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Cogs in the God-Machine: The Machinical Exalted

by CallMeCal
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Autochthon went to great lengths to keep the design of his Alchemical Exalts a secret. He split the pattern among groups of five mortals, each of whom barely understands the part they know and nearly all of which is merely a conduit for his own power. It seemed his grand design was safe from theft or duplication, but there is one possibility he never considered: reverse engineering.

When the Locust Crusade broke through to Creation, one of the Soulsteel Castes sent out with the first wave was, unbeknownst to the Eight Divinities, an Apostate in hiding. The moment he stepped into Creation, he immediately felt the pull of the Void from the Underworld, so he stole himself away from his comrades and made for the nearest Shadowland. Something compelled him to steal and bring with him that first wave's entire supply of Adamant. When he reached the Shadowland, he was met there by a Deathlord who immediately took him to the Neverborn to ask what should be done with him. Their whispers answered: study him. As the Yozis had shared the secret of corrupting Solar Exaltation in exchange for help capturing the Shards, so the Neverborn sent an emissary to Malfeas to request help studying this odd specimen in exchange for sharing in the research. The Yozis sent their cleverest, most powerful Catechist Infernals and Low Tide Xenomorphics, and they, with the help of the Underworld's finest Daybreak Abyssals, Antumbral Nihilics, and Necrotech engineers, began vivisecting the Apostate. He relished in the pain and anguish to his dying breath.

They were not, of course, able to divine the complete and perfect process of Alchemical Exaltation, but they got orders of magnitude more than Autochthon anticipated was possible. They were able to extract much information from the Apostate's memory banks, such as the design of the vats complex and the nature of Alchemical Castes, and they learned much more than Autochthon would have liked from the study of the Apostate's body. For the rest, his Primordial cousins filled in the blanks with their own flavor of power. And so it was that the Catechists and Low Tides and Daybreaks and Antumbrals and Necrotech engineers, in concert with the Yozis and the Neverborn, drafted the blueprints for the Obscolescent, and the Machinical, Exalted. The Neverborn disliked the feel of the Adamant, wishing to keep their designs to Soulsteel and Necrotech, and so let the Yozis take the entire supply that the Apostate had stolen.

Machinicals are each (with the exception of the Relic and Scale Castes) designed by a Yozi to be built with flesh of her own substance, skeleton of Verdigris, blood of Vitriol, and skin of a Verdigrised Magical material. They are constructed by Ligier in his workshop using the pure Magical Material, then fitted with an empty soulgem and immersed in a great vat of vitriol that both mimics and mocks Autochthon's perfect design. The body may stay there for weeks, but it must remain for at least seven days to properly Verdigris the Magical Material its skin is forged out of, in addition to catalyzing and attuning the body itself. The body remains lifeless in the vat of vitriol until a human with a soul worthy of — and willing to — unquestioningly serve the Yozis as a Cog in the God-Machine is sacrificed to the Yozi whose substance makes up her flesh. Ordinarily these souls are consumed for essence, but if the Yozi in question has a Machinical waiting in a vat and receives a worthy soul, it will redirect that soul to the waiting soulgem. The body is not removed until the soul has imbued it with life, so a Machinical always awakens to the sensation of drowning in acidic sludge. If the soul arrives before the body is sufficiently Verdigrised, she must spend the first hours — or days — of her new life as she awoke: bound hand and feet, spread-eagle, naked, completely immersed in corrosive vitriol, until her Machinical body is complete.

Castes

Relic Caste (Ligier)

Personally designed and handcrafted by Ligier himself in his great forge, these holy Paladins are made with bone and flesh of Verdigris, and skin of Verdigrised Orichalcum.

Acid Caste (Kimbery)

In an Acid Caste, her solid bones of Verdigris and sinewy veins of Vitriol float openly in a fleshy sea of Acid — drawn from the corrosive waves of Kimbery herself — encased in a pliable skin of Verdigrised Moonsilver. There are few shapes or disguises an Acid Caste cannot twist herself into.

