Breeches & Breechlands

The breeches are ruins from a lost and forgotten era. Each is a monolith or a mega-structure, a gigantic shards of indestructible metal, hollow and hallowed, filled with intricate carvings, statuettes, and ancient shrines. They litter the landscape of Burmeccia. Many breeches have been re-purposed by the Burmeccians. The largest are used as foundations for cities, smaller breeches are built up inside and around to make manors, temples, castles. Some are just too strangely shaped, too remotely placed, or stick up too sharply out of the land to be used for anything productive. But they are all deemed valuable, and a baron will always prefer to own land that contains a breech than land which does not.
To the folks that live in and around the breeches, they seem completely normal and mundane; but the many who visit Burmeccia are frequently astonished by their size and number and mystery. The breeches loom over the hills and forests, so ancient and yet unable to rot. The land has claimed many of them over the millennia, so many breeches are covered in soil and grass like the rest of the land, and so blend in with the hills. Some twist and bend and burst out at odd angles, making good roosts for birds and little else.
Specialised Burmeccian "Breech Scholars" have spent lifetimes trying to understand the strange buildings, mapping them, exploring them, looking for patterns and explanations. Very few answers were found within, at such a close scale. But when the first maps of Burmeccia started circulating, a truth seemed to be revealed. When certain assumptions are made about the positions of certain hills and mountains (and what may truly be lying beneath the soil) the scholars were able to piece together a new interpretation for their relation to the rest of Burmeccia:

Purpose / Function

The maps reveal both that Burmeccia is situated in a gigantic crater, and that the breeches seems to be enormous pieces of shrapnel from an ancient impact or explosion. The theory is that they once all fit together into some kind of discus or chakram shape, which somehow shattered, despite being made primarily of Ambrosium. That every smaller Shard and every grain of Dust found and used as currency in Burmeccia was once all part of that larger whole too.
This theory gave more credence both to landowners who started to see a breech on their land as a symbol of their wealth, and to ecclesiastical societies who came up with all sorts of stories and explanations for the breeches' current existence. Some say it was a discus thrown in anger by a great god to try to destroy the world, some thing it was a wheel that rolled around the world eternally until it was stopped by a giant and once it stopped it fell over and shattered. The most popular opinion is that it fell from heaven itself (though reasons why vary between sects), and that all Burmeccians are divine children, destined to one day return to the sky.

Alterations

So many variants of breeches exist that to list all the modifications made to them by various civilisations over the countless centuries would be impossible. They might be broken down into categories though:

First are the largest breeches, so large as to be filled with dirt and stone and covered with grass, and to have entire countries situated on top of them. Most people don't even realise that they live on a breech such as this, since they so commonly blend in with the fields and hills.

Second largest are those which stick up in the landscape, but which are accessible and conveniently positioned so as to be used as the foundations of great multi-tiered cities and towns. The lowest layers of which go deep within the breeches themselves and which are often referred to as The Below.

Next are those used as castles and fortresses, temples, or enclosure walls or the foundations of dams. Some are ruined and forgotten, or abandoned for one reason or another (usually because they also contain Necrohols) but most are still in partial or full use. And towns are usually built up around them.

Finally there are those large enough to use as a flagstone or support pillar to build a single house around, but little else. Some are of a good size and shape but in a bad location, such as in the middle of a swamp or a cliff-edge.

Any smaller breeches are small enough to dislodge from the ground and sell or use a status symbol. Many petty rulers in Burmeccia will mount nice looking breeches in their throne-rooms like abstract sculptures; and keep the uglier ones in a bouillon vault. Some are even just the right shape to use as slightly uncomfortable thrones.

RUINED STRUCTURE
Estimated 100,000 BCE

Alternative Names

The Shards

Type

World wonder