THE SECRET OF SOULSTEEL
Savants in Creation and the Underworld alike would be very surprised to discover the existence of soulsteel in
Autochthonia, let alone the frightening quantities of the black alloy found in the Realm of Brass and Shadow.
Normally, the creation of soulsteel requires a gruesome fusion of mortals souls with ore extracted from the Labyrinth,
producing an indestructible metal from spiritual matter tempered with the stuff of dead titans' nightmares. Without
any connection to the Labyrinth, it would seem that Autochthon lacks certain necessary raw materials to produce
the Magical Material. More importantly — and disturbingly — these materials, like the Underworld itself, did not
even exist before the Primordial War and the dawn of the First Age. Yet, records and the memory of Autochthonian
deities hold that the Primordial incorporated soulsteel into his inventions long before that time, and the substance
contained in the Machine God is functionally indistinguishable from alloys produced in the Underworld.
The answer to this apparent paradox lies hidden in distant antiquity, remembered only by the Ministers
themselves and preserved in the distorted mythology of the Mountain Folk. In the earliest days of the world, before
the invention of mankind, a race of beings flourished and died upon some remote part of Creation. Once, they
had a name and a language and a culture now all forgotten. The elegant spires of their cities stretched so high that
the blazing fires of Ligier and the Unconquered Sun passed beside them. These people were cherished by the Great
Maker in their time, an emaciated, feeble race utterly dependent upon its technology for survival and power.
These beings' most notable features were their swollen triangular heads, their small, lipless mouths and the
bulbous eyes that filled half their faces.
While the Dragon Kings flourished widely across the world, the Lintha ruled upon their distant continent
and others lived whose survivors would crawl beneath the skin of the world as Darkbroods, Autochthon's people
explored the limits of science and evolution. Such was their ambition that they sought to harness and bind the
very power of their god with an artifact of unimaginable potency and did not see the folly in their plan until the
great metal sphere of the Great Maker descended from the heavens and cast all their nation in his shadow. They
could only stare in horror as a vast iris opened into a maw, from which a beam of Essence ravaged their cities into
dust. By his power, they were unmade to the last, and the souls of all were drawn screaming into the belly of their
god. Never before had souls been unmade in the Creation of Gaia and Cytherea, and the act mingled the millions
of tortured souls with poisoned components of the Machine God. When the black ore cooled at last in his veins,
it was a new substance that Autochthon found incalculably useful in his endless research.
Nothing of the lost race's technology or civilization has ever been discovered in the Ages of Man, though
it is possible that some Darkbroods might secretly hoard wonders of the Nameless Ones. All that lingers of that
doomed race are the alien faces and alien whispers that numbly stir in Autochthonian soulsteel. If members of
the Soulsteel Caste are more prone to inhuman detachment than other Exalted, the Ministers say nothing, nor do they answer the prayers of perplexed mortals studying the fossilized spirits of the black ore or trying to decipher the babbled murmurs of their dead language. Such is the decree of Autochthon — and the price of hubris.
