#amalgamate

Circles on circles, a city constantly building upon itself, new heights, new bodies, and new investment opportunities, skyscrapers arising and then being cannibalized and fed to the newest project. Vision and clout spend better than Calcar, better than gold, the earliest foundations of the town have been eaten away so much that, if not for the undercity constantly strengthening pillars and holding it up, this ‘last height of humanity’ would surely collapse in on itself.

The outermost rings reek of jealousy, the middle hunger, and the innermost a constant, choking paranoia and fear. The Queensguard and their sectioned headquarters at the edges keeping the town just barely from killing itself. At the center, a staircase, going to the edge of the world.

Only the best of the best can live here, can afford to or be allowed to physically. If your forme and style veer too far from the current standard, merchant or permanent resident, you may wake in the Officer’s waiting room with some better options picked out, if they like you. Or a guard station by the outer limits if they do not.

At the top of it all, the staircase reaches the tip of the Queen’s abode, our Astra Memoria, an inverted complex of crystal and glass, positioned upside down at the height of our tallest cavern. Her and the chosen few keeping so close to the surface, keeping watch on the world above so that once it’s healed, once it’s truly ready for us, she will set us free.

Every engine must have its fuel, and more than the miners down south keeping the lights lit, more than the dying mages in the greens and the worn fisherfolk breaking themselves for their food, what the Capital needs most to live, is people they can step on just below, and eat when they need to.

Underground even in an Underground Citadel, the Gwin is a sprawling mass of old rebel tunnels and still active sewer works, its people living on trash barges below Chalcedony’s gutter. Some of the folk work pitiful day jobs in the city itself, spiffing themselves up to get stepped on all day, but some spend their whole lives in the open secret that is this town of refuse.

Most piecemeal work is found here, taking a clear strip of skin off yourself, a finger or two of the crystal’s not got yet just to clear some debts. Bits from all different people all slid together to be a replacement arm for some bastard barrister who’s barely got a few spikes. The work is lovely, top of the line, but that’s not enough to get you out of the gutter.

Hell some of the patch limbs they sell up on the proper streets these days are the cleanest jobs you’ve ever seen. Not a spot of Calcar, fully grown, fully formed, and nobody can even find the seams.

Stagnation is sin, acceptance is avarice.

“The world above lies scorched of life and substance. As we await its rebirth, should we not be rebirthed ourselves? The dretch of first humanity failed its setting and its stars, we must be deserving of more.

Utilize this gift to be greater, not some infinite mirror of singleminded aesthetic but our own personal perfection. All flesh that walks the under earth is but materials for your true sculpting. Your rote birth is simply a blank slate. Make and remake yourselves, grow and shine and hatch out, til this geodic egg of our world below–when we hatch out, when the sun and moon shine upon us again, it will be to a grand kaleidoscope of perfect formes and souls. Chase cellular creativity, chase yourself, your true image formed in flesh. Pain be the only limiter and a cheap one at that.”

The least beloved splinter of the Calcar Church, if they can even be called that at this point, similar only in their mirrored worship for the hidden skies and the Queen herself. Beyond simply embracing Amalgamation, that has become their core binding tenet.

“Change and trade your bodies forever until the earth above falls away again and our stagnant seed can blossom anew under the stars.”

Calcar is not a sign of devotion or divine punishment, it is merely a reminder to advance, again and again, a sign of flesh that no longer serves you. Chase more, find new perfect planks for your Theseus ship sailing through the dull masses.

Some have more strict requirement about what can join themselves, where they can gain the additions to their nervous systems. The majority actually follow in that, a variation of the golden rule, trading limbs with friends and family often, still serving their bodies and chasing their form but with no selfish slant.

Most people of the depths (save for the most devout) actually lean far more towards Geodism than the Calcar Belief in their daily lives. If you point them out to them though, that silent neutral majority is never what they think of.

To all but the most experienced, Geodists are all the worst of themselves, the extremists you see in the papers. Those the Queen has labeled ‘Absolute Geodism”; nightmares of the worst of Officers centuries past, monsters creeping on the edge of town; you must gain your perfect self however you can, however you must. That arm would be better served and loved upon your own shoulder. Care not for the hacked up imperfection that you've left behind.

Though blamed for every outbreak of Mad Amalgamates, very few have ever been brought to punishment. Queensguard are told to stop pursuing them, once they’ve cleared past the edge of town.

Communities can form, out in the condemned caverns, or in ill used back alleys, but usually only with those whose appearance and aesthetic choices align, else wise their groups will skirmish, attacking each other as “pathetic perversions of aesthetics”.

That being said when one of them is under chase, all nearby, and other formes beside, will come to their aid.

When truly desperate for parts, it’s said that Mad Amalgamates, originating from them or not, will sometimes be herded to towns and settlements, the attacks and skirmishes that follow will leave plenty of materials for them to pick through and add to their collection.

“So much life and beauty, and so much misery keeping it all going.”

