[X]Intervene! Specify the Intervention and the point in time.
-[X][Spirit][Infuse] As the Void Seekers take flight, you commute with the nascent Spirit of the "Void Seekers" to give them a reoccurring dream. They dream of the location of a convenient (for us) Precursor Tablet, hidden away on a floating shard not too far from their relative position on Spun-Apart. This Tablet is a long philosophical discussion from our fictional Precursor, which will unravel its mysteries with a spirit-forged language, and one who is able to ask the spirits will be able to learn it. This philosophical treaty speaks of current and future questions of the Void Seekers, about the Void Between World, the attitude one must adopt to travel it and the fundamental loss of sense one must abide with throughouttheir life.
--[X]The Steel Empire, having finished its unification throes, resumes throwing shit at the Spur Clan. It's got to be something to do while they continue to expand across the filament, right? And even though their expansion along both ends of their filament is much slower than that of the Web Nomads since they aren't travelling as much reshaping and colonising the filament itself, it still takes parts of the Empire outside of the obelisk's range. But this does not cause Void Seekers, merely the occasional rebellion. They know how to deal with those. For the Spur Clan's part, their own attempts to marshal a navy has ended in failure. None of them can pilot an air-boat that doesn't itself bear an extremely costly obelisk, not without falling into existentialist throes. Unlike the Empire, they have no strict regime that can enforce itself outside of the aura's range. The next plan is to attempt to abuse the spiritual self-defence clause but it is hard to use this to marshal anything bigger than a few minor spirits who were physically damaged by one of their attacks and, to make things worse, the Empire is also no stranger to fighting off spirits. So instead they settle on using the Void Seekers, taking the nihilist ideologues and promising them material rewards to sail air-boats up towards the Empire. And this time they won't be dropping obelisks but bombs. Yes, for the first time, the smithing of the Spur Clan is turned towards weapons of war and, knowing some of the secrets of ignition, they have devised rudimentary explosives for the crew of air-boats to toss over the side. These bombing runs are incredibly effective and the Empire lacks the initial means to answer them, leading to several of their forts being toppled and shrapnel bombs designed to pierce steel shells being dropped into town centres by the shadows of air-boats flying well overhead. The Empire, seemingly helpless, capitulates to the Spur Clan's demands and dismantles the trebuchets lining the edge of the filament.
-[X][Spirit][Fire][Earth][Infusion][Instant] The peace binding of the obelisk is changed. It does not promote unity and stasis as intended, but rather curiosity, freedom, and a desire to learn.
--[X]It takes over a generation of this sporadic pelting for the Spur Clan to be able to respond. They can't simply send a horde of spirits after all. Instead they construct air-boats, large vessels of stainless steel borne aloft by air-spirits bound into the shell and with a rudimentary propulsive system based around fire spirits and powdered aluminium. The first of these boats is sent aloft up towards the Web with the goal of speaking to these strange foreigners (Neither of them have memory of the other) and making them stop. And if that is not to work, the boat carries a dangerous payload. A pact-binding obelisk lashed to the side is ready to be dropped and it bears upon it the same spiritual binding that the Spur Clan uses to enforce peace. It will be given to the attackers and lock them into happy unity. The Steel Ferrocracy, after capturing the air-boat and enslaving the crew, accepts the obelisk as a gift and refuses to stop throwing things. But now it should do its work and prevent any further incidents. They don't yet know it but through the sacrifice of that boat and its crew, they have been pacified. They will trouble the people of the Spur no more.
You're a pretty big fan of this timeline but it could use some touching up. First of all, the Void Seekers are a little worrying. The tide of Unbeing has withdrawn but they may have left a seed behind within the Seeker's hearts. As they are now, they seek answers and may be doomed to only find the answers that Unbeing provides. Leave them be and they may become the Lek-kego's very own Unbeing, just as their originators were once the same people as you. So no, you'll take that yearning and use it for your own purposes. You'll lead them to a new purpose and in doing so, you will make them once more into your tools.
But for your plans, you'll need to give their entire faction a spirit. They already have one of course, as all things do, but it is nascent and disparate. Under normal circumstances it would probably only awaken if the Seekers were in danger of extinction at the hands of another Lek-kego but your recent modifications to the self-defence Pact prevents even that. But so be it! You'll replace that vague thing infuse the Void Seekers with a stronger spirit, one designed to your liking.
