One Word Prompts

Pattern - The Ruins of Armeya

The ruins of Armeya had lain still and undisturbed for nearly five centuries, swallowed by the forests that had long protected her walls and people. Exactly what had happened to the lost kingdom and her capital was now a tale shrouded in myth, no two accounts agreeing on the details. Some claimed it was the wrath of gods, others the vengeance of demons, that had laid waste to the powerful nation. Others said it had been raised to the ground by invaders while others still would have it told it was treachery from within that lit the first match.

Whatever was the case, the capital city of that lost kingdom, Armeya, had been thought completely destroyed, its location lost with the kingdom. Or it had been, until an intrepid adventurer's party had stumbled upon an unknown ruin, bringing back artifacts none recognized. The scholars had descended upon the strange objects, pouring over each detail, from the quality of material to the pattern of runes on the artifact's surfaces. Was this Armeya? Half said yes, half said no.

Professor Andrea Myel belonged to the Yes Party. Professor Myel was so strongly in the Yes Party, she hadn't waited for the Adventurer's guild to verify the safety of the ruins to plan an expedition out there to investigate it herself. She had been so certain it was the lost city that she had no qualms dragging her assistant and grad student out into the wilds after her to help her with the find of the century.

Which is how he, Jeol Cron (her grad student), Remi Imeara (her assistant), Professor Myel (herself), and four unlucky adventurers (encountered on the way to the ruins and unable to convince the professor to turn around) had ended up inside this dark corridor, surrounded by skeletal warriors.

Two adventurers stood on either side of the group, sandwiching the hapless academics in the center. A swords man and a mage on one side, an axe man and a ranger on the other.

"Now, what are skeletal warriors doing in the ruins of Armeya?" the professor mused as the adventurers battled the skeletons off.

"Aren't undead common to ruins?" Jeol asked.

"Yes and no," the professor said. "Ruins are not inherently locations that spawn undead monsters. Rather, usually a ruin contains a graveyard or crypts. Spirits of the long deceased, no longer appeased by any living loved ones, eventually rise to find someone to morn their deaths. This gives rise to the wandering dead. The nature of the graveyard determines whether the spirits take the form of ghosts, zombies, litch, or skeletons."

"So, it isn't strange that there are skeletons," Remi said. She had her notebook open and was sketching the attacking skeletons for reference later. "After all, Armeya is supposed to have been the oldest city of the Lost Kingdom. If the records are to be believed, it was actually built on top of an even older city of the kingdom that had come before. The graveyards should be absolutely ancient."

"Yes," the professor said with a nod. "But I would have expected more zombie types in a graveyard setting, as bodies from cultures contemporary with the Lost Kingdom were generally preserved for the purposes of viewing before burial. Skeletal types are more common in the case of the unburied or mass graves where little to no effort was placed in preserving flesh. Additionally, these aren't just skeletons."

"Oh, yes, of course, I see now." She made a note at the top of the sketch, before returning to madly recording details as the adventurers hacked the monsters apart.

"See what?" Jeol asked.

"Their equipment," Remi hinted.

Jeol frowned, watching the scene before him. Really all he could see was a perfectly good reason why none of them should be here yet. Monsters, especially the undead, were vicious. The ones that were armed, like these ones, even more so.