The Spine of Desolation

I have been staring at them for two weeks. Two weeks to consider the wasteland that surrounds them and two weeks observing the fear in our guides as the caravan slowly crawled its way here. Even when they were on the distant horizon I could feel that this place...this land...is different from the cities. Haunted maybe. Definitely cursed. Even the twisted monstrosities that usually roam the wastes seem to actively avoid this place. Master Anette has been discussing the circuitous choice of a route that has taken us so long to get here, and the only response they offer her is that “bad winds have spread the silent burning to new places. The path is not as you remember.” The war simulacra have been on edge as we have approached, and they have been asking to switch to active. The first time they asked I laughed. Why would we need that kind of death ready to go? Now, standing at the foot of this I almost wish Master Anette had approved it. The sun is vanishing behind them now, and the sky smiles with its cracked and pitted teeth. We stand before The Spine of Desolation. The last war's greatest example of criminality on a scale we can barely appreciate. Historically, this has been a place of death and overkill and finality, but as always that has not stopped our race from making it a home. I have read all I could regarding the history of these mountains, and it was all I could do to believe it. One single moment some 200 years ago something only referenced as the “Bleak Night” occurred. It was the single most destructive, decisive, and shortest war ever to have been inflicted on this world. This particular mountain range once housed a significant number of military and scientific assets that were buried deep in the rock, safe from conventional warfare. The Bleak Night was not conventional in any sense. It seems our forerunners had a number of technologies available that we can only dream about. Among them, orbital assets geared for war. Invisible satellites with magnetic flux cannons, high density drop rods, and high grade particle accelerators all took aim at a string of hardened facilities over a mountain range several hundred miles long. It was over in minutes. The mountains broke open to sea level in some places. Eons of tectonic work altered to an unrecognizable masterwork in human ingenuity when inspired by death. It is breathtaking.