RYE - The Spire

For as long as they had existed, the lizardmen had contemplated the night sky. The Old Ones had shown them the meaning behind constellations - how the alignment of the stars could foretell future events, allow the past to be uncovered, and even influence events in the present. It was for this purpose that the First Spawning of slann were made - while their younger kin attended to the particulars of the design of the Fated Place, the elder toad-mages reshaped the night sky itself, using spells that took decades to weave to reach out beyond the atmosphere and reshape the glittering lights in the heavens into an order more pleasing to the Old Ones.

So it was that even from the first, when the eldest skinks crawled forth from the spawning pools, they were compelled by gene-wrought instinct to climb atop the tallest temples in Itza and catalogue the stars. The constellations they found there would influence the fate of the lizardmen at all times going forward - the Eye of Chotec, Tepok's Feather, Potec's Mirror and more all foretold different phases of activity in the Great Plan, and when any of them was in the ascendant spot in the sky, there was sure to be a spawning of lizardmen graced by the touch of that particular Old One.

Monitoring these constellations was thus a task of extreme importance, and an entire sub-caste of skink astronomers - many of whom bore the marks of Azyr upon their scales - quickly popped up to fill this need. Every night for thousands of years, no matter if cloud or smoke or the undulating miasma of Chaotic energy occluded the sky, the stargazer skinks would take to the top of each city's pyramids and look upwards, using telescopic lenses woven through with enchantments of clarity and true-seeing to punch through any obstructions. They would catalogue the positions of the Ten Most High - the constellations directly pertaining to the Old Ones - their arrangement relative to each other, and their expected movement patterns. Then they would repeat this for the hundreds of lesser constellations observed over the years, and pass all of this data to the attendants of the ruling slann of that city. Those attendants would analyze the morass of potential portents, quibbling with each other over which omens were more likely to be of significance, and finally present a distilled report to their slann master, or their chief scribe if the slann happened to be insensate. It was by these means that many important decisions had been made by the lizardmen over the millennia, choices that had saved cities and doomed empires, for the stars foretold all if one could but watch them carefully enough, and the lizardmen had all the time in the world to do so.

Even now that the lizardmen had left the Fated Place and labored on a new world, under a foreign sky, the astronomers continued their work. The stars above Mochantia were less orderly than those they were used to, with more haphazard arrangements and no immediately obvious threads with which to tie prophecies together, but the astronomers were patient and diligent with their studies, and slowly but surely they began to see the patterns and constellations of importance that characterized this new night. They were even able to see some patterns suggestive of the Old Ones in the stars now, although these configurations were faint and elusive, appearing only in mathematical projections that suggested they would show glimpses of themselves perhaps once every few millennia.

It was thus of no surprise to the astronomer's clades when the great architect Awanabil'tat approached them with a project in mind, one of such scope and ambition that it would have been folly but a decade ago to even consider. He envisioned a grand spire, a road of obsinite that stretched from the ground to the very heavens themselves. It was to be the first step to not only observing the stars that were so similar yet so different to those that had shone overhead in Lustria, but to reaching them in the flesh.

The astronomers accepted Awanabil'tat's proposal before he could even articulate it, for they had foreseen the construction of this edifice long ago, and had only been waiting for him to catch up with prophesized events. They had, naturally, been inclined to help such a monument come into fruition as fast as possible, and so had seeded rumors and suggestions among the communication circles of high-ranking skink chieftains decades earlier, ensuring that when the time came, everything would be as ready as they could make it. Indeed, it was these murmurings that had gradually coleasced into notions and then outright ideas and come to Awanabil'tat's attention, ensuring that he would throw his considerable support behind the project when the appointed time came.

Construction began immediately - the bureaucratic wizardry of Awanabil'tat was bolstered by the prearrangements of the astronomer clades, who had ensured that appropriate caches of supplies just so happened to be placed in the four eldest temple-cities, ready to be allocated to the adjacent site as soon as the word was given. The convoys set out through the jungle, following preordained navigation charts that took them past and around concentrations of Mochantian wildlife that otherwise would have obstructed their journey, and arrived in hardly any time at all at the one and only place such a monument could have been placed.

