Setting Study: Sycharcharus

World Author: Drew
World Name/Title/Assignation: Sycharcharus
World Creation Date: 3rd of August, 2011
General Setting: Post-apocalypse, desert, urban, dead world, dying sun
Evocative of: King's Dark Tower, if only on a much larger scale; the dread and despair we all sometimes need face.


Geographical Description: The face of this world is bone-white. What few ruins remain uneroded by the sands which coat the entire planet are difficult to make out through near-constant dust storms. When these storms settle, however, regardless of where one might be on the map, one can always see the forbidding behemoth tower as a dark blemish on the horizon.


Sounds: Beastly, distorted howling in the distance. The hiss of sand lashing stone and exposed flesh, dessicating any living matter and wearing away at what little remains that might testify to some long-passed civilization.

Within the tower, all is absolute silence. Perfectly weighted stone doors swing open and shut without a sound, there is no whistling draft or clamor of machinery.


Feels: Cold and hollow. Utterly infinite, unrestrictive, completely free in its emptiness. Dread permeates the air- there is nothing to do, nowhere to go. Not only have life and light abandoned this place, but the very ideas of hope, potential and warmth seem like impossible dreams; they have fled, and did so in a time beyond your reckoning.

If you happen to catch a glimpse of the tower, a keen sense of something being terribly wrong strikes deep within your soul. That tower doesn't belong, doesn't make sense. Prolonged examination at any distance will cause cognitive dissonance: brief, intense episodes of spastic fear or phobia will occur. For a short time the tower may not even appear to be there to you. During these episodes one might notice, flickering amongst the haze of a horizon at sunset, immense hulking figures. The howling grows louder.

Entering the tower, if one can make it that far, brings despair itself. The very primordial essence of defeat, of loss, of never having had- that is all. The uniform obsidian walls offer no comfort, nor does the seemingly endless climb towards the tower's zenith.



Fears: Jagged skeletons of wrecked buildings reach through the dust storms. The brilliant sun often erupts with violent flares. Nights go on forever, days are fleeting at best, and the dark is more oppressive, more pervasive the closer one comes to the great tower. Prolonged exposure to dust storms without proper protection guarantees a slow death of dehydration, then mummification. Are there bodies buried beneath miles of sand? The sun seems unbelievably unstable; could those waves of fire reach down and incinerate you? When might it nova, destroying the world entirely?

There is no consistency of design from one floor of the tower to the next. The bottom is little but mighty support pillars of some grey stone, thick as oak trunks and stretching up into darkness. Etched into these pillars are crude pictographs- common motifs include eyes, a circle surrounded by jagged lines and three swords aiming at a single point, two at an angle and one larger sword in the middle. Near what could be the center of the tower there is a yawning, circular black pit. Noise does not echo into it, but it is impossible to discern its depth. Try long enough, and one might be rewarded with a familiar howling, this time loud enough to burst eardrums.

The top is an empty chamber. A single opening at the apex of the vaulted ceiling spills weak light into the room and allows one a view up at a clear, starry night sky. The walls and floor are decorated with extremely elaborate yet utterly alien characters, all of which seem to flow into one another with no visible structure. One who stares long enough into the sky may begin to notice that, every few minutes, one of those distant stars abruptly winks out of existence.


Loves: When the storms settle, the perfect undisturbed majesty of the infinite white dunes is quite captivating. One close enough to the tower might mark its inherent gothic majesty, flying arches, minarets and broad, sweeping platforms each playing a part in the edifice's complex construction. The tower is the only escape from the dust storms, welcome relief to any who spend time out in the open. The unstable sun's flare storms can be as beautiful as they are terrifying.