Retaining Walls

Slumbering Tragedies

“A monarch falls from its heavenly grace, its storm does not end. It sleeps. And brewing from within that chaos comes new life, small things. Large things, blind things, all things. And when the monarch wakes up. There is nothing left for it to observe.”

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Retaining Walls are massive superstructures comprised of both metal and flesh. They are not built to guard or protect anything, as each construct spans a straight line and ends. These walls span for anywhere between a couple dozen miles and a hundred miles. They do not connect to anything at their ends and must stand alone. At their shortest, a retaining wall will measure 15,000ft. The tallest Wall, Wall Dʐüvay measures 27,250ft. Each Wall is a computer. This superstructure of metal and flesh gathers all information it can from outside and inside. Retaining walls were intended to be a computer that could divine any problem, any answer could be had. All the universes answers at the tip of Serthian fingertips. To a degree they succeeded.

The very creation of the Walls was seen as a sin from the start. The idea was to have these computers constantly throw random chances to determine the right path or answer. The issue came about when the topic of security and how those random keys would be determined. The answer was sinister and simple: “What be more random than dreams?”. The proposition was to find willing beings to sleep eternal, suspended in tanks and artificial fluid. Comatose and lost for all eternity, to never die, to never wake. Naturally it was deemed abomination, but regardless it went through. For no one could offer up a smarter idea that had a chance of working. With that sin committed, Retaining Walls gained the moniker Slumbering Tragedies. Home to millions of slumbering individuals, guarded by the ever faithful Venwàkrökenɸ.

Currently as it stands, thousands of these walls lay about in the wilds. They are left mainly untouched, say for technicians occasionally being called by the Venwàkrökenɸ when they encounter a health problem they cannot fix. Computer Surgeons are the most commonly summoned technicians. Contractors and scavengers frequent walls, almost all are met with death or expulsion from the walls. The Venwàkrökenɸ do not play simple with guarding their keep. Wanderers find the most success in exploring these walls as they harbor no ill intent. The guardians know your intent.

Retaining walls are equipped with hatcheries and foundries from which they manufacture artificial bioengineered animals. The walls with all their condensation and warmth promote rapid plant growth around and in the walls. The tubes and pipes are coated in moss, gardens and galleries of flora flourish from within the walls. Each wall is home to its own unique flora, artificial or natural. And to maintain this delicate balance the walls manufacture their gardeners. Large stalking things melded of flesh and cable to carry data up and down massive walls. Small flitting things with the head of a flashdrive, moving in and out of tight crevices and transmitting small data. Huge beasts of burden who exist solely to pull carts. Stationary fauna to guard entrances and sort technology from flesh as it glides down a conveyor belt. All working together, in sync. A biome to their own. Hunting anything within a retaining wall is strictly forbidden and looked down upon. Similarly, as these animals have been engineered, taming any of them is neigh impossible unless you know how to override their technological and biological code.
The inner walls are comprised of small interlocking passages, almost never do they open up into vast atriums or halls. And if they do machinery is so prevalent throughout it appears as if it is a maze. The only expansive halls that exist are collections, large sectors that house intubated specimens the walls monitor or create. Each suspended, both prime and poor specimens are collected and stored in order to give best results. Interjected into dreams and nightmares to aid in randomization. At the base the other large expansive sector there is would be a ‘Shingled Magnetic Recording Array’. Large vats containing a slumbering tragedy each, these sectors can expand for half a mile at their longest. With beams and pipes strewn about. Large arms read off dreams from their spinning platters that top their vats. Durable half metal-half chitinous things. For many of the newer walls, if one wants entry. They must dance upon the vast unlife that litters the floor, dance in accordance with The Sound.

And isolated above and below, the flat plane of the ‘Nascent Pools’. Massive swathes of water concealing simmering electronics. The boards and wires of these machines are flesh, experiments to test out whatever mad theory the dreamers spun. As cold as the far far reaches of Conferus, as still as ever. Airflow is incredibly limited if at all to the pools. Given non Venwàkrökenɸs passing through, regular individuals will either need a high constitution to take in the hydrogen gas like thick toxic blanket over the lake. Or some sort of rebreather equipped to handle the chill. The lake of liquid hydrogen proves fatal a fall. Bodies lost to the water of unfolding ideas are soon to be lifted by mechanical hands, added to swell of a vast unlife.
The Retaining walls are so vast, and so isolated. That its infeasible to care for them in full. So these monoliths devise their own methods. The pools are built by wandering stilt like contraptions. Like spiderific giraffes that prowl the freezing pools. Swim the waters and assemble new ideas and repairs. These purposed organisms feed on small crawling mycelia indigenous to each wall, to each pool. This section of the wall more like the others, was not meant for wandering nomads. The air above the pool, a gas that disorients, the lake below liquid death. One would need to make jumps, cling to slick frosted metal. Swing across cable, or ride upon the back of a wandering strider. Careful to dismount as it swims once more, careful to not anger the beast. But should one manage a pilgrimage through the Nascent Pools, should one glimpse into their epicenter. Theres that rumor- that He. may look back at you.

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Stragglers and Wanderers

Stragglers and Wanderers are the walls main visitors. Wanderers may be upon their pilgrimage, they explore in a non destructive manner. Scaling high the outside shell, crawling low through the inner systems. The discover sights and sounds like no other, they look and they see. Many report seeing Echos or smaller spirits in and throughout the walls. With a select few occasionally claiming to see ‘the fallen Monarch’. Many who enter become one of the mysterious Venwàkrökenɸ.
Stragglers tell a different tale. Whereas wanderers pass through old halls with the goal of some greater enlightenment or tale. Stragglers seek refugee within the walls. They come not of grace or renown, often with ill intent. Many run to the walls to hide, being chased by a pursuing enemy or war band. Hated figures and ill beings. They wander into these halls, hiss and bark at what crawls in the dark. They don’t think right- and many fail to play right. Dying to the guards of the walls, or becoming something akin to a living dead spectre. And some- some who fear death, who are so terrified of The Cycle, The Wheel they think it smart to integrate themselves into the walls. Crossing wires through bones and blood, relinquishing their body to escape death. And being ensnared all the same, but without freedom. Those who once feared the end, in a twisted sense of fate, they now fear forever. Trapped on a hard drive, denied slumber as they do not belong there. Eternity in a vast oblivion surrounded by thousands who can no longer speak.

These interjects are not innately hazardous, and their strange malign presence is not punished or removed by the walls greater code. It would take years of trial and error if the foolish individual did not know code, to learn how to navigate their new hellscape. Many must scream- but all cannot. Some have learned to take control and live as the manufactured beasts, many wither mentally. All lament their choices. Should a wanderer encounter a terminal, they may find an interject speaking with them. Giving warning and telling their story, recounting fond memories before wishing the wanderer well. Monitoring their new existence as part of the wall, interjects will guide or assist those who wander within the walls. Often guiding them through the opening of doors, them having bypassed the system security. They watch from outside, and they sound the alarms should a deadly storm arise. They lose their names- only remembering what the code of the wall refers to them as. In a way, they are dead. No longer themselves, but always themselves. They hear and listen to the scratching of a needle upon a platter. Of the clicking delicate mechanics produce, of the hum and whir. They write poems long, they wither and dance between binary. Scrambling their meanings- repairing and replacing damaged code. Becoming the system of which they inhabit.