Setting:Tabula Gloria/Benalor/The World Engine

Formerly the Grand Mountain Bjalfi, the colossal World Engine now walks a circular path to the very north of the Benalor Mountains. Literally an animated mountain range, the Engine was once a threat to Benalor before the Three-Way War and the Heavenrider Program, and it is still quite a danger today to those passing through the area. The Engine itself is locked in its path, which has become the deep Rickol Valley, named after the Shaper who had managed to redirect the mountain to its present course. However, rocky creatures of magical origin still spawn forth from the Engine's slopes, as well as other creatures finding the moving mountain as a new home. Caution is heavily advised when traveling in or near the Valley.

Stagnant Genius

The College of Shapers have produced some of the greatest minds and mages of Benaloran history. It however also produced one of the most dangerous.

Nytherio Siev was a rising star in the Shapers' ranks. Attaining the title of Master Shaper at a mere seventeen years of age, unheard of at the time, Siev chose to go back to the College to work with the colleagues he had met during his studies there. Despite his achievements, Siev would have to climb the ladder like all the other Shapers who come back to the College. Many of the higher ranks in the College saw that even though Siev had undeniably proved that he possessed a body of knowledge and work worthy of a Master, his condescending attitude towards his peers and his oft disregard for authority had made him one who could not be allowed to continue his otherwise meteoric rise in the College. Though the reiteration of this reasoning during the many disciplinary hearings Siev would attend certainly frustrated the young Shaper, it seemed like things were going in the right direction when Siev was twenty-two.

Shapers may be mostly known for their mechanical aptitude, but Siev preferred to focus on projects concerning the Shaping of nature. One particular project had especially taken the young Shaper's fancy. The mines of the Grand Mountain Bjalfi in the eastern part of the mountains were a vital source for many of the materials which went into the various forms of technology Benalor would produce, especially many of the magically-reactive materials which were required for the etched spells to work. There was one problem though: the very same materials became extremely volatile when struck against hard enough during the mining process, causing for a clearly unacceptable rate of casualties among the miners. The idea that Senior Shaper and Siev's former teacher Elzenar Morad proposed was to craft a legion of animated golems to do the more dangerous work, leaving the sifting, cleaning, and sorting of ores and other materials to the miners. Siev would prove to be an invaluable asset to Morad's development of the Work Engines, large enough to handle prolonged labor and heavy lifting, but small enough for soldiers to deal with in the case that one would go rogue.

An Unrecognized Effort

Once development and experimentation of the Work Engines were complete, Morad would publish his findings and present them to the College for approval. Siev attended the presentation, sitting in the front row of the auditorium. Not only had Siev helped his former teacher with much of the manual labor involved and proofread the article before submission, he had also helped Morad modify existing Shaper spells and even devise new ones in order for the Work Engines to function properly. The crown jewel of Siev's contributions was an intricate spell which allowed for the Work Engines to recognize the Benaloran language and follow orders based on spoken directions. Beforehand, an animated golem would only follow one set of instructions as etched on them. To repurpose a golem was a painstaking task: one would have to use a separate machine to stem the flow of mana going to the golem, file off the old spell from the golem, and etch a new one into it before resuming the mana flow in order for a golem to follow the new directions.

Per Collegiate procedure, the presenter of new findings would list those who had assisted in the project at the end of the lecture. For whatever reason, Siev was not mentioned in that list of names, a fact that had infuriated the young Shaper. For three long and grueling years, he had put his ego and his pride on the shelf to assist Morad to create what was sure to be the greatest innovation in Shaping since the first Shaper etched his first spell onto a pulley system to make it work by itself. And now here was the Senior Shaper taking the credit, especially for developing the most difficult components of this gracious gift to Benalor! He even listed the apprentices and journeymen who had did some of the grunt work on their holidays off!

Nytherio Siev would have none of this!

Communing with the Mountain

Neither Morad nor the rest of the College had seen Siev after the presentation. Morad himself was frantically looking throughout the Tower, even on the grounds by the Canis Falls. The old man had accidentally skipped past his name during the credits in his haste, finding himself strapped for time after having to discuss the vocal recognition spell at length. He had wanted to apologize to his colleague, but could not find him the dark of night. No one could. Perhaps he had gone home in a fuss, his residence a few miles to the north of the Tower at the time. Morad could visit him in the morning and apologize there. But when the Senior Shaper reached his home, no one was there. He peered through a broken window and saw that furniture was wrecked and belongings were strewn about. Did Siev get robbed, or worse!? As the community was looking for the young Shaper, he had in fact packed some of his belongings and left his home, disgraced. He was sure that someone would discover his rather vulgar resignation letter from the College, parting himself from the treacherous lot who only wished to use him rather than to embrace him for his contributions to the College and the betterment of Benaloran society. He was headed to the only place in which he could find solace now, the mines of the Grand Mountain Bjalfi.