And while you've got your metaphorical hands on the equally metaphorical steering wheel, you'll do the same with that damn obelisk. The Steel Empire will have to figure things out on their own.
The Age Of Discovery
- Even as the Spur Clan ponders the question of the Void Seekers, new advances are made due to their expanding use of stainless steel. Having already gained a sort of immortality thanks to shells that no longer corrode or crack anywhere near as easily, the first successful moult is carried out in the depths of the Spur itself. The first moult had always been a hard limit on the Lek-kego lifespan before this. Once you outgrow your shell, you're done. Their delicate internal bodies can't survive the traumatic process of shell-shedding nor the vulnerable period before another is grown, not without taking some sort of permanent damage or corrosion to their induction coils. But with the invention of fake shells, anti-trauma cocoon of stainless steel, the first moulter has both shelter provided to it and something to digest and forge while they do. With this there's no longer any limit to the potential lifespan of a Lek-kego!
- The Web Nomads have found several Shards by now and while they lose a few people to each one in the sense that a few always settle down and make a home, the majority of them keep on trekking in search of a better promised land. In a sense, they are seeding small Lek-kego families all across Spun Apart. The Nomads themselves have split into several groups, their frankly massive rate of reproduction aided by the fact that the filaments of the Web are almost exclusively steel. They are not a single polity but rather several small wandering nations, many of which are guided by those who wear the remaining suits of tungsten platemail. Their tradition of spiritual distrust, inherited from their homeland and strengthened through surviving the calamitous rise of the spiritmongers, mostly continues as well. They do not interact with corporeal spirits at all, averting their eyes and stepping aside. Anyone who does otherwise is part of the Great Enemy, a theological construct comprised mostly of mythologised memories of the spiritmongers and a vague recollection of the Earthsplitter. But the Earthsplitter isn't directly named and the Enemy is just a semi-coherent term for Lek-kego and spirits who don't ignore the other. Only through complete isolation and segregation from the spiritual can peace be kept along the Web. They have found multiple Precursor monuments and in doing so, know the World to be a created thing. The knowledge that creatures came before them and made the world slips into their culture and taints what they remember of their people's survival. The idea that Lek-kego made the world and that spirits are just invasive interlopers that came along later proves popular, as does the idea that the promised land they search for was gifted to them by the Precursors. The histories of the Web Nomads are, by this point, mostly fictional.
- Some of the Nomad clans come into contact with the Spur Clan's Shard or, that is to say, they come into contact with the cloud of Void Seeker communities around the filaments leading to the Shard. With neither having any need or desire to hurt the other, this marks the first instance of genuine inter-Polity trade between two vastly different Lek-kego cultures, not just between two Nomad clans or two of the Kingdoms. With this, the Void Seekers are able to gain the resources to live out beyond the reach of the Spur Clan.
- The Plateau becomes the 'capital' of the Spur Clan, its hollowed out form now holding a massive city. The original Spur itself is now holy ground, to be trod only by priests and the beasts of the marsh. The Clan has not expanded beyond the Shard due to the inherent range of its spiritual peace but increasing communities of Void Seekers now throng along the near edges of the three filaments. But then the rocks start falling. Boulders several times the size of an individual Lek-kego begin to rain down haphazardly upon the Shard, usually at a rate of a dozen or so per day. Some of them miss entirely but due to the population density of the Spur Clan, just as many take lives or punch holes in roads or buildings. Closer inspection of the 'rocks' reveals them to be made of a demagnetised alloy that closely resembles...a Lek-kego waste slurry. In addition, many of them are clearly shaped. Some of them even have spikes! Seeking answers, spirits of air and sight are sent flying upward to try and trace the attacks and eventually, when they return, they bring tales of other Lek-kego. Namely that of the Spear Tradition and the Steel Ferrocracy who have both constructed a number of small forts at the very edge of their filaments. Forts built around a single massive steel trebuchet. Using the fact that their home upon the filament is substantially higher up than the Spur Clan Shard, they have taken to using their engineering, telescopes and grasp of physics to begin pelting the Spur Clan's Shard with projectiles whenever they pass beneath them. The Tradition and the Ferrocracy themselves have both expanded into the filament itself (on opposite ends of the beach) by this point and still occasionally send soldiers to kill each other for the sake of doing so than any real imperialist intent.
