On a dry valley floor in this open prairie there is a gathering of white monoliths, essentially small buttes.  They are made of chalk, sculpted by rain and runoff into vertical-edged towers seven stories high, equal in height.  The surrounding ground surface is flat and featureless, leading away to low rises on the horizon.

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Dimensions   The chalk towers/buttes reach 70 feet (25 meters) in height.  There are two different clusters of buttes, separated by about 1000 feet (350 meters) of open chalk flat.  The sketch map below shows one cluster's approximate layout of towers, many of which connect to form irregular-sided chalk walls.

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Key Details

• There are very few isolated towers beyond the fairly strict limits of the two monolith clusters.  The localized anomaly of these monuments on the prairie is quite striking.
• The twisty, tortuous walls give the long-distance impression of many disconnected towers, with lots of ways available to walk through the cluster on ground level.  Most of the alcoves between the monolith's 'turrets' lead nowhere.  True passageways can only confirmed in close exploration, or from aerial view.
• In many spots the ground at the base of a vertical wall is absolutely flat, meeting the tower at a right angle.  In some other places the ground forms a significant ramp, rising to meet the monolith edge.​​

• Ground near the towers is absolutely bare, made of crumbly chalk fragments and dust.  It has shallow erosion marks of the water rivulets that appear in rainstorms.  The rest of the valley floor has poor, low grass turf and numerous bare soil spots, with patches of sharp-bladed yucca and small cactus.
• Origin:  The chalk making up these buttes is a type of limestone laid down as thin ​sediment layers beneath an ancient mid-continental sea.  The waters above were more than a hundred feet deep, plied by fish up to 20 feet (7 meters) in length, giant turtles, plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, with flying reptiles overhead.  The sediment was made up of the carbonate shells of microscopic plankton (foraminifera), and this material became deeply buried under other sediment deposits and compressed into rock over the following millions of years.  Erosion of the land surface over additional millions of years has trimmed away the ground down to expose this chalk.  Its thick beds once extended evenly across the entire valley floor (and much further abroad as an underground layer beneath the region's prairie).  Here, rain and stream erosion have cut away 70 feet (20 meters) of the chalk everywhere across the valley floor, except where these buttes remain standing,​​

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• ​Most of the thin layers exposed in these monolith walls are pure chalk, smooth-textured and dusty.  A few are clayey shale, a bit harder material which in some places stands out as tiny wafer-thick ledges on the walls.  Some other layers are made up of visible fossil shell pieces cemented together, a rough-surfaced 'fossil hash'.
• One rock wall has a 'doorway' eroded through, a 50-foot-high arch opening down to ground level.  

• Creatures inhabiting this landscape include coyotes, pronghorn antelope, lizards, rabbits, and rattlesnakes.  There are falcons and hawks, some occupying alcoves high on the chalk buttes, where pigeons and magpies also perch.  Swallows have built colonies of mud nests on the cliff faces.
• Large pieces sometimes break off the walls, creating piles of chalk rubble on the ground below.  This irregular ground contrasts sharply with the flat, clean-swept appearance of wall bases elsewhere.
• More on Origin:  Some mystery remains why these chalk towers stand clustered here, but exist nowhere else in this broad valley.  The monoliths are capped with a darker layer of chalk rock that is rich in fossil hash.  It seems to be a 'caprock', resisting rainfall's erosion better than most of the chalk layers, allowing the towers to still stand high while the ground all around has been worn down to a flat plain.  A very few low, soft-shaped chalk mounds nearby show that if erosion does remove a tower's top layer, the chalk below disintegrates quickly.   
  
  • ​Are these towers the few, localized remnants of many more that were once widespread across this valley?
    
  • Or do these towers mark the only spots where such rich fossil hash was ever laid down in the sediments, possibly under small shellfish reefs on the ancient sea floor? 

Story Elements

• These weird chalk monoliths could be a memorable waypoint on a long, parched journey.  Characters seeing such a location well-marked on a map might wrongly assume they will find a settlement or at least water here, and have a disappointing arrival.
• Someone walking between the buttes experiences constantly shifting directions of open view.  This situation gives many chances for their sudden discovery of something quite close by, or a new sight of someone approaching out on the flat. 
• This could be challenging terrain for a battle, especially one relying on distance attacks.  From the ground, the monolith tops will be out of range for some weapons or spells.  Vertical angle distances will be significantly greater than the horizontal even for shooters standing away from the tower bases.  Fighters on top may have an unaccustomed reliance on gravity in order to reach targets below, and have to adjust shooting styles accordingly.  The tower crests are mostly flat with fairly sharp edges, likely  to block view of someone above for those nearby below.  It may be necessary for a ground army's snipers to scale monoliths to target opponents there, and on the crests nearby.  Once on top, they will have little cover themselves.
• Climbing to tops of the towers without equipment will be difficult, as the walls are mostly sheer.  The chalk is soft, as rock goes: it will be easy to get purchase with pick or metal stake, but the rock surface may crumble on occasion, unexpectedly loosening an anchor point.  If there is a soil ramp at the base, this could reduce the height of the climb.  Some large vertical fractures appear in the chalk face, and one of these could be used aid ascent.  A high saddle on the wall crest could offer a resting spot for a climber.​

• Birds that inhabit the upper reaches of the towers must range far over the countryside in their search for food.  They or their roosts could offer information on what lies beyond the horizon of this valley.  Attention to their flight paths could give some direction to a search for water and other requirements.
• Characters might need to find a route through one of the forbidding tower walls.  (Someone could walk around the outside of such a barrier with little time lost, but that might expose them to discovery by distant spies.)  To find an open path, they would have to visit the many inlets between the 'turrets' of the wall face.  Most of these lead quickly to dead ends, but there are a few that open to the other side.​​

• Who might find this area sacred or taboo?  What might be the origin of that belief?
• In a dry camp here under the stars, characters might dream of swimming in the ancient sea that once covered this land, seeing the monstrous creatures that inhabited the water and skies.  Could the right magic/technology make this possible?
• The tall arch in one wall seems a natural candidate for a magical door: possibly an arrival place for characters who have entered a portal elsewhere?  They would find themselves isolated among lonely monuments on this vast prairie, with little sense what world they had entered, or where they might go.
• What might someone find encased in the fossil hash that could relate to their journey?  A message from the past?   A talisman or an ingredient?  

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Reference Location

Monument Rocks (aka Chalk Pyramids), in western Kansas, a designated National Natural Landmark.  These monoliths are on private land, with access open to the public on condition of no climbing, fossil hunting, or camping/littering on the site.  There are no visitor facilities or services in this location.  The best approach to the site is southward from Interstate 70 at Oakley, taking US 83 and county gravel roads.
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