He had settled into one of the closed mines in which he performed the first experiments on the Work Engines. It was here that he wrote and rewrote the critical vocal recognition spell, over and over, getting the wording absolutely right before he etched it onto the test subject. He managed to do his work despite regiments of the Benaloran Mountain Patrol checking in and around the mines, Siev having made himself well-acquainted not only with the layout of the mines, but also caverns which criss-crossed through the mountain as a whole. The refining of his work like a dream, much better than planned! The golem followed every one of Siev's commands, much to the amazement of Morad. It had even recognized the inflection in Siev's voice as he demonstrated that even a panicked foreman could shut down the Engine with a desperate shout for it to stop. Just three years ago, those proved to be the best times of Siev's life, realizing that he was truly as talented at Shaping as the College claimed him to be upon earning the title of Master. But now the College had threw him aside, leaving him with only his deactivated companions, slumped heavily and lifelessly against the walls of the mine shaft.

Siev rummaged through the bag he had brought with him, pulling out a moleskin journal, a grin spreading across his face as he looked through the pages. He quickly grabbed his Shaper's tools and approached one of the test subjects. He would spend the next ten years of his life as a self-imposed exile at Bjalfi, perfecting the work he had started. At first, he would combine his vocal recognition spell with a list of keywords etched through the spell to allow for a degree of specialization in the golem's tasks, giving him more control over them and making others unable to give commands unto it. One group of golems would be assigned to gather food and water for him, another would gather materials for him to build a more permanent home, while another would ward off monsters wandering too close to his new home. From there, he would gradually scale the golems, making them larger and larger, making them of more durable materials from the mountain. By the end of the ten years, Siev would grow into a rugged man, confident in his self-dependency, no longer needing the College. Or Benalor, for that matter. He would soon begin the pinnacle of his efforts from that point.

The Wandering Peaks

Twenty years had passed since a disgraced Nytherio Siev arrived at the Grand Mountain Bjalfi. Investigators had found his resignation letter after his former teacher Elzenar Morad alerted them of the presumed break-in. They spent more time looking for him, considering the letter to be a ruse at first, an amateur ploy to misdirect investigators from discovering a far more gruesome fate for the budding Shaper. But even the tenacious investigators had to call off the search, closing the case of Siev and declaring him for all intents and purposes, dead. By this time, the aging Morad had passed away, his post of Senior Shaper being taken over by one of Siev's former peers, Sorenev Rickol. The College of Shapers had long since gotten over the shock of Siev's own presumed passing, some of them actually holding him in high regard at the time.

On the first morning of apprentice classes, Rickol had entered the same auditorium in which his Morad had delivered his developments on the Work Engines, to deliver the opening address to a crowd of eager, bright-eyed Shapers-to-be. A light rumbling had been heard since the previous night, most people dismissing them as the region is known to have the occasional earthquake, especially in the northern and eastern portions of the mountains. Rickol opened up his folio, pulling out the prepared address and opening his mouth to speak. Nothing came out of his lips before he was interrupted by a colleague, whispering something into his ear. He instructed the new students to proceed to the subterranae of the Tower with their instructors until further notice. As Rickol went to his chambers with his colleagues to discuss the goings-on, the rumbling grew stronger in the east, in the direction of Bjalfi. There, a battle for the safety of Benalor was brewing.

The Benaloran military had just authorized an assault on what seemed to be a moving mountain. It was as if the Grand Mountain had sprouted legs and crawled forth from the deep chasm its awakening had left, looking like a colossal insect of some sort with a snowy mountain perched upon its back. The military's Land Recon Brigade was the first to encounter it, unable to get too close to it due to the seismic activity each step caused. Next came the Aerial Recon Brigade to inspect the phenomenon from the sky, which managed to get a visual on a man riding atop the mountain. A man who would be later identified as the late Nytherio Siev.

