Someone should make a game about: architectural salvage

A carved Shakespeare head. Several, in fact, set into a balustrade of an old house that was being torn apart for remodelling, maybe even demolition. I forget. It’s all just more wood to break down and get out of the way to some.

But one of the demolitionists saw it differently. He didn’t see something in the way of the job. He saw a long-dead tree someone had cut into the shape of a poet and built into their house. In a town close to Stratford-upon-Avon, no less.

He didn’t see refuse. He saw salvage. He was one of us.

When I complain there aren’t enough (any) games about salvage, I usually mean space salvage. My dream of being the savvy roaming space wrecker and dealer may never come to be, but architectural salvage already exists, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. History might be only the percent of a percent that survived, but the bulk of human edifice is not truly gone. Even some of the grandest of ancient temples and monuments throughout the ages did not vanish, but were gradually broken down and used to shore up a house or tannery or boundary wall, their stones and bricks forming part of a new being like nutrients in the biosphere. Most of it will never be known. And that’s exactly why it’s so precious when you find a little piece of it.