • Artifacts bearing external grooves like maze pathways
  • Fluid-circulation suits with valves and vascular networks
  • Frescoes depicting a golden age under a celestial maternal deity, with later darker carvings showing a shadowy being
  • Massive collapsed cable networks (at least fifty, each thick as a support tower) that may have secured something enormous above the site

Peak population is estimated to have exceeded 100,000 inhabitants. The inhabitants possessed measurement and stone-cutting tools far beyond current Axiom capabilities.

Asgarthan Structures

Each Faction built structures on the outskirts of the ruins:

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