For thousands of years, the Autochthonian people have lived apart from Creation. Of the world left behind, they know only a handful of myths from the Tome of the Great Maker. As for the people of Creation, only the oldest of spirits might remember Autochthon and his vanished worshipers. Yet these two worlds, long separate, may soon come to meet again.
Alchemicals: Forged by the Machine God describes a world in a state of precarious balance, whose nations are facing resource shortages, internal unrest, and soul anomalies, but which is not yet facing existential threat. But a severe-enough shock could send the whole edifice toppling down, pushing the Autochthonians to breach the Seal of Eight Divinities in search of succor. Should the Seal endure, contact is nonetheless inevitable: the lost city of Tekun, stranded in Creation’s underground, seeks the surface out of necessity. Its people will eventually make contact with Creation’s and change the world forever — for better or worse.
The following section proposes a few possible first-contact scenarios between Autochthonia and Creation, why they may occur, and how they may unfold. These aren’t written in stone but are meant to provide the skeleton for campaigns whose course will be shaped by player characters’ actions. Whether Autochthonians enter Creation seeking aid and diplomacy or attempt to conquer and strip the land, their success or failure depends on your game and your choices.
Much of this section relies on material from Across the Eight Directions, and that book is recommended as a companion piece.
Tekun’s Ascension
For generations, the stranded subterranean metropolis of Tekun clung onto a fragile existence, barely scraping by. That era has ended. The exile of the last autocrat, newfound divine patrons, and the agricultural bounty of floating gardens have brought about a new generation of plenty, and now that generation’s firstborn as well. Within the last year of this scenario’s beginning, the long-planned new Circle of Tekunite Alchemicals has been created.
But Tekun’s new prosperity has in many ways highlighted its precarity. The floating gardens which sustain the new population growth are leased from the Mountain Folk, and could be taken back at any time if relations sour again. The creation of new Champions has granted the city a tremendous boon, but its supplies of magical materials are almost entirely expended. Mysterious malfunctions continue to spread across the city. Finally, as population growth reaches the Metra-cavern’s carrying capacity, new population controls are put in place, resented by most. Tekun itself has entered an alarming decline. If its people don’t use its new gifts to secure sustainable food, new land, and the magical materials to build new Municipal Charms and stabilize the city, its very prosperity will bring about its collapse. To answer these threats, Tekun has no choice but to look up, to Creation’s surface.
Unbeknownst to the Tekunites, the higher Upward Reaches are frequently visited by scavengers, miners and treasure hunters searching for First Age artifacts and Jadeborn items. Tekun’s first expeditions will inevitably run into one or more. This is first contact, the first surface-dwelling humans encountered by the Tekunites. They will be invited, or coerced, back to the city’s foreign quarter. The language barrier can be broken through Alchemical Charms, cross-referencing the scavengers’ knowledge of Old Realm with Autochthonian dialects, or failing these the long road of pointing and signing. Once the Tekunites can speak to their new guests, they will gain a ground’s-eye view of Creation: a benighted land whose people are reduced to scavenging the ruins of a greater age, whose population is largely reduced to subsistence farming, large stretches of it uninhabited, yet full of relics and precious magical materials. Yet this fallen realm holds the promise of food, space, and other resources. The Remunerative Theomachracy convenes and speaks: a holy pilgrimage has opened, to guide Tekun out of the dark. What is unclear to mortals and Champions still is this: must they go to Creation to seek mutual aid between two people brought low, or to claim the bounty the surface dwellers have squandered and set right their waylaid nations through conquest?
These decisions will be shaped in part by the player characters, but also by the location of Tekun within Creation. In the following entries are presented several location-dependent scenarios.
A Timeline of the Orphaned City
- Early 558: Tekun crashes to the bottom of the Metra-cavern, unleashing weeks of flooding and earthquakes. Thousands die and are lost to darkness. The city weeps black oil.
- Mid 558: Riots rip through the city in the midst of damage-control efforts. Celebrant Kalch is killed. Tekun’s city-mind goes dormant.
