The Evershift Workshop
Gears and steam, the constant singing of hissing valves, the ringing of hammers, the ever pleasant hum of grinding tools and sounds of wrenches, metal on metal, all mix with scents of coal, oil, grease and smoke. Metal and wood, stone and clay. Every medium, every tool every sort of craftsmanship tool one can imagine, as one wanders the seemingly endless floor of this place they can hear, smell, see these in action, see masters, true titans of their craft, hard at work, evermore, the joy of creation, the subtle pride and pleasure of skilled labor ever on their face. Gone are the pressures of client or customer, gone are the vitriol this can inflict, the poison that can come from the ungrateful or the unknowing. There is naught but the craft and the respect for it. The beings of this place, the celestials move about with great reverence, offering but soft words of encouragement, answering queries, providing unique materials, and on occasion, even educating. For here masters can indulge. They can attempt things they never have. They can work with materials they did not know existed, much less those they never had the blessing to handle. Here they can spend all manner of time perfecting their craft, and take as long as they wish, intimately, with each piece, with each step of the process. That is the joy, the relaxation, the satisfaction of the Evershift Workshop. That is the promise of Cormaq Thunderhand's dominion.
A description, an imagining of this celestial realm contained in The Way of Gears and Cogs one of the holy books of Cormaq Thunderhand's followers, the Seekers of Progress
Geography
Naturally the Evershift Workshop, by its nature as a plane of divinity, a realm of an Ascended God, basically a heaven for a religion, has challenges in properly describing its 'geography' such as it may be. The Evershift Workshop, for example, is far from just a workshop. This is where most would arrive, planar travel or otherwise, however it is inhabitated, as is any plane of existence. The Evershift Workshop is open to a sky naught of clouds or sun, but lanterns and machine parts, a cacophony of machinery parts seeming to work in unison. It rains here, clouds of smoke rain mineral oil, which seems to be as life giving to the plane as water is to the common material realms. The Evershift Workshop, though seeming endless, is only endless until someone wishes to stroll beyond its limits and experience Evershift proper, the city of invention.
Evershift is a plane of conscious machinery and invention and is all watched over by the Divine Forge, where Cormaq Thunderhand and his closest aids make their home, a floating facility, the place where all life on the plane begins, and where its 'citizens' return every month or so in reality time for a tune up. It is also here that new creations from those blessed with their own space in the Evershift Workshop, when such a thing warrants the god's attention, are brought for vigorous inspection and discussion.
It was thusly how the Forgeborn came to be. To know the full story of their birth one would need to visit the plane, and find Rian Gergauge, convincing the saint to divulge the secrets. Alternatively one could attempt to break into the records room of the Divine Forge, where the schematics and processes are kept, the only divine documentation of their birth and how they are made to exist in written form, amongst other secrets and steal them. This however would be the errand of the foolhardy, and even then the exceedingly powerful. To rob a diety's actual stronghold upon their own divine plane? Madness.
Evershift is a plane of conscious machinery and invention and is all watched over by the Divine Forge, where Cormaq Thunderhand and his closest aids make their home, a floating facility, the place where all life on the plane begins, and where its 'citizens' return every month or so in reality time for a tune up. It is also here that new creations from those blessed with their own space in the Evershift Workshop, when such a thing warrants the god's attention, are brought for vigorous inspection and discussion.
It was thusly how the Forgeborn came to be. To know the full story of their birth one would need to visit the plane, and find Rian Gergauge, convincing the saint to divulge the secrets. Alternatively one could attempt to break into the records room of the Divine Forge, where the schematics and processes are kept, the only divine documentation of their birth and how they are made to exist in written form, amongst other secrets and steal them. This however would be the errand of the foolhardy, and even then the exceedingly powerful. To rob a diety's actual stronghold upon their own divine plane? Madness.
Localized Phenomena
Show spoiler
The truth of the Forgeborn is actually something truly amazing, and is a heavily guarded secret not out of greed of the god of invention, but out of clandestine necessity. For time works differently on a divine plane, and the Forgeborn are the culmination of Rian, and two other saints, as well as Cormaq himself, working for what is nearly thousands of years to create a seemingly impossible process. To revert shattered and broken souls. To unmake Voidlings, beasts of the Blackness. They thus far can only do so to Horrors, the lowest ranking of such creatures, however it is via this process, through untold decades of work by material time standards, that they create the blank, but repaired souls that go on to become Forgeborn. For souls are but energy, the manna of the world given form, around a core of pure Spirit Manna, Meanma. A voidling is merely that core stripped bare, and subjected to torture and mutations and alterations of its pure energy that go beyond comprehension to alter its very state of existence. To create something of the purest most heinous evil.
