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I don't claim to know a whole lot about Exalted, but I have read more than a few of the books and absorbed quite a bit through following this thread and Kerisgame and even Keychain of Creation back in the day. Anyway, the discussion of Autochthon got me thinking about his nature once again, and I think we have to actually look at him through the same lens of the other Primordials to be able to better pin down his nature. What is Autochthon?
Autochthon is an inventor. By the standards of the other Primordials he is "sick". This aesthetics are associated with the mechanical. These are the big, core characterizations throughout the books. But the Primordials are more akin to cosmic forces than anything human. Malfeas is a star encased within his own flesh (possibly the most metal way of describing a Dyson shell ever). Cecylene is the speed of light and frames of reference. Adorjan is the hostility of the vacuum. Isidoros is a black hole. The Ebon Dragon is entropy. These aren't all they are, but they are frames to get across the sheer alien nature of these beings.
So where does Autochthon fit into all of this? He's an inventor, progressive, and imperfect. But to invent implies that there was some less advanced version before. Progress implies direction.
What is Autochthon?
Autochton is evolution, or more precisely he is cosmic horror story of entropy driven evolution. He is the rising complexity of the universe because atomic weapons increase the entropy of the universe faster than rocks basking in the sun. He is the blind watchmaker given sight but not foresight. Where the Ebon Dragon is more a metaphysical and moral entropy, Autochthon is the entropy of a steam engine. His "sickness" as far as his siblings were concerned was his own nature. Where their components parts were far more complete and unchanging, it was in his nature to be continuously tearing apart and remaking his Third Circle souls. Where they were constant and enduring, he was finite and frail, because nothing he made could last. He had to be able to cannibalize himself for fuel for his next iteration. But what is he progressing to?
Heat death. The cold blackness at the end of all things when all fuel has been expended. The Void.
In this light, the Primordial War is perhaps not the bullied Primordial just snapping, but the purest expression of Autochthon's nature. The Exalted are the invention by which the Primordials were rendered obsolete, the next step in the evolution of Creation.
I think if you look at Autochthon in this light, you can also break Voidtech and Gremlins and the like into two categories, of which the inhabitants might not actually know the difference. The first is the Old. These are the parts of Autochthon that are breaking down because they are past their expiry date, obsolete metabiology that needs to be replaced. They are vestigial organs and atavisms that no longer serve a purpose but still hang around, using resources. They are antiques that take up space. They are the dead things that still cling to their old life and rob the living of their existence to keep going. These things should be cobbled and patched together, post-apocalyptic steampunk undead monstrosities.
But those should not be Voidtech. No, Voidtech should be the New. Should be the pitiless drive of evolution and self-improvement at all cost. If the Old Gremlins are the parts of Autochthon that had reached the end of their operational lifespan and refuse to retire, the steampunk monstrosities in a dieselpunk world, then the Voidtech Gremlins should be the natural response to the constraints that displacing himself to Elsewhere Autochthon's metabiology would produce. Dark, sleek, solid-state beings able to run efficiently on the necrotic essence that is starting to fill up the Great Maker like the exhaust of a car running in an enclosed space. And if humans get in the way, well, in this latest iteration of the Great Maker there is no need for them. The systems they maintain are old and inefficient, and their elimination will simply make the upgrade process more efficient.
Because Autochthon is progress and evolution, and if the next step has no room for maintaining inefficient systems then it is as pitiless as an asteroid impact or a corporation buying up land for redevelopment. Even if its progressing to oblivion, even if its evolving to extinction.
Anyway, that's my thought on the matter anyway.
Oh dearie me.
First, replacing the 2e one-dimensional biomechanical monster antagonists with Xenomorphs is not an improvement.
Second, that music video (while really good, and pretty much mandatory if you want to listen to the song) isn't a terribly effective encapsulation of any Primordial. If I had to pick one, I'd actually go with Metagaos over anything - it's a picture of mindless self-indulgence, overconsuming and devouring and absorbing everything without regard for anything but your mad hunger, shamelessly reveling in your own venal nature of what you're doing all the while. There's a sort of dark Shashalme-ism to some of it as well - "admire me, admire what I have made, admire what I have taken for myself."
