[WFRP2e] The Power of One - Part 2 - "Transire Benefaciendo"

[BananaPhone]

Taalia Giovanni

The Shepardess could only marvel at the remnants of a deceased civilization stretching for before her into the depths of the earth. Vast, expansive and enameled in the labour of master craftsman and celebrating the friendship between two peoples Taalia's young race felt as ancient elders, the girl beheld a time capsule from another era, a bygone time whose world-shifting currents no longer ran through the land, but whose wake had shaped it all the same.

She smiled. She laughed.

"Haha!"

Though no particularly funny joke had been spoken, the idea that she'd end up underground again, only this time in a forgotten tunnel of the two prior dominant races of the world, having restored a prior elven shrine, was so improbable it had to be some joke from the gods above, a joke to which the shepardess chuckled in the dark.

Without a torch, the girl relied on the pillar of light poking through the hole in the earth some forty yards above and behind her, the residue of its illumination granting her sharp eyes the base motes of sun required to penetrate the darkness and pick out the details of the dwarven highway ruins. Even then, knowing that her perception of the totality of the beautifully crafted corridors was limited as it was, only made the Taalia feel smaller as she stood at the optimum of safety and curiosity. The girl had not even been on this earth for twenty years, having come into being only eighteen or nineteen years ago. Though her trials had been a sinkhole of misery from which she had only miraculously clawed her way up from, to stand here, now, in the edifices of prior civilisations that had stood proud and strong thousands of years ago...it gave one perspective. For all the hurdles she had overcome, her eighteen years seemed paltry and insignificant next to the generations linked together through thousands of years of labour and craftsmanship. The skill that had gone into crafting this highway during its construction had been a studious expertise and commitment, but also one of love, Taalia surmised. For only workers who truly loved their creations could foster such timeless beauty that could remain here, thousands of years without maintenance, yet still carry the undimmed glory of their original visages for this girl-human to see.

Swallowing as she beheld it all, Taalia wondered quietly to herself whether she would contribute to anything that would be happened upon millennia from now, as the workmen who fashioned these statues and roadways had. Would she ply some trade or assist with some production that generations in the future would look upon with awe?

She hoped so.

Inhaling a lungful of stale air, Taalia swallowed and ran her hand over the crafted edifices and bas-reliefs of the forgotten highway. She took the time to notice any pattern that she could, and acquire and proof that was available of the subterranean path. A worked bit of stone that had gone loose, a piece of the highway or statue - anything that she could use to present to a dwarf or, Verena willing, an elf, whom would recognise the craftsmanship of their people and believe the tall tale she now had to tell.

By the time Taalia returned to that column of light from above, the shepardess had a storm of thoughts rolling around in her head. Looking up at the others who were doubtless concerned about the laughter before her disappearance, the girl waved up to her fellows and drew the noose of the rope around her foot and held it with her spare hand so that she could be elevated back up to the surface.

She took careful note of this tunnels location, its position, so that it could be found by those armed with such coordinates.