The question we face now, as we awaken to the depth and scope of his genius and its meaning for our nation both past and future, is how Meck came to acquire the knowledge reflected in his works; writings and diagrams our eyes can only now, enlightened by the boon of material evidence, discern for what they truly are.
What follows is the culmination of nearly three years of research into the material of the late Chief Engineer, extensive re-cataloguing of the archives of both Guilds, as well as much careful and circumspect review of what might reasonably be inferred between the facts and what indeed may never be confirmed.
It has been proclaimed both by His Majesty the Satrap-Archimandrite and the incumbent Chief Engineer as the closest possible summation of the truth.
Osh Esidh, First Illuminator
`3232/Fon’verun
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On review of Meck’s material ― voluminous in quantity and as yet still not archived in its totality ― it may be fair to venture that his unique genius first becomes latently evident in what may now be referred to as his “Sub-surface” theory; a hypothesis arguably constitutive of the ingrained brilliance of his people, but nevertheless unprecedented in his era.
There is clear written evidence that, while still undergoing rudimentary City Guild training in `3168, Meck was fostering a growing intrigue over the layout and street-plan of Antissa and, furthermore, proof of its architectural “layering.” The private study upon which he almost certainly embarked at the age of 25 would lead him to several astoundingly accurate conclusions about Antissa’s early design, original construction and topography. These included, among other things, the location of the first “fortress” wall (`3170), the estimated position of a central piping “hub” (`3172) and, crucially, the site of an early “citadel” in the exact location of the modern Inner City gardens (`3173).
Although ostensibly the unmitigated product of his own logic, it is within the bounds of reason to concede that his early research into such theories was not without help. It is probable, if not likely based on his reticent but nonetheless corresponding diary entries regarding [latter] meetings with Azal, that the Mathematician did in some way prompt a closer examination of the legends and surviving records of the Builders (or First Antissans.) We cannot know with any certainty whether Azal provided more than suggestions. However, from the same period there exist many screeds of calculations by Meck regarding aspects of the Inner City construction and, particularly, the gardens’ wall. Unless pages are missing from these calculations, they conclude with no apparent solution; yet it was not long after they were penned that Meck would purchase a certain building directly adjacent to that wall.
Irrespective of the depth or exactitude of contributions made by Azal, therefore, we can assume that Meck had pinpointed a probable location of Antissa’s first citadel (as since unearthed by the Royal Guild), supported by theory sufficiently robust as to justify great financial expense. There are records of communications between the estate’s one-time owner in residence, unwilling to sell, and the then Citizen District Overseer, complaining bitterly of persistent harassment from a Guildsman. The final price of a thousand tallans that was ultimately agreed upon, documentation of which also exists, is far beyond the real estate value of the house. Indeed, conspicuously so.
Since our official discovery of the Builders’ citadel three years ago, the Royal Guild has ascertained with absolute certainty that Meck confirmed its existence during ownership of said estate, most likely early, and kept the knowledge fully secret. The Guild has purported with almost equal conviction that the house’s previous occupant, and at least four occupants prior, knew nought of it. Modifications on the interior walls of the building clearly narrate the progress of excavation by Meck’s hand, all of which closely matches blueprints of site and structure from that time. Furthermore, the chute-like channel he would have discovered to lead directly down into the landfill supporting the Inner City gardens, was found by the Guild to have been furnished with additions too obviously of his time. These include a locking device and a mechanical staircase. Thus it is beyond doubt that Meck not only found, but entered, the Builders’ citadel.
We can but wonder what he expected to discover therein. But what he did find, the Royal Guild has since concluded, is probably identical to what we find today. The single chamber at the epicentre of the landfill possesses no lateral outlets or communicating rooms; comprising only a mechanical floor interconnected with the Builders’ Stones (as found at monuments elsewhere throughout the desert). This has since been revealed to function as a vertical transportation system to levels below.
The chamber was never modified, nor added to, by Meck. Nor, to the vexation of this study, do any of his known writings reference the discovery directly. Unlabelled, undated sketches from the approximate time may however allude to it, by way of doodles to be gleaned from the margins of his diary entries. If these can indeed be read as indicative of the Builders’ citadel, then we might speculate with some confidence that he never solved the chamber’s puzzle or activated the descending floor mechanism. By contrast, notwithstanding his reluctance to commit such problems to paper, the sheer dearth of any material in reference to what he would have discovered had he descended by that floor seems almost inconceivable, and would strongly support the conclusion that he did not.
Further supporting the connection of these sketches and doodles to the Builders’ citadel chamber is that the same diaries, if not the same sketches, contain numerous scribbles of the Mooncircle emblem. As we now understand the historical relationship between this our national emblem (once called the Chieftain’s Crescent) and the Builders’ Stones, it is arguable that Gaspar Meck was the first Vedan of 4th Aeon Vorth to recognise it. Unfortunately his personal library, in such form as this study inherits it, has long been established beyond any dispute as both vastly incomplete and problematically intermingled with stray inventory from adjacent collections of the time. But be that as it may, the aggregation of literature thus attributed to Meck at the time of his death is considerably less eclectic as might be expected. Within it, nonetheless, several distinct versions of the legend of Chieftain Esha and the final departure of the Builders have been found. It may well be, then, that Meck entertained the possibility ― now an accepted fact ― that the chamber was the site of that event.
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As new light waxes to reveal grooves of profound significance throughout Meck’s life, career and exploits, so too widens agreement that in his failure to uncover the Builder citadel’s true secrets, time ― if anything ― was the culprit. He was now a Royal Engineer and as such the demands of his duties would have been near all-consuming. There were suspicions, some documented, from the likes of both district neighbours and Guild contemporaries over his strange protectiveness of the garden-wall house and the work he conducted there. The exact reason for his secrecy has already been widely debated among his most recent biographers, but his distrust and lack of confidence in Chief Engineer Thazra will surely have played a major part. It is also possible that some additional exchange with Azal (merely conjectured, no proof exists) further encouraged him to conceal the citadel.
