Inauguration
Journey to the Ruins
“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands…”
My name is Lafayette Lee and I will be your companion on this journey into the Ruins. Although heir to this estate, I am without penny or pot. Just the last drops of a patrician bloodline and a squandered birthright. No one has use for a penniless blueblood in this country, and so I am resigned to fill the measure of my creation as an aristocrat of the soul instead.
As you enter the Ruins, you will notice that things are overgrown and hardly a column remains of that once magnificent house. Just hellvines and sinking stones all nestled together under a shroud of Spanish beard. The place is far from desolate, though. In that Dionysian soup dwell a multitude of ghosts; some quick and slippery, others cleverly lurking in the darkest places. You will feel the weight of a thousand empty eyes there.
Every man, woman, and child in this neck of the woods clings to a different explanation as to how this glorious estate was reduced to a play yard for vines and specters. Some say it was a single catastrophe, others a parade of misfortunes. Even still, there are those who insist it was an act of God; a divine punishment only Jehovah Himself could summon. These good people are not entirely wrong, but they would do well to know a truer account.
The Ruins are ancient, its walls and columns bound by a mortar mixed with the blood and bones of millions. When that First Family finished their tabernacle of clay, they made a covenant with the Almighty and He breathed life into their handiwork. Corotoman became a living edifice. No single storm or cyclone could have done it, not even centuries of storms and cyclones. Nor could nature’s worthy rival, human stupidity, topple those walls. For Corotoman was alive and protected by divine covenant.
That leaves us with the Almighty. Did the great Lord of Hosts strike Corotoman down? Did He look upon His own creation finding it unworthy? What of His covenant with that First Family and their posterity?
I will gladly answer these questions as best I can as we journey into the Ruins. The path there is long and winding, and we will have plenty of time to discuss Corotoman’s former glories, its extraordinary demise, and the strange disappearance of its princely inheritors.
We best be moving along.
Welcome to the Ruins of Corotoman.