Maya's story was a bit of narrative I wrote during the T3 alpha and beta to be placed on the website. At the current point I'm going to post it here, because there seems to be little enough chance that it'll be posted in the current state of actual busy-ness among the GMs and Devteam. --Sedelyan
She grumbled to herself, and stretched the top corner of the fabric over a board, then paused for a break. At least it was starting to look like a tent...
Animals everywhere around, a menagerie of fauna from all walks of the world, from Egypt and elsewhere, mythical and fantastic. They seemed to surround Maya; honking geese, stampeding gazelles, camels, even sheep; a zoo, unrestrained by bars...
Or were they? She'd woken up to find them surrounding her, but on closer look, she saw that they were merely representations. There, she could see the camels were comprised of straw, mud, slate; there was cactus sap matting down the beaks and 'feathers' of the geese, all carved of wood and closely-knit boards. Strands of thick wire held up some of the animals, glistening below. In fact...none of them were similar to their representative counterparts. But for a moment, Maya surmised, they'd seemed so *real*...
She stood shakily and looked about, then blinked at the sight of another odd animal -- it was similar to a gazelle, sans the horns, a thicker body and sturdier hooves pawing the ground soundlessly. It almost *breathed* in lifelike manner, the beast so realistic that it nearly took her breath away. Here, too, she could make out the materials, but she didn't have to struggle to comprehend the form. The artist had, in fact, captured the very essence.
Maya stared for almost a minute before smiling, and deposited her chit in the box left by the artist before returning to her campsite.
"Thirty two..." She shook her head again, already growing weary. Her hand nearly cramped, Maya took a quick look about to sight three more species. "And then it's back home again."
"Look at the buildings that have already been constructed! Sturdy and mammoth, all of them, a testament to our progress to date! But when their occupants leave, what remains? They are unuseable by us, through our own laws, materials rotting and gone to waste! We can change that! We can salvage these materials and reclaim the land, if only you make our voices heard!"
Maya winced; the woman had the look and voice of a statesman, but her words rang curiously false. A grumble through the crowd confirmed this; it may have been her choice of words, or her focus on the materials, but this merely sounded like greed. The crowd slowly dispersed, many waiting for the chariot to proceed, others looking about for something to do. The poor woman slumped, shaking her head and gazing at a scrap of papyrus in her hand.
Maya began to approach, but hesitated...then joined those waiting for the chariot. The woman sighed for a moment, then discarded the scrap of papers; it blew away rapidly in the wind, a law discarded for lack of a good voice. "Perhaps that's not what leadership means, after all."
At least there were oases. Paused at one, Maya took it upon herself to cleanse her sweating face, shaking drops of precious water dry. "Why, oh why, did I come along?" She groaned -- no, she knew exactly why. As a child, she had unwrapped the well-preserved scrolls, logs from her ancestors. The words were strange, foreign even to her, but after some time she could read them almost as well as the language of her current people. One came back to her now.
Another fell today. The count now stands at 14; foolish people who believed that a day's worth of incredible, prodigious work could serve for a lifetime. The scientists tell us that ten more will mean the end of these useless deaths. I stand between; praying that no more will die, and hoping that they can be proven right.
Those words had seared themselves into her mind. With the number of times she had read them, she could recite them, and the rest of the scrolls, by heart. She had been filled with visions of Egypt, a land of opportunity and hope -- and, possibly, danger. Nonetheless, she knew that she would survive, and succeed. The others in the caravan were driven by that same sort of hope. None had collapsed, not even those with child; the days that had brought them so close to their destination would soon be behind them.
The days wore onwards, ever hotter; the spring season melded rapidly into summer. Now, more rested inside the drawn wagons, canvas providing some modicum of shade...when they traveled during the day, at all. The oases dried rapidly, leaving palms and cacti as their only sources of water; the stockpiles were running low. Fortunately...
"Ho! The Nile!"
