So! In the attempt to get myself posting more content and not spinning my wheels on things, here is a thing I wrote up ages ago about the artistic philosophy and outlooks in Autochthonia, and just how that aesthetic sensibility interacts with their physical and spiritual environments. Mostly just on the basis that this kind of shit is super-interesting to me, as-is exploring the ways cultural beliefs and circumstance influence art.
On Faces and Facelessness
Lacking other sentient species or animals beyond rats to expand the contemporary frame of reference, the artistic and aesthetic cultures of Autochthonia are highly conservative and intertwined. Pragmatism colors the widespread use and acceptance of art forms, and resource scarcity means that movements are prone to rapid cycles of interest and disdain as commodities like glyph-paint become less viable mediums or seen as wasteful pursuits. But rendering the human face is one facet above all others that consistently pervades the vast majority of Autochthonian works, as a symbol of religious deference and reverence.
At its source, "facelessness" is the domain of Autochthon and his teeming millions of infallible machines. Though some may walk on two legs, hold two arms and comport themselves as mortalkind does, there are as many who simply defy mortal experience and identification. Ranging from great multi-limbed engineers to sentient masses of liquid metal, it can be challenging to find shared empathy with or from the mechanical divine. Particular details even among common custodians and subprocesses encompass a vast spectrum as complex as the analytical intelligences working behind the surface. Through countless telescoping lenses, chemical-measuring grills and air pressure sensors, the Maker's children interact with the artificial world of the supernatural on a far more advanced scale than any Populat worker could comprehend.
Such alien senses guide inhuman frames through complex rituals of maintenance, and the modular landscape responds in kind. Though the mortal populations of Autochthonia's eight nations may be more technologically advanced than any society after the First Age, the majority are still blind to the inner workings of many of the Great Maker's most potent wonders. Inside the industrial body that carries his name, and the home of the Octet within the Pole of Metal, this ignorance brings with it incredible dangers.
Understanding the gulf between the spiritual and mortal perspectives at work, and foreseeing future clashes with the systems of the divine, the early emergence of the Theomachracy laid tight restrictions on what works and machines could safely display the Maker's inhuman graces. Imposed uniformity was demanded of the creations of humanity, to follow the mortal body plan chosen by intelligences beyond questioning, both in appearance and function. This sweeping but informal 'First Doctrine of Consistent Design' served to render Autochthon's complex and strange creations unto his subgods and component spirits, and those of mortal-make to the nations which support his life.
Though originally intended as a matter of dogma, it did not take long for the doctrine to appeal to other wings of the young Tripartite and radically alter the way the early settlers integrated into their new home. It quickly found practical purposes in manufacturing and theotechnical discoveries, driving savants on the home front to construct new forms for tools and retrofit existing divine systems with rational, human-optimized interfaces. Engineering such go-betweens demanded even lesser degrees of formal supernatural education in the Populat, without dumbing down the nuance and care needed for day-to-day operations. In the Reaches, such conformity allowed experienced explorers and guides a means to identify friend from foe at a distance, as roaming custodians and elementals would rarely permit a second attempt for mistakes. The ultimate expression of these concepts would eventually become the Alchemical Exalted.
Aftereffects echoed through the supernatural world in response to the mortal-crafted demigods, giving rise to a subclass of so-called 'civil spirits' who lived and worked primarily around human encampments. While neither any more approachable or helpful than others of their kind, these spirits adapted to mortal presence by modifying programmed behaviors around human body language. After generations of influence it is not uncommon to see local spirits aping human norms whole or in part to aid in brief bouts of communication, as jarring as it can be to witness a repair custodian wordlessly flip onto its back and flex its underplating into crudely snarling brows and lips before scurrying away with a furious chorus of clicks and buzzes. Savants who spend a majority of time away from the urban expanses prefer such alien reactions, for the better to gain some frame of reference than take away utterly zero context for such an encounter. Many simply feel honored and grateful one of the primordial's children felt it necessary to acknowledge the communication gap at all.