So the theory was, if it can be done in that direction, surely it should be able to be reversed? Though this spoiler skips many steps, and quite the story of adventures amongst divinity and the deepest pits of the Void, the short answer was....they were right. And thus. The Forgeborn came to exist. They are always the Forgeborn, though on different material planes they may take different names, this is their truth. They are born of the Forges of the Divine, after first being tempered and stripped of the contamination of their form, brought back to a pure 'neutral' state by the tireless efforts of a select few trusted souls in the Evershift Workshop. Raids into the Void are not frequent for the process is not yet efficient so the need for Horrors to feed to the process are not high. Yet the fact that such a process exists is enough reason for the clandestine measures and the deepest secrecies woven of divine oaths and punishments, and deep divine magicks. Because should the greater powers of the Void ever become aware that this knowledge and process exists, they would no doubt launch a full scale, and in a rare terrifying thought, unified attempt, to sunder the Plane of Evershift itself from existence.
But once these mysterious efforts are complete, Rian himself is the one whom, in a special corner of the Evershift Workshop, guides these souls to vessels and gives them another shot at life, a chance at redemption thought impossible. This is the truth of Forgeborn, they are not loyal followers given a second life. They are the hopeful to be redeemed, the potential rescued souls believed lost, the hopeful beginning of a turn in an eternal war of attrition that Creation itself eventaully stood to lose. For though to count the existence of every soul in all realities is impossible, the number does have an end. A finite amount. Souls are not infinite there is only a set amount of Meanma in all creation, no energy, not even Spirit, is limitless. All things are finite, and thus, the Void being able to do these horrendous things to create such monsters....on a long enough time scale would be the end of all things. A turning out of all the lights in reality and the multiverse.
But with this discovery, and spread about carefully, clandestinely through to other aspects of 'invention' and 'science' in other worlds, Cormaq perhaps has lit a beacon of hope within the Dreamweave, one that can't be so easily extinquished. A means to not just defend via faith and resisting the fall to the pure darkness of despair and the emptiness of the Void. But the means to fight back and claw back some of the light already stolen. Perhaps in time, or perhaps in some realms and realities, that time has already arrived, this can in one form or another, provide the means to take a more offensive position in that great and eternal conflict.
For the most important thing in the multiverse, in the Dreamweave is simple. It does not matter how dim the light, how dark the outlook of a reality. They are all lights against the blackness of the Void, the end, The Nightmare of Silence and Empty. Thus, they all need to be treasured, armed and protected.
For Valerick, the only realm Cormaq can influence directly, and for his part as an aspect, a God of Invention to this lone realm, he with the help of his Saint of Invention, Rian Gergauge, have chosen to start this path and task with the Forgeborn, a new ancestry of being, a new peoples, to new force to stand against the darkness.
So the theory was, if it can be done in that direction, surely it should be able to be reversed? Though this spoiler skips many steps, and quite the story of adventures amongst divinity and the deepest pits of the Void, the short answer was....they were right. And thus. The Forgeborn came to exist. They are always the Forgeborn, though on different material planes they may take different names, this is their truth. They are born of the Forges of the Divine, after first being tempered and stripped of the contamination of their form, brought back to a pure 'neutral' state by the tireless efforts of a select few trusted souls in the Evershift Workshop. Raids into the Void are not frequent for the process is not yet efficient so the need for Horrors to feed to the process are not high. Yet the fact that such a process exists is enough reason for the clandestine measures and the deepest secrecies woven of divine oaths and punishments, and deep divine magicks. Because should the greater powers of the Void ever become aware that this knowledge and process exists, they would no doubt launch a full scale, and in a rare terrifying thought, unified attempt, to sunder the Plane of Evershift itself from existence.
But once these mysterious efforts are complete, Rian himself is the one whom, in a special corner of the Evershift Workshop, guides these souls to vessels and gives them another shot at life, a chance at redemption thought impossible. This is the truth of Forgeborn, they are not loyal followers given a second life. They are the hopeful to be redeemed, the potential rescued souls believed lost, the hopeful beginning of a turn in an eternal war of attrition that Creation itself eventaully stood to lose. For though to count the existence of every soul in all realities is impossible, the number does have an end. A finite amount. Souls are not infinite there is only a set amount of Meanma in all creation, no energy, not even Spirit, is limitless. All things are finite, and thus, the Void being able to do these horrendous things to create such monsters....on a long enough time scale would be the end of all things. A turning out of all the lights in reality and the multiverse.
But with this discovery, and spread about carefully, clandestinely through to other aspects of 'invention' and 'science' in other worlds, Cormaq perhaps has lit a beacon of hope within the Dreamweave, one that can't be so easily extinquished. A means to not just defend via faith and resisting the fall to the pure darkness of despair and the emptiness of the Void. But the means to fight back and claw back some of the light already stolen. Perhaps in time, or perhaps in some realms and realities, that time has already arrived, this can in one form or another, provide the means to take a more offensive position in that great and eternal conflict.
For the most important thing in the multiverse, in the Dreamweave is simple. It does not matter how dim the light, how dark the outlook of a reality. They are all lights against the blackness of the Void, the end, The Nightmare of Silence and Empty. Thus, they all need to be treasured, armed and protected.
For Valerick, the only realm Cormaq can influence directly, and for his part as an aspect, a God of Invention to this lone realm, he with the help of his Saint of Invention, Rian Gergauge, have chosen to start this path and task with the Forgeborn, a new ancestry of being, a new peoples, to new force to stand against the darkness.
Type
Dimensional plane
Owner/Ruler
Characters in Location
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