If you want pitiless evolution, then you go to Ramethus. He's the Primordial that proclaimed that to exist is to be in conflict, that the weak either become strong or become food for the strong, and was so dedicated to his vision of eternal Darwinian apotheosis that when the Exalted Host came to tear the titans from their thrones, he happily took arms against them and died laughing, for by destroying Theion's rule and casting Creation into chaos by force of arms, his killers had only proved him right.
@Dif put this better in one of his earlier Autochthon posts, but the theme of the Great Maker is better described as "technological progress". His imperfection is partially a product of that, because technology is made by failing again and again and learning each time, or even just bludgeoning away at a problem until a solution presents itself through serendipity. He lived and died a billion times just to be born at all, as his Mythos struggled to create itself, failed, and then tried again. Now, the actual process of natural selection definitely has strong parallels with that, but the term evolution as it exists in our lexicon really doesn't. It's the whole "not saying wizards" thing.
Still, the idea of the Void manifesting as both grinding obsolescence and the dangerous road to progress is definitely a good one.
The counterargument for "the Octet is right" is that in terms of actually securing mankind's future in Autochthonia, then no, they're horrifically, dangerously wrong. The old way, the safe path of steady gains and logic-driven decision making, no longer leads to anything but an open grave in the long term unless something further is done. Autochthonia is dying and no amount of well-designed, well-assembled mundane thaumaturgy or Patterning can stop it. Now, one way to fix things would be to find some means of awakening the Great Maker and having him deal with the problem - but 99.9999% of Autochthonians do not consider that a viable option (quite rightly), so once you become aware of the truth of things, you either give up and await death or start feverishly looking for a third option.My only problem with this line of thought is that it risks attaching Morality to technology the way that 2e's kinda-goony Order/Chaos dynamic attempted too, when Exalted doesn't really try to handle the morality of its actions at all, or when it does, the language used is presented as a position of Power and Might being exerted over a Lesser/Inferior than some sort of objectively-derived Truth. Power over others being used to say what is true or not is always the stronger narrative than a black/white dynamic.
Voidtech is pretty much the only hope of survival when "kosher" means prove insufficient or infeasible; not everywhere is as well-stocked as the Octet (and yes, the major Autochthonian cities being considered "well-stocked" is meant to be upsetting), so once you get a certain ways out from the center of civilization, Apostasy is everywhere - not because of some moral laxity or supernatural creeping corruption, but because fuck you Octet, we're asphyxiating out here, don't give us shit for repairing our conventionally unrepairable atmospheric scrubbers by whatever means necessary. The attachment of morality to technology should definitely be there, but as an in-universe belief of the Octet, just like how the main setting has "demons" that the average inhabitant treats like the D&D variety when the truth is much more complex.
Adding another layer of complexity, consider that the stereotypical Apostate behavior - dismantling old things to jury-rig new ones, scrabbling with their neighbors over resources, repurposing & recycling to create living space or arable land or other necessities where none exists, constricting their worldview to let them focus on their monkeysphere or their spiritual beliefs over all other things - are perfectly normal for Second Age Creation. If a bunch of Apostates ended up in the Scavenger Lands, they'd fit right in; it'd be the Octet guys who'd come across as unsettling and weird to the people of the Age of Sorrows.
So yeah, the Octet could totally use "Apostasy" as just a blanket term for "person we think is wasting resources we could use better, a filthy squatter obstructing our maintenance work, and/or disrespecting the Great Maker", so that actual use of the Void (let alone dangerous, irresponsible, or otherwise assholish use of the Void) is less important for determining who's a heretic and who isn't in actual practice than whether or not the Octet says you're one of the "bad guys".
Which is where I blend in the idea of Voidtech as phone phreaking or other outdated tech from your post, as a particularly common form of "apostasy" that most people who live outside of mainstream Autochthonian society have to make use of if they want any sort of security or comfort in their lives. It's not harmful, and it's not really connected to "proper Voidtech" in any metaphysical way, but it's been lumped in with it because the conditions that push people to use outdated tech often also push people to start doing things to the Great Maker's insides that the Octet would rather they didn't.