Category:Factory-Cathedrals

Description

Manufactory Cathedrals are at once houses of worship and centers of industry, empowered by prayer, dragon lines, and strange occult approaches to energy creation. They demand great maintenance and intense purification, but in turn are able to produce complex works of artifice in quantity. The most ancient of Cathedrals date from the time of magitechnological innovation under the leadership of the Primordial Autochthon and the Mountain Folk during the Age of Heavenly Peace, or during the inventive explorations of the Median Resplendent Period, but but most were raised during the industrial heights of the Golden Age. Such Cathedrals are the purview of the Primordials and the Celestial Exalted, and in the present Age of Sorrows the Dragonblooded struggle even to maintain their functions, unable to replicate them.

Tools

Manufactory-Cathedrals host an array of specialized tools and systems for creating works of artifice. While these vary depending on the specialization of the Cathedral, several are shared in common, including the Hyperion Key, the Euryphaessan Lever, the Photolithographic Brush, the Theonuminal Transduction Engine, and the Focusing Motonoscope.

Exotic Component

Due to their purity, divine power, and complex set of tools, Factory Cathedrals count as an exotic component for the purposes of creating magitech artifacts, but do not count as such for any non-magitech artifact. Indeed, the use of a factory-cathedral as a component in Essence Circuits (the basic 1-dot artifact-components used to construct larger magitech artifacts is not optional but mandatory. This requirement is one of the greatest obstacles to producing magitech today, and why Factory-produced components are in such high demand when recovered from First Age ruins through the Scavenger Economy.

Known Factory Cathedrals

The following is a list of known factory-cathedrals in Creation today.

The Scavenger Lands

Denandsor – The now-abandoned City of Makers is known to most Scavenger Lords as the greatest prize one could imagine, a city that has not fallen to complete ruin, bound to contain a wealth of intact artifacts and components… but kept closed by a curse that neither god nor Exalt can overcome. To those artificers who study at the Heptagram or in Lookshy, its loss is mourned (though still considered irreversible) as the City is said to be home to multiple factory-cathedrals.

Aviary of Deheleshen – Located in the heart of Lookshy, the Aviary of Deheleshen is a high-towered factory-cathedral originally thought to have been designed for the construction of skyships, though the associated facilities have largely failed due to lack of parts to maintain them, or been retooled to produce more basic weapons needed in quantity by the Seventh Legion. It is dedicated to Tu Yu, former City Father of Deheleshen.

Cathedral of Time in the Embrace of Gold - A ruined manufactory-cathedral located in Tien-Wo, whose facilities are still used by the inhabitants there, though local geomancy has been severely disrupted and it is not thought that it can be restored to rebuild the original Cathedral.

The East

(none known)

The South

Cathedral of Gleaming Brass - A ruined manufactory-Cathedral said to be located somewhere amidst the deserts of the Deep South, described in the Code of Zelakas, a tale from the Immaculate Apocrypha. Fragmentary texts and tools appear occasionally in the Scavenger markets of the South, attributed to the Brass Cathedral, which prompts an ambitious Scavenger Lord to mount an expedition in search of it. None seems to have succeeded, and some (including the Realm) consider it to have been destroyed.

The West

Great Cathedral of Murak – The local nobility of the Shogunate of Murak, an independent island state of the Southwestern Threshold, have long claimed that the palace of their Shogun is a factory cathedral capable of producing magitech. While many observers agree there is scavenging potential amidst some of Murak’s First Age ruins, and the locals make use of some items so recovered, the idea that they possess or operate a cathedral is laughable at best.

The North

(none known)

The Blessed Isle

Factory-Cathedral of the Exalted Battle Girded in Power and Fury – Located at the eastern end of the Great Tail of Juche Prefecture. Dedicated to Tachi-kun the Central God of War.

Factory-Cathedral of the Crimson Panoply Borne by Hands Upraised – Located at the northern foot of the Imperial Mountain. Dedicated to Mars the Maiden of Battles.

Factory-Cathedral of the Invincible Prow Cleaving Bloodied Waters – Located along the southwestern coast of the Blessed Isle. Dedicated to Siakal the Western Got of War.

Heptagram - Not a Cathedral in its own right, the Heptagram nevertheless includes facilities and tools (such as purified laboratories, Hyperion Keys, Euryphaessan Levers, and the Crepuscular Transduction Engine), which can ape some few of a Cathedral's functions.

The Underworld

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Yu-Shan

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