Mounth Theka

Mount Theka is an important tourist and wilderness destination in Sindall

Mount Theka Head

The best preserved and most well-known of the heads lies in the shadow of Mount Theka on the border of Sindall. While a natural origin for the head can be conceived, it possess a very clear symmetry, too perfect to ignore. Unlike the other heads, the entirety of a granite needle was carved away to create the Theka Head, leaving it standing out as an imposing monument three hundred feet tall. The Theka Head is positioned to face directly eastward, on a perfect line with High Mountain. Many reconstructions of the face even show it appears to be leaning back, as if craining its neck skyward to view the distant peak above the Aether.

What makes Theka so important, however, are the nearby ruins (not found at any other proposed site). Directly in front of the head there rests a large tel, or mound. When excavated, this proved to be the ruins of Noramtel, a city-state which existed late in the Age of Darkness, among the first major powers in the region by the start of the Mage Wars. Noramtel was the site of many clay tablets which, when deciphered, allowed archaeologists to piece together much of the city's history. Noramtel was established in around 4000 B.G.A., at a time when the features of the face were still highly distinct. The inhabitants of the city worshipped the head, and built their settlement there in order to construct important temples and make offerings to it.

While the mysticism and beliefs of the Noram are most likely an invention, the fact remains that vivid descriptions of the head as it looked in that era provide a clear certainty for its artificial construction. The Noram describe the head as weathered, but still clearly distinct, and even offer some hints as to the facial structure. According to the Noram accounts, the monument had a kind face, long nose, high cheekbones, and eyes which "peered straight into the past".

By the modern era, the nose was gone and the eye sockets had become great hollows. Much of the forehead was worn away, but the regularity of it was evident. The most striking surviving feature are the cheekbones, which are still perfectly symmetrical. The orbital ridge above the eyes is still plainly evident, and impossible to deny the hand of an intelligent workman.

Also of great importance in the Noram accounts is that the head was already present, they decided to settle before it, and what began as a winter camp eventually blossomed into a mighty city. The archaeological record supports this version of events, which would prove the head was not of Noram construction. Though the Noram did eventually become a sophisticated and well-developed culture, they never had the resources to construct such a monument themselves even at the height of their wealth and power; and it is clear from the records that the head existed long before their zenith.

Another, even more important find lines in the clay and silt upon which the Noram built their city. All Noram construction was carried out with locally quarried stone or mudbrick, they imported very little material(only logs for wooden pillars and roof supports, as far as can be determined; Theka was not forested in this time). However, beneath the lowest layer of the Noram city, archaeologists discovered signs of even older habitation, in the form of blocks of white marble. White Marble is not found anywhere in the region, and some of the stones unearthed weigh as much as 110 tons. The Noram, for all their achievements, never reached the capacity to move stones of such size; and the nearest known deposits of white marble are thousands of miles away.

What is more, the dimensions of the stones are consistent with sites known to have been constructed by the Ancients themselves, a progenitor civilization that existed in Antiquity. Their presence on Aren appears to have been limited, but no other explanation for the find exists.