A World of Crowds
The reasoning has changed little from those early days, but hundreds of years refinement and premutation has rendered the First Doctrine down to a broader, simpler format. Rough human faces now gaze out from every cityscape in the Eight Nations, as angular and engineered windows, archways and doors. Expressions fixed in sage-like meditation, relief or observant stoicism welcome all who stop and observe the contours of the local architecture, piled rows of buildings like silent petitioners leading inevitably towards the mighty metropoli and patropoli at the city centers. Automatic rickshaws, pneumatic tram cars and heavy factory elevators bear abstract facial elements, marking them for public use by the Populat. Deep within the bowels of the Pole of Smoke, zeppelins that churn the caustic clouds have yawning human profiles at the fore with twin lamps like eyes which cast light out into the haze. Workman's tools that do not bear prominent etchings to the Prolific Scholars instead include stylized facial features as part of the manufacturing process, as do the armored chest-hulls of industrial exoskeletons.
But at the same time these works hold to an exacting, almost uniform ideal. Facial elements may be blunt or abstract, but are never built marred or ugly. Like the material efforts of every Populat lever-puller, each new representation is said to be another concrete step forward for the tireless spirit of mankind and their respective cities. Theomachracy sermons take pains to capitalize on this shared link between the worker, her tools and her home whenever possible, because when each are integrated together, all will become one. Despite these efforts and high-minded words, many of the healthiest urban centers may still sit atop physical metaphors. Undercity complexes of crumpled and forgotten buildings slump together as foundations for new constructions, where pressure and time have squeezed the wreckage into furrowed brows, sunken cheeks, and twisted grimaces or sneers from ruined doorways.
Rather than attempt to cage the vast supernatural world around them, shrines and temples look inwards at humanity and take face symbolism to a higher level entirely. Full wall murals and supporting columns are dedicated to abstract human figures in the poses of labor and deed, even while venerating the Great Maker and his subgods as distant guiding hands. Extravagant etchings depict ancient mortal heroes as androgynous, stylized silhouettes radiating gear-shaped Hero's Halos as each perform legendary feats of the Octet's past.
Notable personal features, such as the steel eye-plate of Jekson the Firelung, are illustrated sharp-edged and calculatingly sculpted or welded to draw attention away from the figure and instead to the task undertaken. In this way, the Tome of the Great Maker decrees, these heroes have surpassed any singular identity and stand as a faceless example for all humanity to emulate. The true test of human worth is to stand among that emblem of communal achievement, showing "what can be done" by simple blood and toil, rather than build up incontestable gods atop pillars of hero-worship.
Emblems and Identity
Having deified the concept of the faceless, all-encompassing divine spirit, the mortal cultures of Autochtonia have a strong focus on common experiences and unity. The Maker is in every piston, every weld, every custodian great or small, all pressing forward together with singular purpose. But the united purpose of the divine machine is not Autochthon's body, only the means for perpetuating his self-works through time. The divine and its facelessness is not an identity to be obtained, because it is collective actions made in interest of a whole.
'Labor creates the divine,' say the lectors during rousing motivational festivals, so by achieving success through great labors mortal men and women can overcome faces and selfhoods to touch the nature of the Creator. This way it is possible for the lowliest to become part of history, etching a mark upon it for others to follow behind. A lone worker may operate the same machines that have persisted for generations prior to her birth, but her transitory acts in the present ensure that each device will outlive her descendants.
It is not uncommon for the state to invoke the divine spirit by proxy, promoting pseudo-emblems for an entire occupation or class like that of the Alchemical Exalted when it suits the needs of the Tripartite. Hazardous professions that require the use of unadorned containment suits or filter masks are romanticized for facelessness against danger. Military operations and raids employ facelessness in both the literal and implied senses by hiding the faces of strike teams in dark warpaint, or working through subterfuge and stealth. Adjudicators, regulators and the Meticulous Surgeons frequently make use of obscuring or featureless face-coverings to give an impression of inhuman competency in social judgment and punishment, or while conducting actions of law-enforcement and medicine.
