More actions
Whether through the progress of technology, or the convenience of Magic, or just the passage of time, the world of Aloria exists in a fractured state both geo politically and societally. While past civilizations had Empires that stretched the world and were capable of erecting massive monuments to honor the gods and mortals, in the modern era no such endeavor is undertaken. Due to the increase in capitalism, globalization of the mindset, and scholarly pursuit removing the veil of mysticism from the every day life, most peasants in the Empire are concerned with surviving the day, taxes, and warfare. The age of the megastructures has long passed in Aloria, with the All Beacon Temple being the last megastructure built by mortals. Now is the age of the utilitarian and practical building, gone are the days of architects laying the first stones on buildings that their children won't even live to see completed. Still, many of these megastructures have survived the ages, preserved in remote locations or due to their sheer hugeness. Travelers and adventurers visit them from time to time to wonder at their marvel of engineering and imagination, and contemplate if anything like them will ever be built again.
The Kingstones of Coltyr

The Kingstones of Coltyr tower over the hills of Coltyr, one of the provinces of Kintyr in the Regalian Archipelago. During the times of the Breizh Kings before the Regalian Empire, Breizh masons built some of the largest fortifications that even rivaled Elven forts. Beyond building fortifications for the ever-warring petty kingdoms in Kintyr, they also built many monuments across the land. While most Regalians have seen the statues of King Alesthair (not related to Allest) or Queen Gondavira, the Kingstones dwarf all of them by sheer size. The Kingstones of Colyr are a set of 8 megaliths, solid carved stone structures that stand on hills overlooking the Colstyr countryside. The tallest of these megaliths is so massive that the top routinely sticks out over the clouds and can be seen from far away, though they all exist in varying states of decay. One of the Kingstones has fully detached from its base and slid down a nearby hill, while another broke off halfway and slid down that same slope. Each of the Kingstones represent one of the legendary Breizh Kings who united all of the petty kingdoms, but the stones are so weathered their names are illegible and no further information can be found around them. The area around the Kingstones once had many burial mounds from which the red kingflower grew, but the millennia that have passed caused many of these mounds to be forgotten and grown over, or collapsed from age. It is said that the Kingstones of Coltyr inspired the All Beacon Temple, as they appear just as stark with their white stone appearance during the golden hour.
The Heads of Tirgunn

The original name of the Heads of Tirgunn has been lost to time, though what is clear, is that they were made by the Sarnan people. These megastructures are not considered large by sheer size, after all each of the heads is merely the size of a house, though the reason why they are considered megastructures as a whole, is because of the sheer quantity of them. There are at least 113 recorded and mapped heads, with at least four dozen or so suspected in deep forest lands that are uncharted, and potentially a few dozen more that have been fully overgrown, or defaced by Unionist radicals. The heads are meant to depict some kind of rendition of Gaisros, the dead Sarnan God, and always faced outwards from the lands that they traditionally lived in, though it is hard to say this for certain as many heads have toppled over and lay sideways or at an angle now. Scholars have speculated that the Heads of Tirgunn were a border demarcation, or some kind of warning to the other tribes in the area to stay away from the Sarnan lands. How they were able to build and move such massive boulders is unclear, as the Sarnan were not capable of iron working or advanced engineering by the time the Wirtem settlers aggressively colonized the area and conquered their tribal lands. Some have speculated that either the Sarnan had outside help, might have once had more advanced technology, or that the Heads were made by Gaisros the God himself. Heads of Tirgunn reproductions in small jewelry form or statuette as household decorations are commonly sold on markets in Tirgunn, though as with anything Sarnan, it has essentially turned into a curiosity tourist attraction for local visitors and essentially been usurped by the Unionist Leutz people as part of their own cultural heritage of the area.
The Terrasankt of Amelore
The Terrasankt of Amelore is no longer in existence, though still recorded as a megastructure both because it survived until 53 AC, and because many of its bricks were re-purposed for the All Beacon Temple after its demolition. The Terrasankt was a massive Elven structure built by the Bel Hammon Elves of the Amelore Kingdom on the Regalian isle, somewhat off into the forest from the wealthier parts of town. This vast structure functioned more like a library and archive than a fortress, though with its sheer size it was speculated that it could well have functioned as a fortress as well if the Elves of Amelore had continued to hold out. While the popular narrative is that the Five Family Rebellion successfully ousted corrupt and evil rulers of the Regalian Kingdom (actually Amelore), a few scholars who cross-reference Elven historical narratives, conclude that the Bel Hammon Elves simply left, choosing not to pick a fight with the Ailor armies at their doors. The Terrasankt was subsequently abandoned, and though the new Regalian Empire tried to make some use of it, they could not figure out how its archives actually worked, as they required a specific branch of Bel Hammon Magic they did not possess. As the population became increasingly resentful of this Elven spire casting a shadow over the city in the morning, eventually the order was given to break it down, and salvage as many bricks as possible to build the All Beacon Temple. Some Elves still refer to this event as the Terrasankt burning of 53 AC, as Ailor demolition crews took turns to break the whole building down. No care was made to preserve any of the instruments inside, often ripped from the walls with crude pickaxes and chisels, before thrown out of a window or into the sea. Metals were re-cast into nails and hinges, and most of the finely carved wooden furniture was re-used as campfire wood for the workers to cook porridge on. It is impossible to truly tell how much, or what kind of information was lost during this demolition, as the Bel Hammon Elves have never revealed what the Terrasankt was used for, or indeed what its actual name was.
