As with the chamber of the Builders’ citadel, Meck’s inspired hypothesis promulgating the existence of what have since been named respectively “Meck’s Gate” and the “Deeping Sphere” were largely ignored by the Guilds in his own time. What ultimately brought him to the belief that these mechanisms were not so much likely as imperative, was a complex and apparently unplanned deductive process which seems to have progressed gradually over about twenty years (c.`3176 - `3196).
Being essential exponents of a single central theory ― this saliently revolving around the enormous capacity of the central pipeworks themselves, the indicative structure of the Hub and by deduction, the nature, layout, location and depth of a conjectured “sub-surface” Antissa ― “gate” and “sphere” seem to have emerged from his reasoning in conjunction. Both, nevertheless, were to remain unproven all his life.
Primary in Meck’s reasoning was the theory of the sub-surface, which solidified into certainty as his research continued to yield affirming, albeit inconclusive, results. In addition to the very likely link he made between the Mooncircle emblem and the Builders’ Stones (strongly indicating the connection to Chieftain Esha and the final departure of the Builders) we can now confidently discern that there were some conclusions Meck was able to draw from the Builders’ citadel. It was markedly lacking in other chambers. All too clearly a central space, the sole chamber thus discovered possessed no evidence of communicating lateral outlets. There is no definitive written proof, but certainly wide agreement that he simply could not have been ignorant of the room’s mechanical nature, confounding though it proved to be. The vortex-like floor patterns around the Builders’ Stones, for example, could only have been starkly significant to one already imagining a vast, converging passage network below. And if the Builders’ Stones herein acted as an entrance mechanism, why then could the same not be said of other such Stones throughout Vorth’s desert?
To infer from his intermittently ongoing calculations, it is clear at the very least that if Azal somehow possessed some privileged knowledge of such matters, then he never imparted that knowledge directly to Meck. Indeed the exact nature of their exchanges on these subjects remains unknown. We can only, in any surety, tie Meck’s abrupt interest in the Builders’ legacy to the advent of their meeting. All else is speculation.
From a number of commercial fragments in the city archives (some of which are to this day attributed to Esha himself), Meck unearthed apocryphal evidence that Vorth might once have dealt in large quantities of the metal aqualumium as a locally extracted resource; in all Vorth’s records surviving the onslaught, an element classified as very rare. According to his findings, the loss of this abundant resource may have taken place over as short a period as a decade, and seemingly to Ered through trade. Now, with the shining rise of Bardon I and a new dynasty, Vorth no longer recognises Ered as a friendly nation. Nor at the time of writing have we trade arrangements with that Empire or any of its lesser provinces. Begging His Majesty’s grace, it is for this reason (among others) that it is difficult to quite corroborate the truth of the possibility regarding aqualumium.
Nevertheless, as juxtaposed by the relative limits on the manufacture of triglycerate at the time in question ― conversely, an accepted fact ― this finding may have prompted Meck to consider the likelihood of aqualumium having been at some time employed in the lighting of a much larger region unlit by sun. Perhaps, seems to press Meck’s interest, the metal aqualumium was Vorth’s naturally-occurring “pre-triglycerate” technology for artificial light. For, rare as it may always have been until now, all know only too well that the main property of aqualumium is its reaction of instantaneous gold luminescence upon contact with water.
Like any engineer of his time, Meck would have known that the hill upon which the fortress-city of Antissa had been built was replete with piping circuits. The presumed area of a “sub-surface” Antissa, irrespective of size and the potential for “satellites”, must therefore be situated at some considerable depth below that hill (even below sea-level), as opposed to occupying pockets of space in the hill’s rock. No existing engineering documentation from the time ever made the slightest reference to the probability of such pockets in the hill. Nor indeed did the modern layout (or provable pre-modern layers) imply such a thing to be architecturally or even physically possible.
Once more, this is but conjecture as to the elements of Meck’s investigative process. However, a thing he frequently and expansively expressed in writing was his bewilderment over the sheer magnitude of the four Arterials (main channels) at the centre of the piping network as interpreted by the parchments, and his firm belief that (on paper) they demonstrated a capacity to irrigate a settlement far more extensive and highly populated than Antissa could ever be whilst confined to the surface of the fortress hill alone.
Additionally, according to Meck’s interpretation of the Builders’ parchments, the entirety of the city’s piping converges within the Hub in such a way that an almost exact circle of uninterrupted space remains open on all of its circuits, running directly down through the centre of the column. The parchments themselves even go so far ― his notes make clear ― as to demarcate this “neutral” zone with uncharacteristic significance. If anything, the anomaly appeared to mirror the neutral circle.
The size and power of the Arterials which all too obviously connected the central Hub to the city’s water-source, in conjunction with the anomaly of the neutral zone and shrouded significance of the Hub’s terminus, all seem to have contributed to Meck’s intuition regarding the existence of a system connecting “surface” to “sub-surface” Antissa; that system in turn compounding the probability of the latter’s considerable depth.
His conclusion, we might derive, was that the floor of the Hub (estimated at ground-level) was in fact a sealed gate, expertly constructed around the four Arterials: a fact now proven. His early diagrams of possible mechanisms to this effect commence here.