Sure enough, the coursing river lay just ahead of them, verdant, lush growth surrounding its banks. It parted just ahead, forking and flooding over the rocks within. Maya stared in wonder; this was the soul of the country itself. Many travelers dropped to their knees in praise, their words singing to Bast for the glorious sight; other, more sophic members immediately grabbed what jugs they came with, filling them from the bountiful streams. The camels grazed, let loose for the moment.
They were finally in Egypt.
"You're sure you did this right? It hardly looks like it can be solved." The citizen in front of her chuckled wryly, "Of course it can. I wouldn't have so many chits if it weren't for that." He shook a small box to the side of the building, which rattled as if full. Each citizen was expected to put a chit in there with their name and their vote; the boxes were sealed by the schools to be placed on each device, and couldn't be easily 'fixed'...as if a prospective student would jeopardize his or her career by doing so.
Maya laughed, "All right, all right. Just let me be and I'll see what I can't do." The man nodded, and returned to his flax beds as Maya placed a single scrap down to cover a pair of glittering lights.
Maya read from the scroll in her hands, pockets filled with tiny jars of oil and scraps of canvas. She sweated in the daytime sun, grumbling, "I could have sworn that we were done running through the desert, wandering like rats. On the other hand, at least this won't take too long..."
She sighed, and placed that staff of hers in the sand, gazing around. Sure enough, she was completely out of sight of any other land -- no patches of dirt of clay marred the ground. "At least I'll be able to get back once we're done here..." She lit the staff like a torch, then placed a tiny flare on the desert sands, touching it off and retreating to a safe distance.
On a nearby mountain, Jyden dusted off his hands. The rare scarab had, fortunately, done its work; it was fortunate that he'd already bred a few, and had a spare on hand. "Well, returning to nature what we take, I suppose." He blinked and looked up, spying that white flare, an 'ah' parting his lips. His hands fumbled for a scroll momentarily, then read with a shaking voice, "Praise Ra, of the Burning Eye!"
Peace, however, lasted only a few hours. Shouts echoed into the distance as a man, barely fifteen years of age, ran swiftly across the road, his hand clutching a small scroll. "Pharaoh! We've found something!" The expedition team had done its work, perhaps -- what could they have found? A monument? A university, dust settled, barely surviving?
The Pharaoh stood, walking slowly over to the center of the camp where Jyden crouched breathlessly. The boy handed over the scroll to the Pharaoh, groaning, "The results, sir." After a momentary glance at the contents, the Pharaoh looked about, his voice filling the fields around. "Those who wish to see, come along; otherwise, stay here to continue your work. I won't be long."
--
A group of citizens, barely half the caravan, surrounded a ruin. The roads seemed to converge here, three paths leading to a well-preserved plateau. There lay collapsed pillars, brick and board decaying into nothing more than dust. A faded, tattered sign read, in the ancient language, "ND"; the other letters, however many there might have been, were gone to time. A slow murmur of worry rose from the citizens, quickly becoming a roar -- was this not a centerpoint of trade? How could this, of all the ancestors' buildings, have collapsed so easily with time, when ruins such as the old schools were so well-preserved?
The Pharaoh closed his eyes in contemplation for a moment, then cleared his throat. "Citizens. You have all traveled with me to these lands, for which I thank you; you have shown courage and responsibility far exceeding my expectations. You know what we see here: it is a ruin of our forefathers' work, a place for activity and the center of a great city, spanning miles. When our forefathers left this country of Egypt, there were none left to maintain the works. None put care into preservation; much more may have littered these landscapes if not for that simple fact.