Tempelmuur
Tempelmuur is a vast and potentially one of the oldest structures in the world that spans from the northern coast of Anglia, to somewhere halfway the border of it and Kintyr, in the Regalian Archipelago. Tempelmuur is a vast wall structure, though the individual bricks have long been corroded and sort of melted together into a somewhat straight standing rock wall, that towers easily over the All Beacon Temple in height and has only sporadically been crossed by airships, as it also touches above the clouds. It is called Tempelmuur, because sections have been hollowed out or cut into, carving temples and shrines in the wall at mortal-height level. At night, the base of Tempelmuur is often well lit with an array of candles at every shrine or temple, though the top of it has completely weathered and given way to a micro-biome forest high above the clouds that somehow defies ecological and climate conditions. Scholars have speculated that due to the extreme weathering and erosion of the wall, that it might have been a last remnant of a Meraic wall designed to keep out the Demon horde. The way the stone slopes gently on the east side to ground level, either implies it was destroyed with a force unthinkable in the modern world, or that it was simply never finished, and left in a half broken state as whatever nation that chose to make the undertaking was overwhelmed by Demons. The wall gave some protection to the Aml tribes and Kintyr Kingdoms during their early conflict, ensuring that neither people truly conquered the other and giving rise to relatively positive cultural ties between the two realms that has lasted to the modern day.
The Storg
The Storg at first appears like any mountain, but the closer one comes to it, the more one sees over-sized windows and stairs leading into vast gateways and caverns. The Storg is perhaps one of the largest megastructures in the world, positioned in the north of Nordskag in between a set of mountains. The Storg is a huge fortress though badly weathered, and obscenely scaled to proportions thought impossible among mortals. A single average adult male requires a ladder to even ascend a single flight of stairs up into the Storg, and windows are as far off the ground inside the structure as the All Beacon Temple is tall. It is speculated that the Storg was built by or made for giants, though the concept of a giant has always been merely hypothetical among scholars because no bones or other structures have ever been found to indicate their existence. The Storg is one of a kind, leading some to speculate it might have been a mountain-home to a now-dead mountain god. Velheim Ailor settlers eventually carved smaller staircases inside the large stepstones, and even homes inside the sheltered places, causing the town of Storgholm to be built inside the main gateway entrance of the structure.
The Chains
The Chains is one of the more ominous megastructures that can be found on the isle of Kilarallis in the Silerian Chain, a set of islands that guard the boundary into the inner Elven sea, and Aiorania and the Allorn Empire beyond. Killarallis was the major staple port through which all foreign entry into the Allorn Empire from the east occurred, and through which all Oblation pearl trade passed. The Allorn Elves of old erected massive mountain-sized statues of the conquered gods of foreign peoples, and perhaps of whole societies which ceased to exist due to the march of Elven expansionism. These Gods were all depicted in states of surrender or defeat, with their arms chained in one long continuous chain that spanned across all of them. The statues have remained in a remarkably good state over the centuries, though the chain that once connected them all was made out of metal, and some of the massive links have since corroded away, causing some of the segments to just drop on their attachments. It is impossible to tell which statue belonged to which people and which God is represented, with the sole exception of one statue depicting Pahtia of the Khama faith. There was once also a statue of Cemaan present in the arrangement with a raised arm that held open the narrowest point through which ships must sail, but in 177 AC, several Ashal fleets surrounded this statue and bombarded it for seven days and seven nights with artillery until nothing but a pile of rubble remained. They then also carefully removed all weathering and chains from Pahtia's statue and re-chiseled the features on her face manually over the span of several weeks. This explains why Pahtia's statue is the only one that looks cheerful, but has a proportionally smaller head than all other statues.
The Badlands
The Badlands is not a single megastructure but a collection of megastructures that are all vaguely related to one another. This includes the Badlands wall, the Badlands ruins, and the All-Faith arena much further north which are speculated to all have belonged to a long abandoned Amelore creature pit. The experiments of Bel Hammon Mages on living creatures, and the creation of new living beings, is long shrouded in mystery, though some scholars speculate that the Kingdom of Amelore may have harbored creature creation and experimentation as one of its fields of research. The Badlands wall was once much larger and shielding much of the city of Regalia from the creatures there-in. Nowadays all locals think of it as an aqueduct, but this is only because the skeleton of the structure is all that remains, the panel walls have long since collapsed so the structure looks more like an aqueduct now. The interior of the badlands is filled with massive stone structures and statues of Elven warriors, that implicate some sense of observation and glorification of hunting culture among the Elves. Coupled with the all-faith arena looking more like a coliseum than a conventional dueling arena, the speculation has become that this all was once part of a greater complex where the Bel Hammon Mages created monsters and creatures native only to the Badlands, and had other wealthy to do Elven princes hunt or fight them to show their prowess. Why the Badlands were abandoned before the Kingdom of Amelore fell is unclear, as the buildings were already in a ruined state before the Five Family Rebellion even happened. The monsters native to the Badlands remain somewhat within their habitat now, owing to the massive structures that act as natural barriers, and the brave Great Oak Bloodcast Knights that venture inside and cull the population from time to time with notable casualties on their side.