CallMeCanon/Machinical

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 within him, perhaps the Whispers interacting with his Voidtech, 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 they should do 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 researching this odd specimen in exchange for sharing in the results of those studies. 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 Soulsteel Caste. 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 Soulsteel Caste'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 Soulsteel Caste'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 Yozis and the Neverborn split the supply of Adamant evenly between them.

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 user'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 reduced to the use of 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 for the pride of her own.
Because of this disparity in foundation of function, Machinicals cannot install and use Alchemical Charms. When the Soulsteel Caste 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. As the Soulsteel Caste was Apostate, they saw in him and in the 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.)

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.