Ruins and Runes Around The World: A Lost History

Prelude: So many ruins around the world seem to have matching runes! What could this mean? It totally defies theories that mortals originate from a single area due to the sheer distance between ruins, even when the world was once a single landmass. Were there beings before us? Were /we/ the ones who did this?

Chapter 1: known common runes [The page is neatly lined with various symbols commonly found on ruins. Sidenotes are next to them stating number of times seen, which ruins they were in, general concentration of where they are commonly found (some runes are found more commonly in the west than others, some are completely unique to certain ruins)] The whole chapter is started off with a map covered with where ruins were found, and a rating on how intact they were in terms of rune legibility

Chapter 2: Rare/Uncommon Runes [it looks the same as the previous chapter, but much shorter. Something interesting is noted - much of the runes here are actually a bit common within the ruins they were found in - typically in sequence. EX - "XYR" can be a sequence of uncommon runes, however for some reason they're commonly found, in that order, in a single ruin. How strange. The common theory seems to be that those are names]

Chapter 3: Common architecture. It's quite ornate and detailed for an age that mortal races supposedly emerged from in a dark age with so little. The stone was typically quite sturdy, and nothing else quite like it was found in the world, although similarities were found. Each ruin seemed to have a different kind of material and signatures. How these fell into such a poor condition was a bit beyond scholars, and a list of theories were recorded afterwards - mortal races destroyed them, natural disasters, etc.

Chapter 4: Rune Definitions - Many definitions conceived have minimal backing to them due to the simple lack of knowledge. It's too difficult to conceive anything, especially with the mess most ruins are left in (hence the name). In fact, most definitions have been taken from cultist notes, whose phenomenon have been explained in the work: "Similarities Between Cult Practices Throughout The Ages". Due to their consistency despite having almost no way of contacting each other through the century, many scholars have taken that whatever cultists have thought the runes to mean must be correct. Of course this has become yet another topic of debate, often leading into a strawman argument insulting the validity of cultist work and their accuracy considering most of them are, to quote many scholars, "evil uneducated scum of the earth". In any case table 4.1 to 4.7 has all the popular transcriptions of what the runes mean. [There's just pages and pages of charts with runes, along with theories behind their meaning. Some of the ones around Lemuria aren't here...]

Chapter 6: Theories Behind Site Purposes - Strangely enough, the ruins typically do not ressemble cities, at least ruins with runes etched on the walls. There have been quite a few ancient settlements discovered, but those have simply shown the progression and movement of where various races came and went. The ruins and their purpose have been lost to history, and no primary source information about them has been found. What the ruins do ressemble is, again, up to debate - with theories ranging from extremely more complex versions of scrolls and talismans, meant for large scale work, ancient tombs of a long lost race, a weapon of some sort, a summoning site for terrible beings that once roamed the earth (as modern cultists use them today) etc. The following is a record of all the explanations behind the theories. [Various theories and explanations are listed, some quite outlandish, some sensible and logical.]

Chapter 7: Charts, Diagrams, and Maps of the Ruins/Index [There's quite a few pages of similar world maps, but due to the number of ruins found it was difficult to jam all the information on a single map alone. Each map had location markers to different sets of ruins, along with a symbol to mark them. On the page next to the map there was a legend showing what pages some information could be found on according to the ruins, a list of various works which cover that ruin in particular, pages the runes it has are on, etc]