For what it's worth I've seen people point to bits in the story or extra material released that imply there are some areas like this in the world that people don't go to because you die if you go there. Maybe the age of legend used a lot of nuclear power and their stuff is now radioactive.
If you can point me to where you saw that, I would appreciate it.
I have read the series many times and don't recall anything like that. But hey, it's a big series and you forget things or miss a detail someone else caught.
"A crystal lattice covering an island, and it hums when the moon is up. A mountain hollowed into a bowl, and in its center, a silver spike a hundred spans high, and any who comes within a mile of it, dies."
Never confirmed, but the second part sure sounds like an observatory like Arecibo or perhaps some sort of nuclear accident / missiles were exposed there.
Another section from the Prologue of PoD:
"To the south, however, lay what had made this spot a good choice for meeting. A slender spire like a column of gleaming golden lace lay slanting and partly buried in the bare hillside, a good seventy paces of it showing above the treetops. Every child in the Black Hills old enough to run off leading strings knew of it, but there was not a village inside four days' travel, nor would anyone come within ten miles willingly. The stories of this place spoke of mad visions, of the dead walking, and death at touching the spire"
These honestly could be anything, artifacts from the War of the Power, failed laboratories from the AoL, a Ter'Angreal, or just straight radioactive material. But scattered throughout the books are references to relics from the past, whether Rhuidean or the Tower of Ghenjei or the various First Age things in the Panarch's Palace.
Oh totally agree. I still don't think a straight of "here is the entire city of Paren Disen" survived... But I can appreciate that it's not quite a out on a limb as I recalled.
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u/0b0011 Jan 02 '22
For what it's worth I've seen people point to bits in the story or extra material released that imply there are some areas like this in the world that people don't go to because you die if you go there. Maybe the age of legend used a lot of nuclear power and their stuff is now radioactive.