- It takes over a generation of this sporadic pelting for the Spur Clan to be able to respond. They can't simply send a horde of spirits after all. Instead they construct air-boats, large vessels of stainless steel borne aloft by air-spirits bound into the shell and with a rudimentary propulsive system based around fire spirits and powdered aluminium. The first of these boats is sent aloft up towards the Web with the goal of speaking to these strange foreigners (Neither of them have memory of the other) and making them stop. And if that is not to work, the boat carries a dangerous payload. A pact-binding obelisk lashed to the side is ready to be dropped and it bears upon it the same spiritual binding that the Spur Clan uses to enforce peace. It will be given to the attackers and lock them into happy unity. The Steel Ferrocracy, after capturing the air-boat and enslaving the crew, accepts the obelisk as a gift and refuses to stop throwing things. But now it should do its work and prevent any further incidents. They don't yet know it but through the sacrifice of that boat and its crew, they have been pacified. They will trouble the people of the Spur no more.
- INTERVENTION: Due to the vagaries of being at least a little bit outside of time, your second decision takes place before your first. You infuse the obelisk and the intangible pact with the spirit of all Lek-kego that it represents with metaphorical qualities of Fire, Earth and Spirit. You give it the intellectual hunger and curiosity of Fire, which ever seeks new things in order to survive. You give it the freedom of Spirit, which as you've learned can defy even your instructions. And you ground it all in Earth's stability, to prevent fractiousness without causing stagnation. You...hope this works out alright. Your wishes were vague enough that they could go multiple ways. Fire is as imperialist as it is curious, after all.
- The result is still not what the Spur Clan wished, their attempt to permanently pacify their enemies meddled with not only by their cultural differences but also by your transgressing hand. And just as the effects of the obelisk in the old timeline could only be interpreted through the lens of the culture of the Ferroracy and the Tradition, the same thing applies to your new one. The traditions and the martial outlook of their people remains the same but over the generations, much of the rest of the two polities transform. For starters, they don't unify. The 'Steel Empire' has been aborted from the timeline. And the reason for this lack of unification is how the Spear Tradition and the Steel Ferrocracy take the obelisk's influence differently. It only takes a few generations for the Tradition to overturn some of its more oppressive traditions, uplifting many of its slave underclasses and recognising them as citizens. The status of Chieftain changes as well within the Spear Tradition as its observances of the Ferrocracy's system, bolstered by the influence of the obelisk, leads to it becoming an elected position rather than a hereditary one. At first, only the highest class citizens can vote but as the generations pass, it shifts into a system where any free citizen can vote (they still retain some slaves) but each chance at a vote are purchased from the state, allowing for wealthier and more important citizens to vote many dozens or hundreds of times each. As for the Ferrocracy itself? The same sense of freedom infuses them, making it so that eventual reform determines that Chieftain elections are no longer decided by the votes of steel-shells with military backgrounds but by the votes of all steel-shells. But the uplifting of the underclasses and the relaxation of slavery? Unlike in the Spear Tradition, this runs into harsh opposition in the form of the Ferrocracy's long-held metallocratic beliefs. Steel-shells are superior and that doesn't change. It does cause a string of rebellions however. So while this difference in opinion on the rights of citizens prevents the two polities from unifying, both are equally effected by the intellectual hunger and curiosity bestowed upon them by the obelisk. The Ferrocracy and the Tradition both focus much of their efforts on expanding down their respective ends of the filament, reshaping and mining the filament itself as they go. And as they do, they turn their siege-lenses to the stars once more. They are the chosen inheritors of the Precursor's artificial universe, they claim. It is their duty to understand it. They also invent the wheel, having finally expanded out into an expanse of flat surfaces.
