Penultimate Post - The Ancient Ruins
Now to get rid of those WIP teapots... 
Grand Plains
Chapel Cliff Ruins.
These ruins sit on the top of the mesa in the middle of Grand Plains. Missionaries built a small chapel on this cliff by the time this place was initially colonized. This specific chapel is one of the few locations on vernacia where Ancient relics are displayed to the public. Most of them though are kept in private collections all across the world.
Delosia Coast
Delosia coast also posesses the power source for the nearby cities of the west coast, the Quarry Lake Dam, which produces 5 MW of power to the local area.
Palan Bay
Palan Bay's Ruin Complex is the biggest known remnants of Ancient cities in vernacia, sitting on a high and foggy plateau just east from the coastline.
Not much can be seen eh? Other than a dense pine forest...
There are stairways spread across the ruins that it is beleived that led to underground caverns of unknown size. The stairways spiral down for dozens and dozens of meters ending abruptly in massive cave-ins, so no one ever got farther than about 20m under the ground.
Here's what is beleived to have been a greater complex on the ruins, another stairway that goes far deeper than the first one, but also ends on a cave-in.
Here we have the remnants of what appear to have been houses, an arched way on the right, and a bigger building on the left. Majestic statues often are found inside those buildings, leading archeologists to beleive those were shrines of some sort...
One of the most dazzling findings in such ruins is the abundance of ogival archs. This might suggest native traders from vernacia might have imported the idea from medieval europe, however there are no known records of traders coming from a far island in the middle of the pacific sea on japanese or chinese history. Even less from europe.
St. Felicity's Cloister
Not properly a city, the cloister sits on the peninsula far south from Giant's Step.
The Cloister also sits nearby a ruin site, this one is rather studied by the priests on the cloister who struggle with putting together the peices of the language and relics of the ancients. However without any translation table, the efforts for cracking the abundant Ancient writings craved on the walls of the ruins were fruitless...
Here's a close-up.
The cloister itself sits beside a lake, with its own water supply and some vineyards. It produces one of the best wines in the region... 
The chambers of the cloister also contain dozens and dozens of relics from the ancients that are found all over Vernacia, strong efforts by the local order managed to collect a sizeable ammount of relics, however nothing in comparison with the collection that is around the world...
Zura's Crown
Zura's crown is the northern most portion of Vernacia, on the largely undeveloped and chilly Walnut Valley.
Farmers here struggle with the harsh weather. While it rarely snows, frosting of the crops is a common event. However tourism moves the economy of this little town quite a bit, but not as much as it could due to economic regulations by Vernacia's metropolitan government.
However Zura's Crown has a very unique feature which accounts for the tourism that moves this small community. The Rock which is the city is named after, Zura's Crown.
However this is no ordinary natural wonder. Man's touch adds to even more mystery to this location. There are Ancient ruins here too, of what seemed to be a major place of worship, or perhaps a grand palace.
The ruins here are circled by a very unique flora, it is beleived such unique vegetation was cultivated by the ancients, and due to this place's isolation from the mainland (and Vernacia's lack of birds. They were only introduced circa 1720 with the first colonists) managed to keep this unique vegetation sheltered from outside influence. The ruins here are somewhat intact, appearing to have been some large tower in the center. The master craftsmanship of the ancients is demonstrated by the pool that formed on the ruins, what proves there's no infiltration through these rocky structures even a thousand years after this splendorous civilization ceased to exist.
What baffles even more the archeologists is the bridge that connects vernacia to the mainland. It still stands as a perfect, although enormous, arched bridge. The fact the stone resembles that of the cliffs even suggests that this bridge wasn't constructed, but craved out of the bedrock of a natural bridge that once spanned the gap between Spire Rock (the other name for Zura's Crown) and mainland Vernacia.
It is beleived that the top of Spire Rock is connected to the stair pit on the end of the bridge, but as of today no one managed to venture deep into the cave system for the same reason as always... cave-ins...
The only way to make to the top is climbing the cliffside.
And now a word from our maestro! 
Now you folks all see why I had been so silent lately. I had been obscessively BATting to make these darn ruins! expect a STEX release soon once I tidy up the last details 
With this rather monumental ending I am done with the "city" part of Sights Around Vernacia, the next update will focus more on local geography with a big map I'm slowly crafting on photoshop, plus some other goodies.
Expect the real Vernacia journal to start soon... 
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