The ‘Greens’ are a series of interconnected caverns and tunnels constantly flooded with all the moisture, nutrients and power as the regime can muster. Foods of every type known to the underground are grown and processed here, the work constantly boosted by a cycle of young mages who couldn’t buy their way out of the grunt work.

Some caverns host smaller farmworks within artificial ‘seasons’ that never end, whatever setting’s best suited to their target produce. Some grow subsidized ‘nutrient essentials’ like mushrooms that provide the Calciferol we need…once provided by the Sun. Others are run by private companies, who may do whatever they like to gain profit on their land.

Lumberworks transformed into backdrops for Calcedony tourists hunting prey, else growing systems pushed to the maximum. Chained Constellatials and and feeding spells positioned right above their targets, flora and fauna alike growing nonstop, no night, no rest until their harvest. Some issues have been raised, but there’s so much else to worry about…

Mage academies exist here but are highly competitive, and kick students at the slightest grade drop, unless they have connections. Ensuring the best of the best put their all into staying that way, and that the majority of students who enter, must then keep in the Greens and clocking in constantly to settle their loans and have a chance of freeing themselves and settling any elsewhere.

So much energy is continually pumped into the area that new ‘species’ occasionally originate without intention, escaped livestock or the seeds themselves developing into new formes. If they’re useless they’re hunted as a pest, if they’re large enough…What a lovely new advent for limb-harvesting, add them to the stock!

Do NOT Amalgamate. Kill any who attempt.

While the Ascendant and Abstract breathe the natural power of life and arcana, these beings breathe fear and pain, they seek it out, they gorge upon it.

“No ‘species’ of yet that we’ve identified, each unique in its function, forme, and derangements. The category is built of twisted life who would disdain and disgrace every other. The most violent and vile, like a nightmare come crawl up from the depths. Some function in a more physical brutality, dragging creatures of all persuasions into their burning dens and rending every ounce of sweat and blind stress from their prey before consuming them alive, often from the edges inwards. Their strange magic keeping the poor wretch’s heart beating long past the point of natural failure. All suffering they drink in, and then the corpse, and then they make more of themselves.

Sometimes directly, a skinless arm twisting out of their abdomen, teeth sprouting as new armor from their back, their prey incorporated alive-in a manner of speaking. Or else they save up energy, over several kills, and they leave a disgusting little orb of viscera in a piping hot thermal vent. The scent of rot and frying flesh means that there’s an egg, and that you should go back the way you came.”

The first course of action upon encountering is to run, leave any who are downed and if a limb of yours gets fluid contact, either get accessed by an Officer within the first 12 hours or remove it yourself and give it unto the Guards. Should nearby Descendant even be suspected, contact local Queensguard immediately. Specialized crews or hunters of a certain quality will be dispatched to sort out the issue. Do not hunt them on your own, even for vengeance. You’ll just be more fodder for their ranks.

Our one singular solace is that they do not enjoy waterworks or the cooler temperatures, and will seclude themselves to the deeper magmic caverns by choice. All known brood sites have been long sealed and are monitored by remote sigils. Any areas with tunnels reaching above 121 C are immediately tagged and will be investigated by a heat-tolerant surveyor crew. Unlucky bastards.

“It is a strange instinct, to classify and approach all manner of life and beyond, in how best you can break them apart and make use of them.”

If the mages can manipulate a strange and unseen energy, what we call magic, then these beings are powered entirely by it. No spines or venous systems, no blood or hearts just a strange power pumping through their impossible, curving veins. They are energy incarnate, and one day soon we’ll figure out how to use them.

Surveyors have found depictions of the same Ascendant formes in deeper caverns than any outposts have inhabited within record. Some believe this implies a pre-cathedral religion, perhaps even pre-fall. Or maybe it’s just one of these freaks depicting themselves.

Regardless, these formes are the rarest in the depths, only a handful ever noted of each ‘species’. Absurdly powerful but they all choose to flee long before ever attacking, if we give them the chance to run. Amalgamation of their bodies is rarely attempted, though those in the black markets will buy up even rumored parts for great prices just to try.

“I have tried the taste of them, just once. I observed a scuffle between two kindred forms, hid away from the blasts of strange magic and skimmed the wreckage afterwards. I found what I think was a finger of sorts. It went to my half-gone pointer with a bastard (but well tested) stamp and I fell into a strange, sparking fever for days on end, before begging my brother to strike off the whole arm. It’s still in a box by my bed, the whole arm odd-twisted and translucent now. It holds no touch of rot, no sign of decay for the decade now it’s spent in there.”

All types of these carry companions with them, little orbing lights that flutter along and aid them when we attack, healing or taking blows. Perhaps others of their kind, the most numerous beasts assisting the rarer ones, each other species of this category whittled down to a vanishing few…

All creatures of this category once subdued, dead or alive, legally must be turned over to the nearest Queensguard outpost as fast as possible. So the category may be studied and better understood… In fact, there is a specific team of hunters in employ from the Capital, sent to hunt and harvest any they can find, well these beasts and another kind…