Glass Caste (Cecylene)

Keepers of the Laws of Causality, Glass Castes have flesh forged from the smelted silver sands of Cecylene herself, laced with veins of vitriol and plated with skin of Verdigrised Starmetal.

Brass Caste (Szoreny)

With flesh hewn from the mighty branches of Szoreny himself, the Brass Castes are encased in skin of Verdigrised Jade.

Scale Caste (Ebon Dragon)

The Scale Castes invert the pattern upheld by the other Machinical castes; her flesh is Verdigrised Soulsteel, while her skin is constructed of several overlapping layers of scales from the Ebon Dragon himself. Because of this, Scale Castes enter the vat of vitriol without skin, composed only of blood and bone and flesh, so that the Soulsteel may be properly Verdigrised. A Scale Caste always awakens skinless, the corrosive vitriol that envelopes her body flowing over her naked musculature and through her still-open veins. After she is removed from the vat, only then is she — quite painfully — fitted head to toe with individual interlocking scales to serve as her skin. The Scale Castes are unmatched when it comes to defense, and rarely wear armor or coverings of any kind, as nothing could surpass the toughness of their own hide.

Rust Caste (Malfeas)

Rust Castes do not look anything like their name would suggest. The turquoise tinge of Verdigris coating the bright blue crystals of Adamant that make up her skin give her a vibrant, electric-aqua coloration. If her skin is ever broken, however, her brick-red flesh — carved directly from the rusty walls of Malfeas himself — coupled with her green-black Vitriolic blood, provide stark contrast to her outer appearance, and belie her true nature.

Machinical Magic

Despite their best efforts, the Yozis are creators, not inventors. They could not hope to match Autochthon's technomantic designs for Alchemical charms and protocol. What Autochthon accomplished through technomancy, the Yozis were forced to do with sorcery. Machinical Charms are still physical items installed on the bodies of the Exalted, but they are arcane sigils and holy relics that tap into the powers of the Yozis through use of the Machinical's Essence. In place of protocol, every Machinical is born with the pre-programmed ability to use Infernal Sorcery. The Yozis opinions were split on this, and even individually many had mixed feelings. They tended to despise their sickly little brother's inventions anyway, seeing his science as beneath their mighty magics, but this comfortable lie is harder to swallow when faced with the reality that, when it came down to it, they did not choose to improve on his science with their magic, but rather they were forced to use their magic because they were unable to duplicate his science. The degree to which each Yozi feels one way or the other varies from one to the next, but none would dare speak the latter feeling aloud, for fear of the pride of her compatriots as much as her own.

Because of this disparity in foundation of function, Machinicals cannot install and use Alchemical Charms. When the Apostate was mined for data, information on all Alchemical Charms was recovered, and the Yozis designed sorcerous equivalents for most of them, as well as designing some of their own. They did not, however, duplicate any Voidtech, and hardwired into the programming of every Machinical a geas that prevents them from designing or even pursuing such an end themselves. They saw in the Apostate and his Voidtech the illness that plagued their brother even from the dawn of time, and there is little they fear more than the possibility of contracting it themselves. Thus Machinicals cannot install Voidtech, cannot contract Gremlin Syndrome, and cannot gain Dissonance. (To contrast, the Neverborn were elated at the discovery of Voidtech and Gremlin Syndrome, and intentionally infect every Obsolescent they create. The Yozis are… uncomfortable with this.)

Free Will?

When the Yozis captured the 50 Solar Exaltations, they fought amongst themselves for a long time over the possible consequences of giving their Exalted free will. In the end it was decided that the benefits of followers who could be creative and take initiative outweighed the risks of rebellion, in large part because they were confident that they could spot and put down any uprising long before it occurred. In the Great War, Creation's Exalted caught the Primordials off guard; Hell's Exalted will die before they are strong enough to rebel, if not by fate then by force.

