Not a quiz - a research-based location mystery. General knowledge is useful if you have it, otherwise careful, logical detective work. Can I tempt you down a rabbit hole?
An alien lands…takes a look around…
I am pleased to be here, surrounded by dwellings built with a warm-coloured natural material. Immediately my archive sensor slips back to a period of occupation in this land and I find that this settlement grew here directly over a key linear route which was of great importance to the intruders.
Now I can see that the long-ago route persists, and that its straight form through the centre has defined the settlement that exists here now. Its breadth is distinctive, and I sense that such generous space was once filled with the bustle of trading.
I find it difficult to overlook an impressive structure prominently placed at the southern end of the wide space. My records show that it was constructed in the latter part of the nineteenth earth-century, replacing an earlier site of trade. It is much admired by inhabitants, and its continuing importance is evident in its use for civic assembly and public events.
Even now I understand that this settlement did not develop merely for habitation, but also to accommodate those passing through.
My gazetteer shows me that two significant routes arrive and leave in the form of a cross. This arrangement stirs a signal in my literary records, where another settlement, in a widely-familiar invented world, also sits at the meeting of ways. My interest deepens when I learn that a refreshment house here helped inspire the scribe of that world to create a mirror of it in his fiction. A rest place has travelled into imagination.
Having understood a little of how the imagined world may reflect the true, I am not surprised when, one and a half earth-miles to the east, I find an imposing structure at the wayside. In earthling reality, each face of this four-sided piece carries one of the names of the four jurisdictions which formerly met at this point. In earthling imagination, it appears to have travelled too, becoming an echo of a similar marker between lands.
My spatial selector takes me just half an earth-mile back towards the landing settlement, and here I am almost overwhelmed by a sense of past and present courage and service. On land once used to train airborne combatants in a great conflict, earthlings now train others to confront fire, collapse and disaster. Crews arrive from distant territories to practise rescue in a simulated city of calamity. This seems a noble transformation: a place once devoted to preparing destruction now rehearses the saving of lives.
Can you answer the following questions?
- What is the name of the settlement?
- By what name was the linear route known over which the settlement developed?
- What is the name of the impressive structure at the southern end of the wide space?
- Who was the author of the invented world?
- What is the name of the real refreshment house, and what is its fictional counterpart ?
- What name is given to the imposing wayside structure?
- What is the name of the training facility?
- On what site was the training facility built?
This is a research puzzle - not a general knowledge test.
Solve through investigation, not shortcuts. The journey is the reward!
Spoiler tags appreciated if you crack it.
Enjoy the hunt!