: Out of curiosity, how close would you say my ideas of the general aesthetic
: (silvery, featureless surfaces and very simple, monolithic shapes) come to
: yours? I remember seeing a 3D rendering of the Precursor orbital arches in
: one of the earlier entries and it was totally different from how I've
: always imagined them, all organic and massive rather than thin and
: sweeping.

: Or the Charum Hakkor pieces. Do you imagine the architecture (human and/or
: Precursor) as more grandiose and dominating than my depiction, or less so?
: I had a sketch of entire cities worth of structures suspended on cables
: between the Precursor pillars and arches but I haven't gotten it to work
: satisfactorily image-wise (it tends to get too messy).

As far as the orbital arches go, I actually pictured them being much more grandiose. In Cryptum, the human structures are described as appearing like "ivy growing on great trees". To me, the difference in scale would be more like ivy on the side of a church or library... if the building were then stacked on top of itself and stretched into space. Then, take into account that human structures at this time were also very grandiose, since we had achieved more understanding of science than we currently do, and the full scale of what I imagine should become apparent. Imagine whole cities like Chicago or LA dotting a massive structure that dwarfs them so much that they just appear like leaves, and the roads and massive elevators that link the cities are the tendrils of ivy itself. I actually have a cool image in my head where you can see all these human cities decorating a solid grey cliff wall... but the description would explain that the wall, indistinguishable as anything but a flat surface in the image, was actually a portion of this massive orbital arch.

So I always pictured them being very big. Impossibly big. So big that you can tell just by looking at them that the laws of physics are being broken to keep them in place.

As far as the general aesthetic, I'd say the silvery-gray coloring looks, but to me there would be more surface features. Smooth, incredibly perfect in geometry from a large scale, but the closer you get the more detail you would make out, or at the very least you'd see that the surface itself was every-changing, maybe not in a way that you could entirely comprehend. I always pictured Precursor tech looking like a cross between something metal and organic, kind of like a living metal. The black goo from Prometheus always came across as very Precursory to me. Also remember that when I first saw this I thought there was no way it could be anything but Precursor.

But I still think you did a fantastic job. I think the orbital arch you showed that's made up of a lot of smaller strands/cables comes relatively close to at least one of my mental images.