To Siege a Mountain

Soon after the identification was made, one of the walking mountain's massive legs reached up and swiped at the flying machines, taking down a number of them with the one strike. To the remainder who evaded the attack, they recorded audio of Siev claiming his dominion on the mountains of Benalor, the "World Engine" as his throne. As the Recon Brigade retreated, so did Siev into one of the walking mountain's caverns. What ensued was a barrage of assaults to take the behemoth down before it reached the populated areas of the Ebony Tower and the communities spread around it. Waves of flying battle machines emptied entire arsenals of munitions into the craggy golem, all before flying carrier machines dropped regiments of soldiers upon the walking mountain. The soldiers scoured through the caves in search of Siev, only to run into packs of soulless, smaller golems that ripped through them like a hot knife through butter. Throughout the course of days, the battle raged on, the World Engine slowly but surely making its way to its target, the Ebony Tower, where the evacuees within the subterranae heard the rumblings grow steadily louder and felt the earth shake around them more and more.

With munitions and soldiers going to waste on the mountain and quickly running out of options, the military was approached by one of their own, a retired general by the name of Trausten Scyld. Though retired, the former general maintained a sense of youth and vigor with both his body and attitude. He was best known for leading his Beneloran forces to defend the western fort at Minaumec (present-day Minnamack) against a Drakonid invasion, even though they were terribly outnumbered in the offensive. Reluctantly, the military took Scyld upon his offer, temporarily reinstating his commission as a general in order to give him more freedom in doing so. Unsurprisingly, Scyld got in contact with soldiers who were under his command at Minaumec, but he also got in contact with Rickol at the College. Whatever was making the mountain move, it was the work of Siev's highly advanced Shaping - he was indeed credited in the presentation about the Work Engines, after all. He would need someone with a similar caliber of Shaping to reverse it.

All other units were pulled back and two more carrier machines flew towards the mountains, a swarm of lesser golems waiting for the soldiers to drop. From one of the ships came Scyld and his troops, making their way with only their sturdy armor and broad shields - no traditional weapon outside of ship-mounted cannons could even damage, much less destroy, a golem. After the men forced their way into one of the caverns, said cannons cut loose, creating a cloud of mountain ash in their wake. As the landing zone was secured, the second machine landed there, dropping off Rickol surrounded by a retinue of similarly shielded soldiers, taking on the next wave of golem attacks as they trudged into the caverns behind Scyld's advance party. The fate of Benalor was in their hands.

At Wits' End

Slowly but surely, the World Engine continued on its course. Slowly but surely, so did Scyld, Rickol, and their soldiers continue on theirs. The trek was long and arduous, and indeed some of the soldiers perished in the push, but Scyld would not relent until the abomination was stopped. They made their way through the maze of old mine shafts, finally reaching Siev at a bridge connecting the two peaks of the Engine. Though the Shaper had become rugged and more experienced in survival, a crashing shot from Scyld's rifle was more than enough to take him down. As Scyld stayed with the injured Siev, Rickol and some of the remaining soldiers went into the chamber beyond the bridge. What awaited the fellow Shaper was beyond his wildest imagination. Lines and lines of carefully structured and meticulous spellwork was etched all along the walls of the chamber, from ceiling to floor. The complexity of the spell language and its syntax almost made Rickol dizzy. But he had to get to work now, for there was no time to waste.

Hours seemed like an eternity as the World Engine trundled ever closer to civilization. The golems were pushing against the remaining shields holding them at bay against the bridge, knocking one more of the soldiers over to his death. Frantically, Rickol flipped through his own journals, tracing the steps of the spellwork, putting each piece together. But there didn't seem to be a weakness in the construction of the spell, no word or phrase which could make it stop altogether. Frustrated, he looked around the room for any other clues. He looked to Scyld, who woefully shook his head - he had tried to force the answer out of Siev earlier, who resisted until he passed out. Furthermore he looked in the room until he found another journal in a dark corner of the chamber. He looked through it and got right to work, for Siev had documented the details of the spell. He was determined to gain recognition one way or another.

A word here, a phrase there. Filing out a portion here and moving it elsewhere. After another hour, the mountain shuddered to a halt, only to move again but in another direction. To fully stop the mountain, Rickol would have to perfectly imitate Siev's voice, which was nigh impossible. But the keywords as to the mountain's task, laden all throughout the spell, could be rearranged to change its course. So to the wild north the World Engine went and the party was picked up to return home. No one will know exactly how it is still going after such a long time, for golems of any size usually lose their ability to move after long enough. Siev died on the way back to Benalor from blood loss and exhaustion, his secrets relegated to his journal, though even that did not explain the deeper secrets of his work. It was work which may haunt this generation of people, for sightings of smaller golems have been made spreading ever farther away from the Rickol Valley in which the World Engine roams.