But the Theomachracy elite frown on these practices nevertheless. Scriptures written in the Tome of the Great Maker decree that only Autochthon knows true Clarity of thought with the divine spirit, as he is that spirit divided into a harmonious many. So it is laughable to assume that any single cadre of mortal agents can simply deign to shed bonds together, not without tainting the entire effort with the conflicting values mortality relies on to survive. To insist it can be done without the oversight of his greater vision as a guiding force? Therein lies the ultimate blasphemy, of a kind which merely encourages malignant thought patterns like the voidbringers and identity cults to flourish among the lower classes.
This fundamental mistrust stretches to how medical prosthetics and external tool-assistance are engineered within the Tripartite, where outward shells and presentations hew to subdued human norms and away from facelessness whenever possible. Some wings of personal equipment have been subsumed exclusively into internal hardware, or require articulated steel husks and masks bolted onto high-ranking members as part of initiation rites. For anyone bearing extensive physical reconstruction to carry the necessary tools for performing the duties of station, any embedded equipment that treads too close to inhuman is a secret heresy to be disguised and downplayed. Usage is restricted to work hours, behind closed doors, or phased into carefully-guarded 'tricks of the trade,' where it would undoubtedly draw a preceptor's eye if it were flaunted arrogantly in public.
Exiles and the barbarian tunnel peoples of the Reaches receive a similarly poor reception for showing the markings of a fix-beetle passing. Inhuman augmentations are treated with fear, scorn and often barely-hidden jealousy that one of the 'cast-aside' peoples could be gifted such wonders by the machine spirits. Worse still if those wretches could be subjects of some lingering dissonant taint darkening the Maker's corridors, freely reveling in the sins of facelessness. Archetypes like these form the basis of most isolationist rhetoric, coloring mechanically-enhanced outsiders as being all too similar to recurring antagonists from off-shift tales and performance dramas, like the vagrant tunnel-warlord who hides his rasping voice and future treachery behind an egg-smooth shell of chrome.
Sins of Facelessness
In Theomachracy canon, the bi-part soul of mortals are the critical imperfection that stops humanity as group from standing together to shed identity. Many fables are threaded through the Tome of the Great Maker on this subject and conversely, how denying baser animal instincts which drive mankind to succeed is a foolhardy endeavor. Among other things, by pursuing the divine spirit under false pretenses, humankind shows hubris and moral weakness through:
- Loss of emotion or passion in life ('The Rational Corpse')
- Abuse or exploitation of fellows ('The Taskmaster's Grip')
- Inaction or denial of purpose in labor ('The Empty Chair')
- Divisiveness of the common interest ('The Smith of Hate')
- Idolatry through lies unbacked by deed ('The Hollow Savior')
- Evading consequences or responsibility ('The Dragon's Shadow')
- Ambition for the self above all ('The Burning Green Eye')
Though broad in its condemnations, this message is generally viewed as a positive one as it offers no simple path to righteousness. The Populat is encouraged to look inside and find deeply personal methods of enlightenment towards the ideals underlying Clarity, in a way unlike the heartfelt communal anthems that pervade all other areas of working life.
On Identity Cults
Voidbringer cells date back as far as civilization within Autochthonia, when malcontent adherents rejected and abandoned the primordial's messengers to journey out into the shadowy Reaches and find a new way. With the rise of the Octet and the Alchemical cities, newly formed cults discovered the spiritual relevance of communal-emblems and divine Clarity, and took to those goals with an almost maniacal focus. But while many voidbringers are content with minor acts of theft or petty vandalism that underlie the dissonant sins of facelessness, a peculiar number of cults seek to establish warped emblems of their own design. Guided only by alien ideals, and usually a malfunctioning machine god, such cults would raise themselves up to challenge the Clarity of the divine spirit and consume it utterly.
However, while most identity cults are easily dispersed once the backing forces are eliminated, the worst are also self-destructive in unpredictable ways. One such notable being the mass blindings that accompany initiation of new cells into the cult of 'the Eyeless Face,' which has plagued the nation of Yugash off and on for decades, as it works to remove all "windows to the soul." Often infiltration and prevention are the most effective methods than combating the cults directly, the better to avoid loss or disablement of valued workers held in the sway of such troubled spirits.
