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Welcome to the Machine God
A Tour of the Very Different World of Exalted: The Autochthonians
Posted: 2005-04-28

Unlike the Creation of Gaia, Autochthon is not surrounded by the endless chaotic expanses of the Wyld. Instead, the Machine God sleeps in the non-space of Elsewhere. Beyond the static boundaries of Gaia's Creation, infinite uncertainties exist. In contrast, literal and absolute nothing lies beyond Autochthon's boundaries, and so, the titan's boundaries are necessarily more rigid. Geometrically, he is shaped closest to a sphere, although that is a necessary oversimplification for the minds of those who cannot perceive his true complexity. Given that his world is, in fact, a three-dimensional realm of solid organ-continents grinding against one another in the expression of Primordial biology, this changes the fundamental structure of the world from Creation.

The Great Maker is not composed of the same elements as Creation, and so, both the composition and function of the world inside his body differs. In place of the basic elements of air, wood, fire, water and earth, Autochthon uses the artificially created elements of steam, crystal, lightning, oil and metal. Autochthon also incorporates a sixth element of smoke, but this embodiment of pollution manifests Autochthon's ailing health rather than a desired component of his being.

The Elemental Pole of Oil

Just as the elements themselves differ, so too does the arrangement of poles. The upper fifth of this spherical world is a colossal hemispherical reservoir filled entirely with an ocean of oil. Squid-like custodians swim in schools there, mixing the lubricants as they scout their lightless inky realm by echolocation and Essence sight. These creatures also maintain the wards of the ceiling, attaching their suckers to create hermetically sealed environments in which they can extrude welding torches without fear of explosion. Vast ovoid automata, miles long, consume and convert oil into refined chemicals, which are sealed in anchor pods and dropped to the ocean floor. Blade-sleek gremlins prowl tainted currents like siaka, foraging out to attack the factory whales and batten themselves on the processed cargo. All around the containment bulwark's periphery, factory-crustaceans feed and maintain the intake valves and pumps that regulate the flow of oil pumping into the world below. These refinery-spirits also harvest released chemical pods as they find them, placing them into designated drop chutes. In the rest of Autochthonia, the oils serve the part of water as the predominant fluid, greasing mechanical parts and providing raw materials for many chemical components in the Primordial's mechanical physiology. Oil is Autochthon's lifeblood, and the vast pumps beneath the pole serve as his many hearts. Recycled oils work their way back upward through peristaltic veins after use, pumped through successive tiers of filtration until they arrive at the reservoir pole in purified form.

The Elemental Pole of Smoke

The bottom fifth of Autochthonia is a barren and blasted wasteland that forms the single largest open space inside the Great Maker's body. This openness is a sharp contrast to the immensely claustrophobic conditions that predominate in all of the rest of Autochthonia. However, this openness is far from inviting, as the Elemental Pole of Smoke is a dark and poisonous realm. A roiling bank of dense black fog, dozens of miles thick, rises to the ceiling, carefully sealed away from the rest of the Machine God by armored plates treated against the smoke's corrosive pollutants. The scuttling custodians who maintain this shielding perform a necessary but thankless duty. Their existence is short and brutal, as this acidic environment gradually destroys their bodies and ultimately sends their dying remains plummeting into the miles-deep heap of debris far below. The clouds of elemental smoke here are toxic and occasionally luminous when mobile Essence vortices condense into a malevolent glow. In other places, the harsh and relentless meteorological conditions become turbulent enough that intermittent lightning flashes and thunder add to the inescapable gloom. Great automaton dirigibles plated with soulsteel against the corrosive pollution drift through the churning polychromatic clouds, their intake maws sucking in the foul air through purification baffles. From time to time, these bloated automata dock with the colossal inverted spires that pierce down into or even through the smoke at irregular intervals. When docked, air-scrubber drones pump clean air into ventilation ducts, where it funnels back up through Autochthonia for the benefit of its biological denizens and the Primordial's own biomechanical subsystems. This complex system serves as Autochthon's lungs.

Far below the tempest-wracked smog, the floor is a vast scrap heap of twisted metal scorched and blasted by acid rain and incendiary hail. From time to time, shafts open in the longest hanging spires, dropping more detritus onto the industrial landfill. Precipitation from the chemical monsoons filters through the heap and pools below, gradually digesting the bottommost strata into a toxic smoldering slurry saturated with glittering flakes of metal. Veins of especially refractory jade alloys run back along the walls into Autochthonia above, pumping this morass into refinery-organs where catalysts extract raw ores. This endless expanse of debris is home to a few unlucky custodians who fell or were sucked into a waste collector's mouth and is also home to tribes of gremlins. A few fungal elementals breed in terrifying acid-proof colonies, their mindless growth and hunger kept in check only by the custodians' periodic use of fire. The assorted denizens make war upon one another incessantly for resources and Essence until thunder warns of encroaching storms. Then, all flee to their haphazard shelters of piled wreckage, gremlins heaping curses upon their distant tormentors, while custodians pray to the recycling gods for deliverance. When the storms pass, the denizens heap new scrap to fill the smoking holes in anticipation of the next downpour.

