Officer or Sheriff

I am interested on information concerning the ruins adjacent to Upper Sanctuary. Specifically, just how much empty or vacant space is there? How many men would it take to patrol it? Would it be possible to quarantine certain areas to make them habitable and still maintain security if it could not be done with the entire ruins? How much would this cost, and what would cost what?

My apologies if these are difficult questions, but I did not know whom else to ask, and it's my understanding the Watch holds dominion over the Ruins and it's something they might know.

I'm hoping to use this information to formulate a possible plan to make the ruins inhabitable by new arrivals to Sanctuary in years to come, so that more men will not be required to cram themselves in with others in Lower or Upper Sanctuary.

Sincerely,

Ivandur Reynolt

Sheriff Walters recieves the letter while eating a large bowl of rothe stew, glances over it briefly, and has it forwarded to Sergeant Fezlkirn.

Ivandur Reynolt,

Sheriff Walters has forwarded your letter to me, the acting Watch Archivist. I hope that I can answer your inquiry in a satisfactory fashion.

The full extent of the vacant space in the Dunwarren ruins in unknown. No accurate maps of the entirety of the ancient city have been developed, partially due to their sheer vastness and complexity and partially due to other problems mapping Dunwarren.

Lieutenant Greer has indicated that it would require us to double the size of the Watch, or call up the majority of the reserves into permanent service, to secure even most of the nearby ruins on a permanent basis. This is due to the high degree of resistence from hostile creatures, particularly the old Dunwarren animatrons and the remaining creatures that have bred in the abandoned areas since the Quake of Year 65. These external hazards would make it extremely difficult to impose law and order on a new settlement positioned in the ruins. Additionally, there would be issues with residual pockets of undeath and disease that are known to exist scattered throughout the ruins. Given these seemingly intractable issues, the question of how the Founders were so easily able to settle in Dunwarren originally has recently been considered by modern scholars, such as Wright and Wedgrel.

The idea of quarantining a small sector of the ruins and making it habitable is not new-- indeed, old Sanctuary was originally such a camp, and Lower Sanctuary began under similar conditions. These two success stories, sadly, are diluted by dozens of failures. Early expansion and colonization of the Dunwarren ruins ended abruptly with the Great Quake,

...as several sections of the walls around Dunwarren collapsed, releasing the horrors of the Underdark upon many of the outlying camps. Other camps were outright crushed or buried alive, trapped under hundreds of tons of stone and steel. A few were actually cut off entirely from Sanctuary proper, and often from the only nearby source of food and clean water. Wild stories circulated for years afterward about the horrors that took place in these outer colonies... (quoted from another letter on this subject that I'm writing)

-Sergeant Fezlkirn, Watch Archivist