The Fae in the Wires

TERRASTATIC REPLICATOR ZONE Somewhere in the Reaches, an explorer might open an access door and find herself in another world. A blue sky appears above with a hellishly bright golden light arc- ing lazily across the firmament in pursuit of a colder silver lantern. There are grassy plains and trees lush with fruit, winding rivers and even a central rocky mountain surrounded by rolling foothills. In all, it is an alien vista beyond the wildest imaginings of any Autochthonian. No animals or spirits mar this primeval paradise. It is also not Creation, but rather a biome laboratory to model and remember the properties of the world the Great Maker helped forge. Spanning almost eighty miles across, the laboratory exists in a separate fold within Elsewhere not unlike the Poles of Lightning and Steam. A dome of impervious ada- mant encloses the perimeter like Yu-Shan. What visitors do not realize—could not possibly realize—is the Thing in the Mountain. A powerful ishvara of the Fair Folk slumbers within the stone, an enemy the Great Maker subdued at the dawn of time. Brutally calcified and yet waking, it steadily grows in power. Soon, it shall burst forth in Unshaped glory and dissolve the garden in a blaze of chaos, a world-rending typhoon among Wyld storms. It has done this before. Then, as before, the engines of order that sustain the place will engage and push it back, enclose it in rock and bring life to the land. Every iteration is beautiful and distinct. Those 114 engines are failing, however. When they can no longer push back the chaos, what might such a King of the Void do? No particular legends of Autochthon’s paradise garden exist to guide travelers, so discovery of the workshop almost invariably comes as epic serendipity. Assuming there is sufficient time before the mountain bursts, the nation that finds it can be expected to set up navigational beacons and begin rigorous resource extraction, possibly culminating in the revolutionary development of viable hydroponic agri- culture. If the alien vista can be tied to Creation through cross-referenced mythological apocrypha, the discovery may accelerate plans to open the Seal of Eight Divinities and could provide a staging ground on which to prepare for new battle tactics appropriate to the strange new world. Conversely, if the eruption of the mountain interrupts the foraging operation after realizing the link to Creation, the discoverers may misinterpret the disaster and conclude the Seals must remain intact for the safety of Autochthonia.