"The old society was rendered by the tragic loss of an ancient, wise man, whose purposes our histories did not state. He was a friend of my own ancestor, the Pharaoh before me, and together they shaped much of society. When he was gone, some wept -- and some cheered. Others simply stood, wondering what would happen next. Quickly, their culture became obessed with two facets of life." The Pharaoh gazed from person to person, then shook his head. "That is the past! Our country, this land of fertility, will not be built on ruins! We shall clear away this debris, and build on their sites a new nation." The Pharaoh's arm swept over the rubble, gesturing as though it were already gone, his voice rising to a fevered pitch. "Every citizen will be able to live in harmony, our civilization unwanting of the essentials needed to survive! My forefather showed me his vision, of true Harmony in Egypt, and even if he was incapable of bringing it forth in his lifespan, we shall!"
As one, those surrounding the ruin stood, cheering. Maya found herself caught in this flood of joy; the sounds echoed across the plains and desert sands, and she wondered if, for this moment, every tree in Egypt was brightened by it.
Then came the laughter.
"Harmony, you say?" The voice was soft, nearly a whisper, the crowd becoming rapidly silent as they strained to hear this newcomer. "There was never harmony in our ancestors' times. Even near the beginning, they struggled to gain the uppermost hand, competing for the materials they needed to research the technological fields at schools and universities. They joined guilds and formed cliques, driving out those who might join them; those were competition, after all."
The stranger approached slowly, pausing merely a few feet from the Pharaoh and turning to the crowd. "My forefathers, like your own, traveled to this new nation in hope of finding something unique and different. Even now, though, I see the seeds of imperfection in your plans and goals. You seek to drive out that seed of discontent and desire for each person to succeed, no matter what the others might think. You seek to turn Egypt from a fertile land of possibilities into a stagnant, dying serpent, grown fat with lack of challenge, devouring everything in its path simply because it can."
And who is at the fore of this desire for simple, content 'life'? Your Pharaoh! A man who wishes to see the people led like sheep into a pen, growing and living without a care in the world! And then...perhaps in our future, what will happen when another nation, one with its own challenges, lean and muscular...decides to take the resources we have painstakingly ripped from the fertile ground? We will die, unknown and unremembered."
The stranger paused, taking a deep breath...and, standing tall, the Pharaoh cleared his throat. "You speak of discontent, stranger, and then you speak of the need for it. Yet you offer no proof of your words. Why should we listen to the voice of a naysayer, who becomes known to us in neither name nor plan? What proof do we have that your purpose is not simply to destroy Egypt yourself, and make yourself the leader of what remains?"
"The leader? Pah, I seek no leadership. I seek only to correct the mistakes that you make! The gods may have chosen you, but even the devices of the gods can find themselves wrong!" The cloaked figure turned to the crowd, arms raised. "Just as your ancestors did, you must find the challenges of our land and master them -- never ignore them! I have notes from those before me, books written on papyrus which detail how they showed people their own imperfections. I brought with me the greatest scientists from our old home, those without the moral obligations to impede their work. Together, I shall form a great university, to bring the people technologies and skills far beyond what the other schools could. We shall let the people make their own Progress!
"And, because you seem content to ignore my words... we shall collaborate with the other universities and schools. There are six Disciplines of perfection written, the seventh torn from the books; perhaps this was in a fit of anger or disillusion, but it is now lost to us, possibly forever. Within each discipline, I shall reintroduce the challenges inside to the people of Egypt! A truly 'perfect' society should have no trouble mastering each and every one..." That gutteral laugh sounded again. "I shall ensure that they are by no means unattainable."
The Pharaoh frowned, the stranger passing slowly through the crowd again. After a moment, he spoke, "You may collaborate with your scientists and our universities, Stranger, but Egypt will not have any trouble with whatever challenges you offer. We need no proof of perfection; harmony will show our society as a shining beacon, worthy of the annals."
The stranger laughed once more, harshly, turning slightly towards the Pharaoh. "Very well, then...a challenge for you yourself, 'king'. If you feel my disciplines are incomplete, and the challenges expressed too dull and droll, bring your own forth. Create a discipline of Harmony, for your people to pursue at their own choice, and we shall see. We shall see..." The figure turned away once more, walking faster now, shoulders hunched as they disappeared into the darkness.