Examination of the building’s timber and reinforcements for the purpose show that Meck must have sealed the entrance no later than five years after opening it. More, his subsequent blocking of the chute with a measurable four years’ worth of discarded junk machinery, further supports the claim that the window of his inspection of the chamber could not have exceeded a year and a half. And after boarding it up, he clearly never re-entered it.
Confounded as the engineer may have been by the chamber of the Builders’ citadel, its discovery alone will have supported his firming conviction that a sub-surface Antissa of considerable proportions had once, or still, existed: a purpose-built network of levels and tunnels that had, moreover, been inhabited at some time during the history of surface Antissa, and which was (also, almost definitely) integrally linked to the city’s pipeworks.
With the advantage of a Royal Engineer’s resources, Meck’s subsequent research into the legacy of the Builders clearly propelled him towards his theory that Antissa’s lost (or hidden) “underground” may have included satellite locations of some form; this in turn prompting his own experimentation with “Deep” architecture. Several of these experiments came startlingly close to the structure-type of the somehow forgotten Spectres Deep, the existence of which he theoretically anticipated but never confirmed. The diagrams themselves nonetheless formed an obvious prelude to the Deep level he would devise and execute under the High District once in office as Chief Engineer.
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No Vedan, certainly none of Antissan stock, can deny that it is the comprehensive grasp of the city’s ancient piping network, as possessed by the Royal Guild today, that constitutes the cornerstone of modern engineering in the capital.
Most written evidence of the Builders’ engineering was lost in `2760, in the sack of Antissa at the hands of the Lackish. Miraculously, however, an estimated three-quarters of late-period Builder piping diagrams somehow survived it: together with a small amount of other more arcane material, held from the year `2815 (at the behest of Chieftain Esha) by the clerics of Methar so as to safeguard Vedish heritage from the careless hand of modernity. This was until `3169, when Chief Engineer Feridh ― in a lengthy private endeavour ― persuaded the clerics to relinquish all existing diagrammatic material of the Builders to the Royal Guild. This apparent commandeering of national treasures drew the interest of Satrap Hyphet II, however, who permitted Feridh’s Guild a mere fortnight in which to glean what information they required from the parchments before they were reclaimed as exclusive property of the Mooncircle Throne.
The parchments being old and fragile, as well as deeply cryptic in both content and format, Feridh and his engineers were unable to complete the task with any accuracy. Meck was not yet a member of the Royal Guild, so that the fundamentally flawed best efforts which then formed the reference-point for civic irrigation were as much to blame for the engineering disasters that would occur under Chief Engineer Thazra as Thazra’s own incompetence; the parchments mistrustfully hoarded by the throne throughout his five years in office.
It was only after the completion of Meck’s much-praised Deep level ― which for the first time in recorded history exposed not only some of the city’s heretofore mythic pipelines, but also the walled circumference of the central “hub” Meck had predicted ― that royal interest was piqued in the practical understanding and upkeep of the piping network. Following this, success was reached in gaining marginal access to the Builders’ parchments again. The teenage Syphus II had just come to the throne, and although he refused to grant the Royal Guild full claim to the treasures his great-uncle had so fiercely withheld as state heritage, he granted Meck the exclusive privilege of examining them.
With this permitted ― albeit under strict surveillance of the Satrap’s guard, any handling of the parchments forbidden ― Meck applied his prior theories about the construction of Antissa to his task, and became the first to accurately interpret the Builders’ diagrams of the piping network. Most importantly, this included a clear transcription of the complex central hub, which since the time of the Builders themselves had been inaccessible to city engineers and would remain so (despite Meck’s intention to open it) until `3230, almost twenty years after his death. The manner of this breakthrough could not have been achieved had he not been somehow able to derive some threads of meaning from the parchments’ weirdly alphabetised coding system. But there was no time to face the fullness of their enigmatic script: “A style of multi-linear and contextually subjective cuneiform,” he wrote in his official declaration to the Satrap, “that upon deciphering in part such as within these pages alone, at once augments to fundamentally and exponentially become the work of three lifetimes or more to read or reproduce in practice.”
Wisely, he limited the focus of his task to the pipeworks. The revolutionary and celebrated copies he produced would subsequently become core to our modern Piping Transcripts; a concise and comprehensive 25-page representation of the system which existed at the time of the Builders, that has constituted Guild’s central reference ever since. Beyond doubt we now know Meck’s transcriptions to have been astounding in their accuracy; his margin of error mainly a matter of omission, as some further piping lines were added to the early network after the original parchments were composed.
The full body of the modern Transcripts, authored and compiled over the next decade of Meck’s career, total 35 pages, being an unrivalled rendering of the original system as then considerably expanded by his own Guild. It is now considered the definitive reference text for Antissa’s most crucial sector of civil engineering. The diagrams were edited, updated and of course reproduced after his own final contribution of minor extensions. His version of the Hub, however, remains unabridged since he first transcribed it. For, as was confirmed following the opening of that great greenstone column in `3230, his first set of diagrams was almost entirely accurate, sparing a small amount of reasonable guesswork on certain measurements of the interior chamber wall.
Despite the throne’s diminishing interest in their protection and proper treatment, the Builders’ original parchments remained private property of Syphus II until his fall from the throne and death in `3231. With the rise of Satrap-Archimandrite Bardon, they have rightly been returned to the care of the Royal Guild.