My Dear Professor Eamorie:
I have interesting and potentially fruitful information to report following my investigation of the Lockean ruins near Destry. As you doubtless recall, after your approval of my course of study I resolved to attempt to trace the source of the legends surrounding the ruins. Growing up in Destry, I was of course familiar with the legends, but to me they had been simply stories — little more than Grissom’s Fables or the Cousin Stoat tales one recites for the amusement of children. I knew only that they were of ancient origin and involved the Lockean ruins.
Perhaps you are aware that the ruins have never been properly surveyed or explored. Children in Destry are strongly warned away from the area — the youngest with tales of haunting and evil. Older children are either told (as I was by my father) or conclude for themselves that these ghost stories are mere fabrications employed by parents to restrain their progeny from wandering into what they knew (or believed) to be a dangerous labyrinth of confusing passages, treacherous footing, and potential traps. By the time the Destry youth are old enough to perhaps behave responsibly toward such a place, the ruins have become for them nothing more than a vast rockpile, and more pressing matters of everyday life take the fore. Even the rare Destryman still harboring a glimmer of curiosity finds himself without the time or, eventually, the inclination to visit the ruins at all.
Accordingly, when I visited the Destry annals to discover whether any maps, accounts, or other information concerning the ruins might be found, there was very little to be had. There was a fellow in the previous century who schemed to excavate some portion of the ruins, believing he would find valuable artifacts, ores, and minerals therein. He managed to form a mining company and begin, but the venture was abandoned in six months’ time when nothing of value was ever found. No surveys were done, or if they were, they were not preserved.
Thus I equipped and provisioned myself with the limited stipend your department so kindly granted to the furtherance of my studies, and I set off alone to conduct my own survey. In the process I hoped to discover some hints as to the source of the Destry legends, in which the Lockean ruins are described as a thriving city of light, with wonders described in such detail that one is struck by the imaginative powers of the authors — or else their descriptive powers in recording what they in fact witnessed. My intention was to discover which of these alternatives was the case.
To me, the key to the intriguing nature of these legendary accounts has always been the absence of incidental emanations from the Lockean devices in the tales. The lamps produce the same illumination we enjoy today, but are said to produce no odor, smoke, nor soot. Conveyances described in the legends produce the same effective transport as do our trains and omnibus carriages, but they do so silently, and the locomotive impulse is said to have none of the side effects of combustion spewed by our machines. Indeed, the legends occasionally suggest that during the golden age of these ruins flame itself was unknown or at least considered entirely without use.
I cannot help but compare the Destrian legends to the somewhat more complete — yet similarly inexplicable — information and artifacts we possess in regard to the ancient Perenthian culture…
However, Professor, here I must pause this missive. I am, you see, writing during an unexpected interval inserted in my return trip to Byronton by the failure of the train I was riding. The reason for the failure is unknown — the rumor amongst the passengers seems to be that the engine somehow ran out of coal, a possibility that seems absurd on the face of it. Nevertheless, omnibus carriages were summoned to fetch the passengers the remainder of the way, and I see they have arrived.
For the moment, then, I remain,
Your Student,
(anonymous)
