Darzoni/CampaignNotesAutochthonia
Various notes on Autochthonia within my series.
Contents
The Nation of Yugash
Yugash spent most of its reserves of Magical Materials in the Elemental War. What is not mentioned is what they used them for. They used them to build Alchemicals and equipment for the Alchemicals, including magical armor, magical weapons, Alchemical Charms, and two Autochthonian warstriders. The Tripartite of Yugash was too intent on defending their reasons for the economic war waged against the nation of Sova.
Experiments on Captives
The captives from the Locust Crusade are subjected to horrific exploratory surgeries and implantation experiments. Those that do survive are used in menial labor, as they are too broken to do any but the simplest of tasks. There are bins in the laboratories where the multitude of bodies are simply dumped, awaiting reprocessing. Some of the tests involve a soulstone being implanted, then killing the victim in an attempt to capture any soul these beings from Creation may have.
The Vats
The Alchemical Vats in Yugash is a massive complex that is called The Most Auspicious Palace of The Ephemeral Thoughts and Deep Mysteries of The Machine God by the Sodalties of Yugash. It is the center of the Sodalts' power in the Patropolis of Ot, situated inside Ot himself, near his Essence tank. In reality, the Auspicious Palace is a manse, being situated at the confluence of Essences within Autochthon and Ot, and such places are the only locations where they can conduct their businesses of working with the Five Magical Materials and the creation of Alchemical Exalted. That is the nature of manses within Autochthonia. (In game terms, an Alchemical Manse has a rating equal to half the Essence rating of the Alchemical that hosts the Manse.)
The vats themselves are large tanks in the center of the palace, near where a hearthstone would form. In the place where a hearthstone would form is a glass tank filled with Essence, used in the process of creating the self-regenerative Essence broth each Alchemical contains.
Each of the five Sodalties knows a particular aspect of building an Alchemical Manse, and none of them would be able to build or complete the building of an Alchemical Manse without the other four. Just as Autochthon intended it.
Alchemical Warstriders
Drawing upon ancient texts and manuals handed down from the first human inhabitants of Autochthon, the Sodalts occasionally build massive war machines for the Champions of Autochthonia to use. They are called warstriders, and are quite different from their counterparts in Creation. Warstriders were more frequently created and used millenia ago when the humans were just settling the innards of the Machine God, defending themselves from their host's own immune systems. As the population learned the means to survive without attracting attention, the warstriders were dismantled and used for other things.
Warstriders are extremely rare in modern Autochthonia, as the resources and amount of Magical Materials needed to make just one are astronomical. However, they are most sophisticated than the warstriders of Creation ever were, largely due to the fact that the Alchemicals can truly use them as extensions of their own bodies. They are taller than their cousins in Creation, somewhere between 20-30 feet tall and able to accomodate an Alchemical of Essence 3 or less. However, there is a high price to pay for this kind of power. An Alchemical using a warstrider cannot utilize his Charms, having to commit his full personal essence pool just to attune the machine. Essence-powered devices may be installed on the warstrider, however.
The Alchemical warstriders have a featureless face on the head of the vehicle, which reshapes to show the face of the Alchemical using it. The overall look of the Alchemical warstrider is that of a massively tall human wearing articulated plate, with artificial leather covering any exposed mechanisms in a skin. The Alchemical is held in a spherical compartment, curled up in a fetal position and suspended. A spike is crammed into the base of their skull, causing one health level of unsoakable aggravated damage that remains for as long as the Alchemical is attuned to the warstrider.
(Note: It is possible that the Alchemical simply don't have warstriders because Essence 4-5 Alchemicals effectively are warstriders. I'm probably going to not use this material in the future because of that.)
A Brief History of Autochthon
The God War
Before humans, Autochthon relied on its own custodians for the upkeep of its internal systems. Then when the Machine God decided to side with the Celestial Incarna against its bretheren, it needed more than simple automata to become an effective ally. It brought humans into itself and built the Alchemical Exalted to help the fragile mortals survive inside it. The Great Maker then proceeded to teach the humans how to manufacture the wonders that the Champions of the Gods would use in their battles, taking in materials and goods from Creation in order to do so. The Alchemicals were charged with nothing more than the defense of Autochthon, accused of cowardice by the other Exalted, though the other champions failed to recognize the importance of keeping the Autochthonian factories safe. Eventually the oldest Alchemicals became suburbs, the foundations upon which the humans of Autochthon build their districts (and eventually nations).
Slumber
But all things must end, even a war which had shaken the foundations of Creation and permanently altered the course of fate. Struck by the curses hurled by its dying bretheren, Autochthon was given its own Great Curse; It would be consumed from within by its own custodians. Since being active would accelerate the process of its own death, the Great Maker decided to withdraw until the Great Curse had been broken. So it withdrew from Creation, leaving behind a legacy in the form of the great artifacts it had built and refined, hiding behind the Seal of Eight Divinities. The Machine God whispered knowledge of what to do while it slept to the minds of the metropoli and patropoli, and the Ewers of Souls were built by the eight nation builders based on a design found in the Word of Autochthon (the holy text of Autochthonia, in reality a technical manual on how to build anything the Great Maker had ever made).
Alchemical Exalted
Literary Inspiration
Obviously the ideas for Alchemicals had to come from somewhere. I personally look to none other than Frankenstein, the story of how an inanimate object was given life for where the concept of Alchemicals came from. I think Raindoll is onto something with the idea of the Alchemicals' great flaw being Inhumanity (see AlchemicalFlawIdeas for details). I mean, you are a being who wasn't born to a human, but created by humans, you're never going to fully empathize with the human condition.
As for what roles the Alchemicals play in Autochthonia's society and how they interact, I suspect they're viewed with awe and fear, much like the SPARTANs in Halo. On the one hand, you have this entity who is the champion of your god, on the other hand the champions are often not really all that human in appearance. The Alchemicals are likely expected to fufill roles where human emotions or human frailty would be a liability, such as being judges for crimes committed by members of the Tripartite. While they are not lacking in all emotions, the Alchemicals rarely ever have a bond with humans, because they're different.
The Alchemicals can do some funky stuff with their charms. I've been looking at sci-fi robots, anime robots, and Exalted's first age gizmos for ideas on what their charms could be capable of. I mean, why not give them the capability to wipe out a chunk of land the size of a city? At higher Essence, the Alchemicals -are- the size of cities, so why wouldn't their charms scale? For a sentai super-robot feel, create a charm that allows five alchemicals to merge into one giant super Alchemical like that one spell in the BoTC.
Charm Suites
Since the Charms of the Alchemicals are more or less modular in design, the more inventive Alchemical Exalted have taken to developing suites of Charms that suit a specialized need or circumstance. A battle suite for lengthy engagements, for instance, and another that is more suited to traveling long distances in a shorter period of time. It depends on the mission's length, since refitting the charms involves a stay at the Alchemical Vats.
A Future Role
If the Autochthonians are somehow convinced to establish peaceful relations with Creation, this could greatly benefit the people of Creation and the Autochthonians. Technology would flow from Autochthon, and the Alchemicals with them. In the absence of the great war machines of the First Age and the Dragon-Blooded Shogunate, the Alchemicals could very well become living war machines of the Second Age, and are potentially powerful allies against the Realm and the Deathlords.
Comments
I may have more to say later, but for now I'd just like to note that "The Most Auspicious Palace of The Ephemeral Thoughts and Deep Mysteries of The Machine God" is a totally rockin' name. - Quendalon