- Late 558: Autocrat Wotak declares martial law, suspending Tripartite councils, and deputizing Populat to support Regulators in quashing the riots. Hundreds are killed.
- 559: The city’s four active Champions complete a geomantic exchange that supplies Tekun with energies drawn from nearby demesnes to keep the metropolis operational. The efficiency of the exchange is refined over the following two centuries.
- 561: The white flux ravages the city. The orbital of Nari is used as a quarantine zone and abandoned. Panic breaks out anew as Nari becomes a shadowland, a phenomenon previously unknown to the Autochthonians.
- 564: A thousand Tekunites are placed into suspended animation within the Sempiternal Vault in the face of famine.
- 566: A Tekunite scouting party encounters a Jadeborn caravan near Nova Tiros. Violence erupts due to mutual misunderstandings; the First Orphan’s War begins.
- 571: Synchronized Polar Helve and the Jadeborn pattern knight Hokloz-Ur Hammel slay one another. Gainful Moil’s Conclusion negotiates peace, securing food shipments in exchange for tribute from Tekun’s vault.
- 574: Using incomplete First Age texts traded from the Mountain Folk, the Champion Smog-Crowned Magistrate successfully summons a demon of the First Circle, marking first contact with Hell.
- 611: The sorcerer-cleric Fend attempts a coup using summoned demons, and escapes in the aftermath. Demonology is officially forbidden in Tekun.
- 623: The Second Orphan’s War erupts over Lyxus, a mine near the sacred Jadeborn stele-garden of Idoz-Ur Kelma.
- 625: The Ubena Batfolk attack the Tekunite outpost of Mulqart. A plague of smallpox erupts in Tekun.
- 630: With the conclusion of the Second Orphan’s War, a ban on foreign exploration is enacted by Autocrat Ruve. All foreign traffic is restricted to Neb. Tekunites who leave the habitat zone without authorization are stripped of caste and citizenship.
- 682: The Lector Otar receives a vision, venturing north with Smog-Crowned Magistrate and a score of mortal followers.
- 684: Otar returns bearing a new compact with seven gods of Creation’s depths. She is imprisoned on return but freed after public demonstrations. The Remunerative Theomachracy is born.
- 722: Gainful Moil’s Conclusion secures a 100-year lease of 12,000 floating gardens from Idoz-Ur Navver of Hokloz-Ur Iram. Tekun’s population booms over the next decade.
- 743: Autocrat Lantros is forced to flee by a general strike of the New Electrics, and the reawakened colossus, Erudite Vestige Architect. The first Tripartite council since the Gomas Decree is held. Tekun begins creating new Champions.
- 745: The Surveyors are established, easing the prohibition on exploration. Citizens may settle in exclaves and retain their citizenship and caste, though they are barred from reentry.
- 766: The Orbital of Arn undergoes a catastrophic meltdown, killing hundreds. Tekun begins broadcasting a mathematical distress sequence.
- 768: Current Year
Jewels Beneath the Sand
Act One: The Salt Pan
In this scenario, Tekun emerges on the Saltblaze Plateau (Across the Eight Directions, p. 225). The Metra-cavern’s freshwater sea was created by the diversion of tributaries of what is now the Dying Sea, leaving the surface a dazzling white salt pan. This landscape is as thoroughly inhospitable as any in Autochthonia: no food, no water, no means of orienting oneself. The Tekunites’ first task is to set up a stopover outpost to stock with supplies for any further journey above. All expeditions must range from this outpost, creating an important (and vulnerable) point of contact.
