Before there were parchments and seals, there was a mountain made of concrete and glass.
I imagined an adventure park — a place where people could walk a story, not read it, but feel it underfoot.
The glass mountain stood at its heart: a series of rock walls within that you could climb, with a modular cave system beneath where every turn was different from the last. The caverns themselves would change — interchangeable modules, panels, secret passages, new chambers appearing overnight.
Above, rope bridges swayed like Aetherwalk — both inside the mountain glass and, in clement weather, stretching outdoors into the wind: a high course tangled in branches and sky.
Behind the mountain lay a man-made lake with an island at its center, crowned by an arboretum café. To one side, a market hummed with local merchants whose shops were not fixed. Their façades could be lifted away and replaced eight or ten times a year — not unlike a movie set — so even the streets seemed to breathe and evolve. Groomed walking trails circled the property, inviting wanderers and hikers to lose and find themselves again.
Visitors would not return for the rides — there were none — but for what had changed since their last visit, or to once again dare the heights and depths of the attractions.
It was a village that remade itself while you weren’t looking.
That was the first hint of Rowendrey — a village imagined first of timber and glass, then of ink and dream.
But some ideas are too alive to stay fixed in the soil.
Concept sketch of the original adventure-park vision. (W.O. Rowen Archive)
From Blueprint to Dream
One night, the vision slipped from my hands and began writing itself. A seal appeared where none had been drawn. The mountain gave way to Skyreach and parchment, the cave system to Hollowdeep, and the high ropes to Aetherwalk. The market remained — joined now by archives and records, and a Council that governed through ink.
Thus began Rowendrey — the one you can now hold in your letters.
I still dream of that original place sometimes: the bustle of the market, the surprise of visitors seeing a new façade, the echo of shouts and laughter on the climbing walls, in the caves, and among the ropes.
Perhaps one day, when the record is full enough, that village will take form again — not just as an attraction, but as a home for all who once read their way inside.
— W.O. Rowen
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