But what of these Alchemicals, and this Gremlin Syndrome? If such a thing is contagious to Primordials, as they fear, then the Alchemicals' mere existence is already more threatening than any rebellion they could muster. The Yozis were unilaterally against giving the Machinicals souls and free will. Sadly (for them), the Soulgem is integral to the design and function of the Exalt, and it will not work with anything less than a full human soul inhabiting it. Even the Yozis have not yet found a way to permanently remove free will from a person while leaving their soul completely intact and functional. And so, reluctantly, they allowed Machinicals unbroken use of their souls. Unbroken, but not unbound.

The Yozis placed many and sundry geas over the Machinicals, forcing horrible punishments for disobedience and offering great rewards for devotion. The bulk of the geas were set to ensure that no Machinical would ever seek out Voidtech or attempt to install it, or anything even remotely similar to it. Any amount of Dissonance of any kind, no matter how innocently gleaned, is punishable by immediate obliteration. To further ensure obedience, only the most devoted, most subservient, most zealous souls sacrificed are chosen for Exaltation. If they detect in the soul's personality any hint of doubt, any chance of mutiny, the soul is devoured and the wait begins for another sacrifice.

Yet despite all of this, the Machinical still has a human soul, with human thoughts and human desires, as much as any other Alchemical. As Piety increases, they become more devoted, more zealous, more detached from their human intimacies, just as the Alchemicals did with Clarity, but at no point does her soul stop being human, at no point is she unable to make her own decisions. There are just incredibly severe punishments if she makes the wrong ones.

Changing Sides

Alchemical Exaltation works differently than it does for other Exalted. Autochthon's prototypes do not have a perfectly contained Shard that can be easily transferred from one host to the next; each Exaltation is personally and intentionally applied to the soul and body. Because of this, changing Chakras is a significantly more complicated ordeal than it already was. The Logic Chakra exists in the substance of the Gem itself, the Quintessence Chakra is held between both the Soulgem and the physical body, but her third Chakra is located entirely within the physical body, manifest in the pattern and substance of the Magical Materials that compose her corporeal form. To change to a new template, an Alchemical must literally change to a new body. This is not impossible; in fact it works much the same as Exalting in the first place. She must find the group that is capable of constructing and exalting her target template's Alchemical bodies, have them uninstall her Soulgem from her current body and then install it in a new one. Since her primary Chakra remains unmolested, it remains unchanged by the process. However, half of her Quintessence must be surgically removed - as well as the entirety of her Template Chakra - in order to transfer her to a new body. Thus she keeps the same amount of Logic Chi, and her Quintessence is halved (round down) +1 Permanent Quintessence from the new body. Her new Template Chakra, however, always starts at 2, as though newly Exalted. She receives 100*Essence EXP as normal, but uses her old body's Essence for the calculation, since her new body is now Essence 2 (thanks to her new Template Chakra). Because the Chakras are less solidly bound to one another, this conversion may be made a theoretically infinite number of times, however she must receive a wholly new body every time. The body she leaves behind is now nothing more than a very very expensive statue, and cannot be used for Exaltation again without being entirely broken down to its component materials and reforged from scratch.

Why Are We Here?

The Alchemicals are the prototypes for Celestial Exaltation; somewhat weaker and somewhat less efficient than the later versions. (No, prototype does not mean "better".) They are clunky and unwieldy, need to return to a home base to outfit themselves with Charms, they are a constant reminder of everything that forced the Primordials into their broken state and hellish prison (granted Infernals and Xenomorphics and the like are that as well, but their strength and initiative more than makes up for that), but more than anything else they are contagion waiting to happen. The Yozis did everything they could to ensure that Gremlin Syndrome would not infect their Machinicals, but so they did against insurrection from the Incarnae and look how well that worked. Why are they taking this risk? Why did they accept these weak links into their mighty chain? What purpose could the Machinicals possibly serve that makes them worth the trouble?

Creation wonders, and Hell responds with silence.