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Meck’s first considerations regarding the means of a supposed descent into a “sub-surface” region were likely sparked by his discovery of the Builders’ citadel chamber; including its mysterious stones-floor construct and, conspicuously, no ways out. The “chute” that granted access through the Inner City wall has now been thoroughly excavated to reveal that it may not have been part of the Builders’ original design; rather a later civic addition, either a vent or delivery conduit latterly widened by the slow deterioration of foundations following its sometime collapse.
Also now strongly coloured by what has since been confirmed, Meck’s study of ancient Antissan literature, feasibly on Azal’s advice, may have already prompted alternative interpretations of the oft-quoted refrain from popular legend that the Builders departed “into the desert.” Barring this, it is most likely that any coherent ideas regarding a “gate” at the Hub’s lower terminus preceded those of any kind of transportation machine or system. The development of both concepts must have otherwise been largely inter-dependent; therefore chronologically inseparable for the purpose of this study.
With the benefit of new perspective gained in reviewing and re-cataloguing the vast store of Meck’s writings it is clear that, in his rendering of the Piping Transcripts from the parchments of the Builders, Meck failed to accurately identify the Builders’ designated symbol for the machine that we now call the “Deeping Sphere.” He appears to have mistaken it for the layout of an additional, or possibly intended and unbuilt, circuit zone of the Hub’s lower reaches. This was most certainly a pardonable error since, despite the figure’s uniquely symmetrical nature, it did bear striking and indeed misleading resemblance to the Builders’ original Hub breakdown. However, his accuracy of interpretation regarding the rest of the Hub did rightly lead him to the conclusion that this “zone” fitted nowhere in the plan. From the authorised Transcripts he omitted it completely, though in due course would return to it himself, with new eyes.
Of course, the Transcripts would inspire the construction of Meck’s Deep and the consequent unearthing of the Hub wall at the exact anticipated position. But then, in `3182, shortly after the completion of his Deep level, a singularly curious artefact was found in the Guild’s vast metal stockpiles. A truncated mechanical component defying any identification by contemporary engineering standards, it was brought to the Chief Engineer’s attention when found to contain a significant amount of the rare metal aqualumium. Despite the high value of the piece for this reason, Meck chose not to extract the aqualumium; instead keeping the part intact for further examination, while junk-piles throughout the city were scoured for similar articles. None were found. The component, which would remain unidentified for years, was nothing less than a partial arm and anchor-claw from a Deeping Sphere.
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Naturally this added weight to the notion of the one-time abundance of aqualumium in Vorth, and the subsequent forays Meck conducted into the metal’s sometime use as a local light-giving resource, as well as its largely inexplicable and mysteriously abrupt disappearance from all records of the period, would slowly come to bear upon his theory of sub-surface Antissa and its satellites. Based in part on what seemed a curiously mundane implementation of the metal in the piece (the as-yet unidentified anchor-claw), Meck wrote thereafter of his strengthening conviction that aqualumium had potentially been employed en-masse in the construction of his theorised sub-surface. Persuasive to this logic was the tantalising duality of triglycerate’s equally abrupt invention and pre-eminence as a light-giving resource around the time of aqualumium’s disappearance, and the profound reasoning that any underground domain would require vast amounts of artificial light.
Light from the marriage of metal and water: this brought Meck back to the pipeworks, all evidence unequivocally pointing to their status as the grand, defining nucleus of Antissa ― modern and ancient, fortress-city and monument to engineering mastery. What apter force than the huge kinetic power of the Arterials to facilitate transportation between the surface and great depth? The machine, he resolved, must be hydraulically operated.
Though his writings on the subject thereafter are erratic, frustrated, unclear and all too frequently defiant of our efforts to categorise them, there is strong argument that the crucial link was that mysterious “neutral space” of the Hub which, though omitted from the Transcripts, may well have roused Meck’s interest again at this stage. But although he failed to gain access to the parchments for a second study (they had since become extremely brittle), the image had been simple and his copy ― as we now know ― exact. With the benefit of hindsight following our recent discoveries, it is now manifestly obvious that, if viewed instead as representative of a physical object or device, then that object’s apparent extremities perfectly mirror the demarcation lines of the “neutral zone”. The focus of Meck’s ensuing diagrams, the object itself, overwhelmingly supports the likelihood that he perceived this link himself.
When Meck visited the Vedish temples at the end of his long journey through Exelcia Minor, it is documented that his research into the monuments there did not yield positive results. Undocumented, however, is the claim circulated by some after his death that he returned to the temple of Uribb in Methar at a date purportedly after his breakthrough of the “device symbol.” Accordingly it is claimed that he spoke to some thereafter of having found faint markings of a corresponding symbol on the monument stones there. Such hearsay might not, in and of itself, pose strong evidence. No diary of Meck’s mentions a second visit; there are, in fact, entries from his last years that continue to refer to one visit. Nor indeed has any marking of that description since been found. Yet the trajectory of his logic would gather momentum around this time. Moreover it would continuously return to the symbol; a symbol which had, arguably, become the cornerstone for Meck’s whole conception of “the machine.”
