Worldbuilding for the Remembrance, from 30 December.

What the crap does the Keep look like on the outside?

A castle? A church? A factory? A giant squid? An inverted spleen? A diner? From Nikki: “I can see it black with towering spikes. All lines and angles and large windows.” She elaborates, and I translate: The base should be wide, like wings, maybe swooping or covered in spines. There should be a tower rising out, like a serpent’s neck, topped with Herod’s quarters. He should be able to see out and around the Keep, and much of the city, without being seen from the outside.

I countered that most dragons I had read about took refuge underground. She said that many sought out mountains, and I said, “Yeah, under mountains.”

She changed angle and made a point that I couldn’t disagree with – Herod had just been freed fro institutionalization. He would abhor the feeling of being trapped or closed in. Building the Keep in the rater afforded him the sense of being underground, while the tower allowed him the sense of freedom.

She also pointed out that the crater was likely to have walls that were far more gradually sloped than those I was picturing in my mind’s eye, and that makes sense. In fact, the lip of the crater should come right up to the road that the Caravan is driving on, and right up to the edge of Hart Plaza.

Crap. I’m going to have to look at a map to be sure, but it’s likely that the crater will extend into the river. So, the Keep could sit in a pool of river water that swirls around it as the river flows. This would allow for an over-the-top moat, complete with drawbridge.

Or. The debris fro the city’s buildings and foundations could be pushed outward as the crater is made, altering the shoreline. Concrete and stone and steel would jut out of the water, just above its surface, in an almost-circular extension of the crater’s border out into the water. Some river water would seep and leak through, to form shallow pools around the edge of the Keep, before draining into the salt mines below the city.

Yeah, I like that one better.