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Place and Boundary Markers
Place and Boundary Markers along roads in the Steel Realms are made of stone. Wooden road signs are fairly rare, but they exist inside and close to towns. Markers delineate most of the Travel in the Steel Realms. Many roads and outskirts of settlements will include boundary markers that declare what settlement is ahead. These. Mark, be nominally accepted areas of control for the settlement beyond its immediate vicinity. They typically aren’t marked with any sort of distance measurement.
Typically all boundary markers and road markers are made of stone. Some of them will be painted and others will be chiseled in terms of writing. Many settlements also have some sort of symbol associated with them. At least the larger ones. This will also be inscribed somehow on the markers. In places like Umback, the markers are kept and maintained constantly. In other places they may not be and may be illegible and worn as they are infrequently maintained.
Far Beacons: Many large settlements have full stone dolmen with names, symbols and very clear markers that can be seen for, from long distances and don’t require much maintenance except after a few hundred years or so.
Valois Markers and Obelisks
Thousands of years ago in the reign of the Valois Kings of Umbak, the king’s brother Alfons (of the Automata Brigade of Virtue and Reason) instituted an upgrade of all the trail markers in Umbak. Using White Limestone from the southern reaches, almost all in the kingdom were replaced. Bright and tall, clean and even polished in some places, they were a hallmark of the great kingdom. It began a fashion for many of the larger cities around the Steel Realms as a means of a cheap building project for rulers. Typically chiseled with place names, painted white, and black organic stains were made for lettering and sealed with resin. It instituted a modern standard for distance using ‘road distance’ vs. ‘as-the-crow-flies’ distances.
Some rulers built bases and made monuments to themselves under the auspices of road markers. It is still done today, but only for major cities and typically a ruler will replace or update one in their reign as a ‘gift’ to the people. Only in Umbak is the practice of making the major ones an obelisk still practiced – probably due to the fact they are not vandalized like they are elsewhere.