>>5420203>The barracks are more important. Continue on your way.You content yourself with glancing over him once as you pass him by. He does not look up. Then you are away, the road glued to the temple walls, and the scene is forgotten for now.
In the distance, you see battlements cutting across your path, and as your litter approaches that place you realise these must be the walls of the city. The impression is short-lived, however, as you pass through a gate and out onto the banks of a great canal. The sentries bow to you as you pass by, but you pay them no mind. Across the water, on the other bank, the second half of the city beckons you. You crane your neck from left to right, following them astride the horizon as far as you can see until the waters turn away and are obscured. To the south, a bridge connects the two riverbanks, and it is towards this bridge that you now turn.
Soon, you are crossing it, and as the wagons and carts clear the road for your procession you peer down at the canal and notice the boats and coracles bobbing up and down the current. On the shore, the people wash themselves or their clothes, while a few cast fishing-nets from rafts just out of reach. And far off to the north, the river splits in two, flowing along its assigned path after branching away from its natural course.
What a feat of engineering, to tame a great river and force it to flow into a city. And all the while, the water is caught in other places and sent down little waterways to irrigate the fields. Thousands of mouths, hundreds of thousands! All bound to the river by thirst and hunger. To know the earth and the water so closely, so well, as to know where it must flow, how it must be divided, how much and how little must be allotted to a given place!
Ah...
>roll 1d100:>Such dangerous tasks are best left to professionals. [1-20]>And the river is weaker for it. [21-40]>Give enough men shovels, and the world will be split by water. [41-70]>I must delve deeper into this subject. [71-90]>I think I remember... [91-100] 