- The Tungsten Kingdom's petty squabbles are interrupted by the arrival of an enemy that they have long since forgotten. Finding the no longer moving plain abundant with water to be an attractive nesting spot, several colonies of migrant-birds settle down and begin using the spot as a stopping point. This is initially disastrous but the Lek-kego of today are not the easy targets they were in prehistory. It is not long before many of the birds are cut down by tungsten spears and, having seized their nests, many of the Kingdoms begin taming them as weapons or war to be ridden almost exclusively by spiritmongers. And with their new bird-riders, they no longer need to continually fight over the single filament to expand! Now possessed with a sudden fervor of colonial intent, they stop squabbling so much over their own land and instead every nation begins sending out riders to find and colonise other Shards. The first Shard they find is another migrant-bird nesting point and so is the second and the third, following their steeds migratory instincts to quickly conquer and control a number of their nests and thus even more birds.
- The Ferrocracy and the Tradition, after coming out of their initial periods of social unrest and reform, resume throwing shit at the Spur Clan. They already have the trebuchets set up and everything after all. Their sense of imperialism and manifest destiny hasn't changed. For the Spur Clan's part, their own attempts to marshal a navy has ended in failure. None of them can pilot an air-boat that doesn't itself bear an extremely costly obelisk, not without falling into existentialist throes. The next plan is to attempt to abuse the spiritual self-defence clause but it is hard to use this to marshal anything bigger than a few minor spirits who were physically damaged by one of their attacks and, to make things worse, their attackers are also no stranger to fighting off spirits. So instead they settle on using the Void Seekers, taking the nihilist ideologues and promising them material rewards to sail air-boats up towards the source of the attacks. And this time they won't be dropping obelisks but bombs. Yes, for the first time, the smithing of the Spur Clan is turned towards weapons of war and, knowing some of the secrets of ignition, they have devised rudimentary explosives for the crew of air-boats to toss over the side. These bombing runs are incredibly effective and both the Ferrocracy and the Tradition lack the initial means to answer them, leading to several of their forts being toppled and shrapnel bombs designed to pierce steel shells being dropped into town centres by the shadows of air-boats flying well overhead. Seemingly helpless, they capitulate and disassemble the trebuchet-forts lining the edge of their filament. They are replaced instead by observatories, ones that can aim their telescope downwards to observe the other lands of Spun-Apart.
- INTERVENTION: You infuse the Void Seekers with a spirit, making their collective spirit much more defined and interactable. And as you do so, you do your best to 'program' that spirit into accepting the following information and grinding into the Seeker's collective unconscious. This drives some of the Seekers to betray the Spur Clan, keeping the air-boats and setting sail with them across the great atmospheric seas that divide the Shards. And there, guided by your design, they 'find' a Tablet left by the Precursors. They learn the 'truth' of the world and, reading it thanks to their own spirits, they learn how best to traverse the void between Shards and even the void outside Spun-Apart. The Tablet contains for them a purpose outside of the Spur Clan and outside of Unbeing. All Void Seekers will feel the urge to make this pilgrimage. And if any other Lek-kego were to ever see the Tablet, they would see nothing but an empty rock floating in atmosphere. You didn't actually make a Tablet, of course. That would require an Intervention of Earth. It is merely a shared hallucination bestowed upon the spirit of the Void-Seekers.
- One of the Web Nomad clans catches sight of the Central Face spinning beneath them along a strand of far filament and immediately declares it to be the promised land. Other clans are quickly told and soon, a great deal of Nomads are taking their first steps along the bountiful savannahs of the Central Face's continental plates. Here is their paradise, the true land meant for them by the Precursors. They immediately set to fighting about it.
- Another Nomad clan travels up a filament and runs into the furthest outposts of the Spear Tradition, where they are immediately captured and taken prisoner. Their strange artifacts, such as a single suit of tungsten platemail and their maps, causes them to eventually be brought before the Spear Chieftain, who breaks their shackles and sets them free in exchange for some of them staying behind in their court. A trade agreement with several Nomad Clans is set up but more importantly, the Tradition learns of the routes between the filaments, the location of their old enemies the Spur Clan and the existence of the 'cursed land' filled with valuable tungsten. This last part is much more interesting to them. It may finally give them the weapons needed to wage war upon the Ferrocracy!
There, how about that? You got a little flexible with your intents this time so they might have more unforeseen consequences but other than that, it turned out pretty well. Or did it?
You have two Miracle Points left.
[ ]No further Interventions. Let the Age pass.
[ ]Intervene! Specify the Intervention and the point in time in which it happens.
