Rewrite, GHOST OF THE DEVIL-HORSE, 12/27/2020.

Moving along!

I assume that whoever reads this will be doing so after the Dominion has been finally crushed, once and for all — which hopefully means that you’ll already be beginning to forget just how horrible it was to have that evil empire festering in the middle of the continent. I envy you future readers that, I really do. This past millennium has been dominated by one Dominion outrage and act of cruelty after another, and they’re taking a damned long time to choke on their own blood. The Dominion can’t die fast enough to suit the rest of us.

On the other hand: it’s never been a better time to be a salvage archaeologist. Entire regions are opening up for researchers now. Old Denver’s a case in point; it’s one of the romantic cities for modern archaeologists. The city changed hands a half-dozen times after the Discovery, had its own empire — and was left to fall into ruins when the Dominion conquered the place.

They never really did settle there; a garrison-Tower was erected, purely for the sake of the site’s strategic location. When the Alliance retook Denver, none of the fighting was in the ruins of the city. So there could be anything there, and now we can actually go look for it!