The Elemental Pole of Metal

The remaining three-fifths of Autochthonia form a roughly toroidal cylinder, the solid husk and flesh of the Great Maker. Within this predominantly metal realm, continent-sized organs drift and clash according to the inscrutable principles of this realm's biotectonics. The vast majority of Autochthonia is unyieldingly cramped, a bizarre mix of subterranean and urban design. Moderate spaces and chasms exist only in the interstices between organs. Here mortals build their cities and towns, which are connected by a multitude of lesser spaces carved by labyrinths of tubes, veins, tunnels, chutes and chimneys threading through and around the Machine God's organs. Much of this crowding and claustrophobia stems from Autochthon's own constraints — he crammed his infinite being into bounded space for his exodus. The entire toroidal bulk forms the Elemental Pole of Metal, the Essence-charged nature of which makes most surfaces impermeable to dematerialized beings.

At the absolute heart of Autochthon, the metacrystalline Godhead contains the Primordial's Core, which the residents of Autochthonia imagine to be the Great Maker's own soulgem. This core contains the processing function of the titan's ego. From the outside, this chamber is a vast sphere. However, the wide hyperbolic slope of a solid central pillar transforms the interior of the chamber into a torus. Affixed to the upper half of this pillar and woven outward to fill the top half of the continent-sized cathedral, the Tapestry of Autochthon's design incorporates a multidimensional fractaline complexity resembling Yu-Shan's Loom of Fate. Likewise, the gossamer spider web of starmetal cables and adamant nodes plays home to millions of design weavers, the upgraded pattern spiders weaving the Essence and future of the Machine God's Realm in accordance with the dictates of the Core. Lightning arcs between the strands constantly and elaborately, a great sizzling storm of naked, incalculable thought. Far below, the Godhead itself is a forest of couplings, tubes and towers, every one leading through ducts, filaments, wires or some other apparatus to mechanisms through all of Autochthonia. Because the Core trusts the Divine Ministers and their revered subroutines to fulfill their assorted autonomic functions, the slumbering Primordial makes infrequent use of these couplings. From time to time, however, Autochthon directs one spider or another to fall on a gleaming dragline from the web and plug its spindly legs into some architectural tree miles below. Once attached, the web-strand links the Tapestry with the machine, bridging the two in an awesome surge of Essence. The power of that vast thought races to its destination, displacing and superseding all other spirits in its path. The Godhead is the Elemental Pole of Crystal, but more than that, the chamber is the very brain and perfected ideal to which all else in Autochthonia is physically and metaphysically subsidiary.

The Elemental Pole of Lightning

The Elemental Pole of Lightning exists within a cylindrical sanctum measuring a third the height of Autochthonia and a fifth the diameter. Bounded in semi-organic insulating ceramics tiled over indestructible crystal, the chamber boasts dynamos whose number and size stagger the imagination alongside Essence capacitors affixed to the interior walls in stacked-ringed tiers. Each tier rotates opposite from the one beneath, turned by an impossibly complex assemblage of Essence-driven engines and gears, all lubricated by oil pumped through veins inserted through scattered sanctum doorways. Lightning fills the space within the rumbling column, arcing from node to node in sparks that could span — or vaporize — whole cities. The largest of these arcs blazes brighter than the noonday sun by several orders of magnitude. As directed by the Divine Ministers, spikes of orichalcum extend from between the dynamos, conducting their power through portals into batteries scattered in Autochthon's central mass. These batteries serve as relay nodes, transmitting their stored lightning through the starmetal nerve cabling threaded throughout the Machine God. Surges of this power feed the Tapestry of the Godhead and innumerable other components, as well as igniting oils to generate fire within factory-forges and providing rapid communication between Autochthon's Primordial biology. The Pole of Lightning powers the Great Maker's biomechanical nervous system.

The Elemental Pole of Steam

Autochthon's Elemental Pole of Steam exists in a sanctum realm the same overall dimensions as the Pole of Lightning. This colossal silo houses a sea of fresh water in its lowest expanses, kept boiling by the constant application of underwater lightning arcs. Unsurprisingly, nothing biological can live in this scalding, high-pressure tank. Its only denizens are jellyfish-shaped custodians capable of rapidly adjusting their buoyancy to move through the shaft, tasked with upkeep of the cistern's mechanisms and scouting for impurities to devour. The entirety of the silo contains steam at pressures that would crush a behemoth or transform coal into diamond. Vents open in the walls, allowing that pressure to feed through sanctum portals into arterial veins within Autochthonia. From there, the steam flows to all parts of the Machine God, providing driving force for pistons and wheels, as well as cleansing whole sectors with tempests of scouring vapor.

Cooled by blue-jade filters, steam condenses into water, which serves a myriad of functions throughout the Machine God. In industry, water tempers freshly smelted metals and lubricates those components where oil proves dangerous or impractical. More importantly, water supports the ecosystem of truly biological life within Autochthonia. Some veins carry water near mortal settlements, diverting some of their pressure into the capillaries that carry nutrients and veins of organic waste. As part of this life-support system, globule cisterns staged at strategic intervals in the vein networks contain vast reefs of synthetic coral. These are the largest species of biocrystalline elementals in Autochthonia, created to process and filtrate their environment. In this role, they use some of the biomass to expand or repair themselves and excrete the remainder as nutrient pastes directly into adjoining capillaries. Inorganic wastes flush away to factories capable of extracting the purified ores. The reefs take the bulk of their purified water and send it directly into the Pole of Steam via sanctum portals, where it joins with the other steam and reclaimed water to keep the sea at a roughly constant volume. Subsidiary elementals live inside the vein network itself like blood cells, where they diligently repair cracks and attempt to remove unforeseen contaminants that could poison fragile mortals.

Exalted: The Autochthonians, a hardcover Exalted rulebook, releases May 2nd.