Arnâron is littered with leftovers from the past. Abandoned, ruined cities dot the ancient continents and the former coastlines. A network of canals criss-crosses the world, most of them still functional after many centuries. And everywhere signs of ancient battles and wars can be found.
Canals
The most notable remnant of Arnâron’s ultra high technological past is the global network of canals. Their construction was a feat of engineering unrivaled in all of Arnâron’s history. The canals bring water from the poles towards the equator, and from the remaining seas towards the ancient continents.
The major canals are a kilometer wide and fifty meters deep. They are lined by earthen levees that protect the surrounding lands in the event from flooding. Water seeping through the canals’ sides form an aquafier in the immediate surrounding, which makes a wide stretch of land along the canals arable – sometimes several kilometers wide. Not all of this land is claimed, or even usable for agriculture, and consists mostly of steppes.
A network of minor canals – not shown on the above map – branches off of the major canals, transporting the water further inland.
The canals are not always “simple” trenches through which water flows. In several locations, extensive aqueducts were built to cross a canyon or valley – or former ocean trench. Pumping stations forced water uphill, towards the interior of the ancient continents. Locks helped ships and barges to travel canals at different heights.
The most amazing thing about the canals is not only the fact that many are still operational after many centuries – Locals do their best to clear out debris and sand during low flow – but that many of the locks and pumping stations are still in working order. Not all of them, but enough that the majority of the canal network remains usable. The engineers who built them anticipated that their descendants would not be able to maintain the machinery properly, and designed for it.
City Ruins
Before the planet began to die, the people of Arnâron were a mostly urban society. Centuries of urbanization had all but eliminated rural communities. The result were huge cities that covered vast areas. These cities had grown over long times, and were chaotic accumulations of buildings – most of which were high rises or even skyscrapers. They consisted of modern, lightweight construction materials, and many were covered in blueish solar cells. Buildings in the outlaying areas were smaller and lower, usually housing one or a few families instead of thousands of people. Many buildings and properties had hexagonal or octagonal features or layouts. Transportation was mostly public, and electrical, but some individual transportation was used as well.
Most of these cities were devastated when Arnâron changed. Earthquakes, floods, fires, and riots all did their part – most were seriously damaged. Some were rebuilt, others abandoned. Then the oceans began to recede, and the cities that had been rebuilt were eventually abandoned as it became increasingly difficult to maintain them. Some survived along the canals, but eventually the people migrated towards the new coastlines.
This led to a second generation of cities being built. They had to be built quickly and had to house millions of refugees. They were planned out, usually again along hexagonal or, more commonly, octagonal layouts. The buildings weren’t as tall or beautiful, but there were fewer people – the death toll had been huge. Some of these cities survive until today.
Modern Ruins
The current cities are fairly similar to the second generation – building styles have changed somewhat, as the climate has become more hostile. Many buildings are designed to include natural air conditioning – they are built high to take advantage of the difference in temperature to provide a cooling air flow inside. Cities are also heavily defended, including walls and other defensive installations. All cities are located either on a canal or another body of water.
While most of the “modern” cities are inhabited and kept intact, some have been abandoned. This was usually the result of war – sometimes, when a city was razed by an enemy, it was not rebuilt. The survivors fled to another city, or built a new one in a more defensible location.
Ancient Ruins
There are some ruins that date back to “prehistoric” times – that is, to a more primitive time before the golden age of Arnâron’s high technology civilization. Very little is left of them – even those which were kept in good repair as historic monuments deteriorated quickly when the effort to keep them intact ceased.
There are some monuments that survive pretty much as they have for thousands of years. For example there are ancient pyramids and megalithic sites that have merely eroded a little in the past centuries.
Roads and railways
The ancient continents were covered by extensive road and railway networks. The rails were usually dismantled and the iron used as raw materials when the regions they served were abandoned, but this wasn’t always the case. Both roads and railway lines are now usually covered by the shifting sands of Arnâron, or overgrown where “extensive” vegetation still exists, but in some rocky desert areas the ancient roads are still visible and usable, connecting long destroyed points of interests or the dead cities.
Weapons of War
War has always been a fact of life on Arnâron, even before the catastrophe that transformed the planet into its current sorry state, even if the warfare has never been so widespread as today. No signs of pre-catastrophe battlefields remain; the nations involved always cleaned up after the wars were over. But this has not always been possible since. While scavengers usually moved in on abandoned battlefields, there are many sites which they didn’t find or elected to ignore, for example in places that were too remote or too dangerous to reach. Here, sun-bleached skeletons can be found among the burnt-out shells of armored vehicles and combat walkers.
Working Artifacts
Not all artifacts from Arnâron’s glorious past are ruined. Some are in perfect working order – The canal system, while deteriorating, is a lasting monument to the quality of the work of its designers. Many cities or other ruins may yet hide preserved weapons or machines. Even those cities that have been thoroughly plundered may yet contain hidden basements or sealed vaults that contain valuable devices, books, or other relics.
The largest single surviving piece of machinery, and probably by far the most powerful, is the captured sun, a working fusion power plant in the polar city-state Nation E. It runs largely automatic, but is attended to by a caste of priest-technicians who can conduct minor repairs. It is the source of the wealth and power of that nation – and the envy of all other cities and nations of Arnâron.
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