His early study of Antissa’s architectural layering promulgates that the farther back one reaches to the time of the Builders, the more overtly the city conforms to patterns of roundness in its design; peaking in its genesis as a fortress comprised entirely of domes and spheres. This trend seems to have demanded, in Meck’s view, that the depicted shape of the transportation machine was not merely symbolic either.
In all his notes and diagrams to follow, Meck would thus favour the notion that the machine was spherical. Its extremities, he concluded, comprised the anchors, of which he estimated there would be between six and eight; this in turn necessitating some form of ancillary system with which to engage. The demarcation lines of the “neutral zone” thus became a proposed network of suspension cables, repeated on numerous levels of the transportation route as a means of arresting the machine’s hydraulic rise and descent. Inevitably, these developments in Meck’s conjecture would have contributed in turn to his conception of the “Gate” and its inherent mechanism.
The machine, of course, has been proven to exist. In the course of the Guild’s ongoing excavation of the Builders’ Deep, we have thus far uncovered nine. And despite the fact that Meck never saw a Deeping Sphere, or had any solid proof such spheres existed, his estimations were close. Although his writings reveal many attempts to the effect, he never reached a firm solution as to the exact relationship between the Deeping Sphere and the pipes that must power it ― this naturally implicating a fuller understanding of the Gate mechanic. Nor did he finalise any ideas regarding the force which must imperatively counteract the hydraulic descent in order to facilitate upward movement. Nor could he even begin to propose, with any seriousness, possibilities for the sphere’s operating controls; unable to deduce even whether these were automatic or manual. He strongly suspected the latter.
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Only now that Antissa has direct access to the Gate, the Deeping Spheres and the Builders’ Deep can the Guilds begin to approach such questions as Meck, for all his brilliance, could never have known to ask. The Gate itself, although comprised of interconnected loops of purest aqualumium, operates ― indeed, it behaves ― in ways that discombobulate our understanding; seemingly able to flex, morph and reshape itself in ways wholly unfamiliar to our comprehension of material substance and physical laws. No genius of Meck’s could have anticipated such wonders.
Throughout our national history, perception of the Builders themselves, as a people, has been twofold. That they were singular in knowledge and craft is irrefutable and recognised by all of our race, past and present. But that they may have been superior from the Vedish of their time in other ways is believed widely also. Our artworks depict them variously as giants, djinn or winged folk; this view not merely symbolic but heretofore firmly espoused by engineering society. Equally favoured has been the opposing view that they were the fathers of our race as it exists today: human Vedans desert-born whose legacy resides not only in knowledge but in our veins. Meck himself was not only adherent to this latter view but, throughout his life, career and deepening research, most inflexible upon it.
Now, as corroborated by all our findings to date, compelling new theory most convincingly suggests that he ― along with half the Vedish souls ever to dwell in this desert ― were incorrect. The Builders were not human. Not only that, but of their racial nature, if anything, theirs was a breed not of titans or giants but instead of beings very much smaller than humankind. At the present time estimates range between 2 and 3 feet tall.
With northern Vorth still oppressed under Ratheine occupation at the time of writing, the excavation of the Spectres Deep in Verunia remains impossible. However, Guild research has ascertained that this satellite may in fact have been a joint engineering enterprise conducted between the Builders and the Vedish Antissans of the time (period uncertain). Daring investigations of the site when it was discovered at the end of `3230 reported stone likenesses there that clearly depict members of a small non-human race. As no such depictions or artworks have yet been found anywhere in the Deep below Antissa, their existence at the Spectres would suggest a degree of collaboration with human Vedans.
As such, if it can reasonably be supposed that Azal knew the full truth of who the First Antissans were, then perhaps an attempt to persuade Meck to that end ― that the Vedish were not the blood-descendants of the Builders, our founders ― may indeed have set a wedge of dissonance between the two men, and in turn go some way to explaining the great engineer’s reticence about Azal in his private writings. After all, Meck had a reputation for stubbornness all his life. We shall, of course, never know beyond all doubt.
Yet still, his genius speaks. His solution to the Addendum of Azal’s Theorem has given the Royal Guild cause to revisit that work in full; containing as it does prospective principles that, if proven, could shed new light on the true nature of the Builders’ handicraft and science. Perhaps it contains the secrets that will enable us, in our future, to replicate such works of seeming sorcery ourselves.
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And so, as a matter of record royally sanctioned, it bears repeating in these pages that His Majesty the Satrap-Archimandrite has formally renounced the falsehood ― seeded such as it was by conspirators at the time of his ascension ― that when the Builders’ Deep was opened, the Mathematician Azal walked again in Antissa.
The marvels of his mathematics and the mark of his mind upon Meck’s will continue to shine bright lights unhooded on the path that lies before us. But let it be known that Albastra Azal’s last documented appearance in Vorth remains dated to the year `3177. The man, therefore, is certainly long deceased.
And of genius matched, Gaspar Meck now joins him in legend.
Osh Esidh, First Illuminator
`3232/Fon’verun