Titanflare Spire

After the Shattering, the titans that destroyed most of Harokin did not go away. They continued, roaming and fighting each other and leeching every lume of ambient arcana out of the environment for miles around. As dozens of years grew into hundreds of years, the survivors of the Shattering were faced with the fact that they needed a more sustainable way to live in the shadow of world-breaking monsters. Farms, orchards, ranches, and fisheries were still needed, and trade routes were still needed, and the titans didn't seem interested in hunting kinvari down--so if they could be avoided when they were nearby, perhaps life could almost seem normal when they weren't.   Kinvari had already discovered that titans could not hear high-pitched noises, making use of spinwhistles to warn nearby people of an incoming titan. But spinwhistles had limited range, so - tentatively - lighthouse-like spires began to be constructed as a lookout for titans.   These spires were placed in strategic places, usually situated in a place unlikely to be regularly trampled by passing titans, and largely resembled enormous redwood trees. When a titan was spotted from the spire-keeper's vantage point, a bonfire was kindled, and with the use of reflective metal sheets to both enhance and block the light source, a message could be passed to the next spire in very basic code. Sometimes, a titan would be able to see the flashes, but even then, most of them ignored it. Those few spires that were investigated or outright attacked were long abandoned by the time the titan reached it, its spire-keepers having fled at the first sign of attention.   Eventually, the network of spires became dense enough to be a reliable way of long-distance communication unto itself, though its priority always remained dedicated to titan warnings.
Type
Lighthouse


Cover image: by Ty Barbary via Midjourney

Comments

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Aug 18, 2023 05:23 by Michael Chandra

Nice how this developed out of sound alarms to a clever way of light signals, without depending on the sun. Glad there's no lethality involved in the job.


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