Requiem: Silence

(Late Night Ramblings)

What can I say?  I love ruins 🙂

I first got the ancient history bug, not through Indiana Jones, but through an old book my family had called “The Complete Book of Marvels” (which was a compilation of his First and Second Book of Marvels)  by Richard Halliburton who was arguably the greatest adventure/travel writer the US has ever produced.  If you can find it, nab it.

Halliburton was the first place I ever heard of such places as Petra, Baalbek, and Angkor Wat.  I think I was around 7 or 8 when I was first introduced to it.  Coincidentally, it was right around the same time as the very first ideas for Requiem were starting to form in my head.  It was also the first time I really began to understand the concept of time, and of history.

The original construction of the place of “Those Who Came Before” was another Bryce 5/Poser 5 work, and needed to be totally reconstructed from the early source files for the new edition.  While the grass/grounds of the complex were created out of digital algorithms the first time around (and tweaked to simulate some kind of approximation to terrain), this time we went out with a digital camera and took photos of grass until we found the right one to tile over an infinite plain so it would look real.

As for the material of the temples and walls themselves, hell the whole reflection motif that is rampant throughout Requiem, (including the black crystal of the city you see) comes from the legend of the Irish hero Connla. When I was really young I ran across the  ancient Celtic fairy tale of Connla from the Book of The Dun Cow. Connla was romanced by a goddess who whisked him away to the “earthly paradise beyond the sea” in a magical ship that belonged to the sea god Manannan – A crystal ship that, “knew its pilot’s mind and was capable of flying over sea or land.”   English Translations of it are online at http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/connla.html

I haven’t ran into a complete English translation of all of the book yet (matter of fact, I don’t think there is one, and the Book of Dun Cow is missing quite a bit in it’s gaelic form) , but looking back on it now, what I read then was more than likely one of the main sources for what became Requiem in the first place.  Or at least, the original source idea for how the House’s came into this world in the first place.

The vibration of the city goes back into old H.P Lovecraft (The Music of Erich Zann) and the feel was of course influenced by the Shadow Out of Time (as was much of the later sections within Threllichock Territory)