Oct 26, 2015 4:10 pm
Just some context. More story coming soon!
Here's a rough map of the courtyard garden. Those X's are guards. There are two drawbridges to the north, one letting people onto the Hill, the other for them to leave by. The first drawbridge is much more crowded, but there's some traffic on the second.
Xulara, admiring the buildings, sees that the colleges appear to have been built around the same time with soaring white stone and tiled roofs that gleam an earthen red in the sun. At one time, they were clearly meant to have been symmetric. However, it seems that as the generations have gone by, each has made modifications to appear less like the other. The College of Magic has floating balconies, stained glass that moves with the breeze, a collection of colored lights lazily orbiting its highest tower. The College of Matter flowers with carvings on every surface, painted frescoes, lapping fountains, models of the constellations wrought from the finest silver. Both are crowned by all manner of gargoyles--fantastic creatures above the College of Magic, and artists, scholars, and men-at-arms above the College of Matter.
The Fortress, however, seems aptly named... it hails from an earlier time, and while impressive, is notable mostly for its massive size. It is rough-hewn from gray stone, and seems as solid, unyielding, and forbidding as the word of its monarch, which is absolute law in Heirwater. It is doubly-guarded, and every surface seems to speak the same message--don't dare to defy the rule of the Heir. Its windows are narrow arrow-slits, and everything about it seems to call back to an earlier time, when a barbaric warlord built an unassailable castle on a remote island, in which his young son and heir should be raised.
Here's a rough map of the courtyard garden. Those X's are guards. There are two drawbridges to the north, one letting people onto the Hill, the other for them to leave by. The first drawbridge is much more crowded, but there's some traffic on the second.
Xulara, admiring the buildings, sees that the colleges appear to have been built around the same time with soaring white stone and tiled roofs that gleam an earthen red in the sun. At one time, they were clearly meant to have been symmetric. However, it seems that as the generations have gone by, each has made modifications to appear less like the other. The College of Magic has floating balconies, stained glass that moves with the breeze, a collection of colored lights lazily orbiting its highest tower. The College of Matter flowers with carvings on every surface, painted frescoes, lapping fountains, models of the constellations wrought from the finest silver. Both are crowned by all manner of gargoyles--fantastic creatures above the College of Magic, and artists, scholars, and men-at-arms above the College of Matter.
The Fortress, however, seems aptly named... it hails from an earlier time, and while impressive, is notable mostly for its massive size. It is rough-hewn from gray stone, and seems as solid, unyielding, and forbidding as the word of its monarch, which is absolute law in Heirwater. It is doubly-guarded, and every surface seems to speak the same message--don't dare to defy the rule of the Heir. Its windows are narrow arrow-slits, and everything about it seems to call back to an earlier time, when a barbaric warlord built an unassailable castle on a remote island, in which his young son and heir should be raised.
