Mechanicum of Arktis
Located in the further northern reaches of the Blighted Lands, this former wonder of the world now lies a tattered ruin of its former glory. The library that stood here prior to the Blight contained works that documented the journey of the human species since its earliest recorded beginnings. The structure itself was a marvel to behold, a huge depository made of intricately carved wood and brass, with the entire exterior lined with thick glass windows stained to produce vibrant and colorful dancing lights within as the day progressed. Now, the ruins that remain are barely recognizable and have been completely picked over throughout the years by expeditions sent out from the Becht nation and curious treasure seekers and arcanists following the possibility of hidden works of forbidden knowledge that would have at one time been stored there.
Purpose / Function
The structure was initially built to house the publicly available records and an accompanying and vast collection of literature and informational manuscripts that dated back to the inception of humankind as an organized species. The engineer, Malcolm Arktis was a genius of his day, a prodigy of engineering who devised the vision and implementation of the location as a monument to the potential of his people and as a centralized location far enough removed from central society to be what he thought would be out of harm's way and yet still accessible enough to be utilized regularly.
Architecture
Prior to the Blight, the building itself was a wonder of engineering and construction. Designed by Malcolm Arktis as his magnum opus, the intricate and complex workings and the extensive stained glass exterior took a decade to complete using a sizeable workforce of both labor and craftspeople. Within was a system devised to automate the fast majority of functionality needed to maintain the building and its contents, allowing a visitor to select the desired text from a catalogue and the librarian to enter a code into a unique cryptex device that in turn sent the clockwork mechanism into action, shifting shelves and spinning columns to produce the intended work, and then moving them safely to the operator's desk in a matter of a minute or two to land neatly before the individual requesting the tome. The exterior was lined with fantastic, multicolored stained glass windows of every shape and size imaginable, offering a multicolored, shifting light that filled the building with a soft radiance through shielded glass and illuminated every corner of the structure. The towering, fan vaulted ceilings averaged around twenty four meters in height and could be seen from throughout the ninety meter square building offering a breathtaking view of the entire edifice.
Below the main floor were hidden vaults built to protect the more delicate and valuable works, private quarters for the library staff, private reading rooms for exclusive guests that were deemed high priority, and several workshops for the maintenance of the inner workings of the structure and for the restoration and upkeep of the books themselves. The inner workings of the clockwork mechanisms were extremely complex, and required several engineers to remain on staff at all times for upkeep and repairs. To this end, unseen from the outside, the shelves and lower walls were a mass of service tunnels and maintenance shafts through with service workers could move unseen while keeping the clockwork running smoothly.
(Image of the location prior to the Blight)
History
Malcolm Arktis was an orphan born in the city of Armuun who rose up above his station and managed to make the entire world take notice. He was hailed as a prime example of the Bechtlarite societal ideal, and proof that industry and intelligence could overcome any obstacle. His acceptance and minor celebrity status within the rank and file of the Armuunian elite emboldened and inspired him, urging him to reach ever higher and higher for ways to express the constant and inventive flow of information that the young man seemed able to pluck from the air. It is said his intellect was dizzying, even for most of the scholars that he engaged with on a regular basis. When the idea of the Mechanicum was initially brought forward, most were unsure what to make of his designs, the complexity of the clockwork begin so far beyond anything in current production that his peers were at a loss to define a great deal of it, let alone verify that it would work at all. Due to his status and public support however, the funding was easily enough secured and construction began.
The next decade was a difficult one for Malcolm, as he oversaw the construction personally and found that, due to the complexity of his designs, a large portion of the work would fall into his lap, forcing him to toil endless hours at the construction of the finer parts of the mechanical aspects. This labor soon turned to obsession, and the young genius withdrew and began to act erratically, becoming less and less amicable towards the other workers and engineers, and eventually, one by one, firing any that he did not absolutely require on staff to finish the construction.
Once completed, the reputation of the man was soiled by the accounts and rumors that grew in the wake of his outward actions during the building. He was noticeably absent during the ceremony dedicating the site to Goyne and later found in his private apartment in the lower sections, drunk and passed out. He remained at the site, refusing to come home, until his death eleven years later. During those years he had become a recluse, keeping to himself in the basement level and seldom coming out except during the evenings when he would drunkenly wander the library. There are many accounts that he would often be heard crying and muttering under his breath, but no one ever dared to approach him and risk his wrath or their position there. Following his death, his journals were recovered from a small hidden compartment in his room that told a disturbing story. In it, the delicate handwriting revealed that over the course of the construction, he had uncovered a personal account of the details of his mother's life, a diary. In that diary, according to what he wrote, his mother had been involved in a strange cult that was obsessed with an entity that lived within the Ephemeral Sea and manipulated things in the terran world above with agents of its will that the creature had managed to obligate to do its bidding through means of deceit and trickery. His mother, in a moment of desperation and naive ignorance entered into a deal with this creature, promising the soul of her first born son to be sworn into eternal servitude following the child's death. Apparently, at the time the mother had no child, not intention to have one, but as fate would have it some years following this deal, Malcolm was born. The mother, in a desperate attempt to hide him had cone on to leave him at the orphanage where he grew up, and then vanished. In the last years of his life, the writings became erratic, his entries moving from the delicate script to a scrawling mess of symbols and words, the entries themselves mentioning voices in his head, hallucinations of the entity that his mother made her bargain with, and lamentations about his soul being damned. Further details of this were never uncovered, and the journal as well as any associated information was removed from the library which continued on up until it was destroyed by the Blight, where it stood until the historian, Vincent Osiander, and archaeologist, Oriana Caecilius investigated the ruins and had a unique experience there, meeting with one of the first Volrishtad excursions from Sasha's Folly.
RUINED STRUCTURE
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Founding Date
2nd of Cortus 123 AR to 45th of Senectus 113 AR
Type
Ruins
Owner
Related Ethnicities
Ruling/Owning Rank
Owning Organization
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