In the mythical world, Ruins are everywhere, a world full of ruins from cultures that had died away in the distant past, millions of years old. Archeologists could not understand many of the intricacies of these ruins. The function of some of these buildings was never understood, some machines could kill anyone near them, and they have been known to make people sick with diseases never known by physicians. It has been said that devices have conditions, meaning they are living things. An almost artificial biological, mechanical and electrical life form that has its form of illness that could, at times, be transferred to humans and animals. These machines expire from illness, as biological organisms will do when they are invaded by disease. Besides the old machines the ruined structures have exerted their influence; people could feel the emotions from the past as if they are accessing memories from the past. They become part of the story, a play of reality once staged, sometimes causing death and insanity. The ruins keep records of the personal lives of people who once lived there. For the people, those lands where the ruins reside have become inspirations for art, rumor, legend, stories, and history.
Perhaps without the ruins, the villages, towns, and cities in a mythical world couldn’t function. No electrical-powered devices exist; machines in the fictional world are not powered by electricity. Light and a life force of their power, the machines almost resemble a biological function. It seems the ruins bring energy to the device the villagers use. This was not always true, the modern appliances, as said before, have their source within themselves. Sometimes it was found that the ancient machinery was influencing or taking over modern devices. Like the beneficial Bacteria fighting the invading organisms, the modern machines fought back. Another influence of the ruins, a sort of cultural one, is that people of a particular village or town would pride themselves in what they believed about the achievements of their remote ancestors. Still, it could be said in truth that the ruins of the immediate past were created by their ancestors, but those of more ancient times were probably not.
Many ethnic groups had created legends around the ruins, creating whimsical and fantastic things, but the real story of the ruins is buried in time, and perishable records haven’t come through. Yet some things tell the real stories or, should be said, the history of the ruins. It’s been said that when a person stands among the ruins, they will hear events that took place centuries ago, some of them an entire history, others of a personal account of individuals and families. Many historians had gone to the ruins to explore, to learn of the events it was difficult to piece together; when things took place, it required years of cataloging. A historian walked around the empty ruins, asking questions no other historian or archeologist ever requested. Suddenly, he received his answers of dates, times, and centuries; it was realized the ruins could speak, and his colleagues confirmed this information.
People had been missing around the ruins; they never came back. It was later found that the devices created a gateway to somewhere none returned from. After it was learned that, people would live in that somewhere else and also live in their world. This meant they lived in both worlds to escape difficulties like persecution, unhappy marriages, or the society they didn’t like; there were thousands, millions of reasons why they lived in the in-between worlds. This in-between world existed between their world and the other, a neutral place where nothing happened unless the person who came there through the vortexes wished to create things with their thoughts and hands. This could be where the powers of the mythical originated from, or it could be the machines making these in-between.
The ruins have been left the way they are; perhaps no one wishes to touch them, some believing there are spirits, others thinking about the hidden devices that could harm them. Another reason was that historians, archeologists, scholars, wise ones, and Aura-Laei-I sought the protection of historical structures. People were interested in the past, but many of the central governments of the mythical world wished to preserve something, even if it had been part of ruins. It has been found that scavengers and squatters would build homes around the ruins, and some had become complete settlements. Ruins are respected or disrespected; some ruins are deadly, and these are places people seldom visit. Those only approached them with a great understanding of what was there in the past.
The ruins are many things to people. They evoke great power, danger, history, ancient technology, culture, respect, and all other things.
Robert J. Matsunaga