As often as possible, scouting expeditions will be led by an Alchemical — indeed, they may consist entirely of Alchemical player characters if their mobility far exceeds mortal scouts’. Eventually, they will find traces of human occupation: this is the Burning Road that connects Gem to Dajaz, dotted with caravanserais. Scouts may approach covertly or openly. This is a major point of contact, which could unfold in a number of ways: there’s information to gain and resources that could be bargained for, but the scouts are wary of strangers and the language barrier impedes peaceful contact. Each town and caravanserai is home to water cisterns and merchants either carrying food and gemstones to Dajaz or iron, lapis lazuli, and luxury goods to Gem. While insufficient to entirely sustain Tekun, bringing back any goods at all would mark the venture a success and a great symbolic victory. If trade fails, aggressive Alchemicals may even elect to raid a settlement for all its goods.
More important than any goods is the trade route itself and information on what it connects. Dajaz is remote and reliant on external supplies and so of little interest, but up north is Gem, crown jewel of the Tsavo Cities, seat of Despot Rankar VII’s new empire. Tekun’s leadership agrees: this must be their next destination.
Act Two: Courtly Intrigue
The core of Rankar VII’s empire, Gem, is a city within a dead volcano, half above the caldera, half within winding tunnels. In this way, it is not wholly unfamiliar to the Tekunites. Grown fat on the spoils of empire and its own mineral wealth, Gem has almost everything Tekun needs: water, food, rich metals, save for the magical materials. Anything the city doesn’t produce, it can access through trade, but at what price? Tekun’s emissaries may approach openly as a delegation from a new foreign power, or they may make their initial approach covert, masking as ordinary merchants to gather the lay of the land. Either way, the task of supplying an entire metropolis will eventually require the clearance of high officials.
Rankar VII is a savvy ruler who has won much in life, but whose ambitions are not yet sated. He is outwardly friendly, offering gifts to the envoys as a show of goodwill and attempting to get as much information out of them as he can. Envoys are offered quarters. Every servant, official, or guard they encounter is spying on them, which Rankar expects them to know. Thus begins a delicate dance: Tekun wants not only supplies, but information on the surface world and a path to acquiring land. The Despot wants to know if this new city is a threat to his empire or a potential target for conquest. If the Despot or any merchant in Gem has an inkling of how much Tekun needs them, they will gouge them utterly. Securing trade deals, establishing connections with local powers, figuring out Gem’s political landscape and making friends with the Despot’s allies and his enemies are all goals the envoys may pursue while attempting to retain as much secrecy as possible around Tekun’s location and vulnerability.
As the Tekunites gain a better understanding of the region, one fact becomes evident: though the South has vast stretches of uninhabited land, it is uninhabited for a reason. Humans follow the lifegiving waterways, and every settlement is built along river, lake, or coast. Consequently, nearly all arable land is already settled. To gain a foothold on the surface, Tekun would have to take it from someone else, with or without their consent. While they gather this information, Gem is likely to find the way to the Upward Reaches, if not to Tekun itself. The greatest threat this presents is that Gem envoys could contact the Jadeborn and make overtures to parties dissatisfied with the peace, who would see the Metra-cavern reclaimed. This would lend Rankar VII powerful allies. Conflict can be postponed by canny players threading the needle of convincing the Despot they are too dangerous to fight but also too good a friend not to have, and secure a trade of some land south of Gem and the materials they require in exchange for commensurate expense. However, the material reality of Tekun’s true condition makes conflict inevitable.
Act Three: War for the Tsavo Cities
Tekun is dying. The metropolis itself is decaying, wanting for the Autochthonian energies that once fed it. To save the city, its Champions need vast amounts of precious minerals, magical materials, and control over enough land to remap their dragon lines. All these things can be found in the Tsavo Cities, and all these things are in the Despot’s control. Unless the Tekunites are willing to abase themselves in a deal that will make them utterly subordinate to Rankar VII, Tekun has no choice but to go to war. Thankfully, they need not do so only as foreign conquerors. Tensions are rife within the Despot’s court and in each of the Tsavo Cities for Tekun’s envoys to take advantage of. If the Tekunites look for support in seizing land and wealth from Gem, they may find it in opportunistic nobles of Gem, in survivors of the deposed House Arajana, in the enslaved demon-hunters of Scathe, in Origin’s restless conquered nobility, or in many other places. All these rivals could potentially agree to cede Tekun the land and resources they need in exchange for casting down Rankar VII. Depending on who exactly they favor, they could start a coup within Gem itself, or cause Origin to rise up in rebellion and join them on the battlefield. But if they alienate every possible ally, then so be it — Tekun and its Champions will stand alone if they must. If Tekun initiates hostilities, it may gain an early advantage, which is well worth the trade-off of being perceived as the aggressor. An Alchemical assassin could even dispose of Rankar VII — though such a move is almost certain to see his successor rally the nobles for war against the foreigners.
The longer Tekun takes to gather allies and muster its strength, the more assets Rankar can acquire. Eventually, either his spies will find the entryways to the Metra-cavern and a path to Tekun, or the increase in trade from the city’s surface outpost will make it impossible to conceal their location. The power of the Alchemical Exalted may give the Despot pause, but only long enough to gather a suitable army, the backing of spirits and sorcerers, and any other advantage he may secure. He will be especially emboldened if he can obtain Jadeborn allies, and even moreso if his spies can somehow make contact with dissidents within Tekun, such as supporters of the last autocrat’s regime or Populat bosses: these could lay the groundwork for his invasion with sabotage and popular discontent. Then, Gem will march on Tekun. From a certain perspective, this is to Tekun’s advantage: No power in Creation is prepared to face the defenses of an Autochthonian metropolis, and the invaders will have to move through the Upward Reaches and engage in tunnel fighting Tekun’s militias are expert at. At the same time, the risk is immense. Without foreign support Tekun’s militias are vastly undersized, and any damage to the orbitals, the floating gardens, or the city’s infrastructure may cripple the metropolis for decades, even after a victory. The Champions’ actions will determine the fate of the city — a crushing triumph against an invader’s reckless gamble, a pyrrhic victory that undoes much of the progress made to secure Tekun’s future, or even perhaps outright defeat. Even in victory, the task of claiming land from above remains, which may require further battles against the remnants of Rankar’s army, especially if the Despot lives to fight another day.
As the dust settles and peace treaties are signed, the new shape of the South emerges. The sun may rise on newly free Tsavo Cities, on a conquered Gem, or on a Tekun ascendent as the new regional power. Or it may dawn on the smoldering wreckage of two middling powers ruining one another in an ultimately futile attempt at claiming regional hegemony, leaving them ripe for foreign invasion. This may be the end of the story — or the beginning of a new one.
Alien Vistas
Though Autochthonians know of Creation’s open skies and boundless oceans from the Tome of the Great Maker, experiencing them is another matter entirely. The sheer infinity of the sky is enough to induce agoraphobia attacks in many Autochthonians experiencing it for the first time. Only a few cities’ denizens have ever experienced rain or snow, and maintenance protocols need to be adjusted against the threat of water seeping into everything. Soil is another aberration: earth is not normally this easy to mold. Autochthonian devices designed to tunnel through metal may find their work much easier, or on the contrary end up jammed by dirt. Vegetation is everywhere, as is animal life, and yet the spirits feel so absent. Most of the world is fertile, yet food has to be actively produced months ahead of time rather than tapped from a conduit and immediately processed. Half of Autochthonia’s catalogue of chemicals simply do not exist here.
Most disturbing of all is the silence. When the first Autochthonian envoys set up camp and sit down, and officers cease barking orders, it will fall. No grinding of metal. No churning of pistons. It is all replaced by… nothing. This is the strangest thing about Creation: despite its vast rolling plains, its endless forests, its bounty of water and food, it is a silent and still world. There are no world-engines churning steam enough to scald nations, just clouds and rain. No continent-organs grinding against one another in colossal motions, just mountains standing still. The sun blazes far, far above, where it may never burn a human hand, and its setting and rising are so predictable one can set a clock to it. This world is safe, thriving with life, and yet, to an Autochthonian’s eye, it is not truly alive.