The clearing that Mazdamundi's spawn-kin - Starwalkers, as some now called them - had departed Mochantia from a century and a half ago remained in the exact condition it had been in back then. The jungle had not encroached a single millimeter into the clearing carved out by the will of the slann, and a thick layer of dust had built up over the patches of glossy stone that each elder mage-priest had rested upon. The entire clearing still had a slight chill to it, and the mages accompanying the expedition shivered for other reasons, for their arcane sight showed them the echoes of the Ritual of Departure that still lingered in the vicinity. Even the traceries of the spell were terrifyingly complex to witness, and the weight of their presence was almost oppressive, crowding the air with a teeth-tingling resonance. It was for this reason that the site had gone unused for so long, though it was a prime site for a temple-city in all other aspects. Now that mystic reverberation would be turned to other purposes, for the spell of the Starwalkers had imbued the clearing with a longing for the heavens, and those same energies would assist the construction of the Spire as it stretched up beyond the boundaries of the atmosphere.

The effects were felt almost immediately as the excavation began. Teams of kroxigors hefted gargantuan stone rods that hummed and shook to break apart soil and rock, boring deep shafts down into the earth. Down and down they dug, and the earth seemed to part before them almost eagerly, until at last the kroxigors had reached far into the bedrock and gems upon their equipment began to shine, a surefire sign that they had reached far enough to tap into the deep leylines running below the clearing. Only then did they begin to excavate properly, employing a rotating system of bastiladons with gargantuan containers affixed to their sides to haul the soil and rock away. For days and days they dug, carving out massive pits from the earth while gold-scaled Chamon skink priests painstakingly transmuted the acres of loose dirt, clay, and sediment into smooth blocks of stone that could be more efficiently transported into an obsinite conversion pit. As long, flat carts of stone wheeled away upon roads that sped their passage by converting excess friction into momentum, more of them returned bearing branching, spiked pylons of obsinite that forked and split like the roots of trees. The kroxigors took these with gentleness belying their size, and placed them into the colossal pits they had dug in intricate, interlocking layers, forming a network of obsinite strands that gradually grew larger and larger as they approached the surface. The stone pieces melded with each other as they worked, nascent enchantments laid upon them triggering as they were placed and feeding upon the energies of the leylines to sustain themselves.

By the end of it, the kroxigors laid the obsinite root network into the ground across the span of several square kilometers, with each bundle of stone stretching several hundred meters below the ground. It was a level of terrain alteration unparalleled even by the founding of the largest of temple-cities, and all to supply the proper amount of geomantic energy to the structure itself. The base of it, although still massive, was designed to be much narrower, consisting of a single gargantuan sheet of shaped obsinite as wide as Itza's largest plazas that was fifty meters thick. It was projected to be so large and heavy that it was impossible to use any existing city's manufacturing facilities to make and then transport it - instead, the lizardmen were forced to create a uniquely-designed supermassive obsinite generation scaffold around the site of the base itself, a gargantuan decagon that they filled with the accumulated detritus of a century of activity from across the empire.

Millions upon millions of tons of rock and soil and bone were deposited within, making it perhaps the largest mass graveyard the lizardmen had ever constructed. Seeing this, as a means of sanctifying the monument in the sight of their god, several priests of Ayotzl entombed themselves within the scaffold, creating a crude but effective ritual that drew the resting place of their bodies under the turtle-god's protection. Not to be outdone by their newer brethren, the clergy of Sotek also joined in, shipping orks in from the north - at great expense in time and labor, for the greenskins had to be placed in stasis to avoid their spores finding new ground yet again - to use as sacrifice. The attention of the lizardmen's gods rested heavily upon the site even without the calls of their cults, however - its importance resonated in the narrative waveforms of the Warp, and the gods could sense it.

Activating the scaffolding's conversion spell drew so much energy from the Geomantic Web that the Preservation Barriers in surrounding cities flickered and failed momentarily, and even Awanabil'tat resorted to nervously quadruple-checking his calculations to make sure he hadn't accidentally triggered a power outage. After over a day of transmutation, however, the scaffold's spell completed and it fell away, revealing the single largest piece of obsinite in existence. It was an edifice that could be seen from kilometers away, looming ominously above the treetops like a fossilized chunk of the night sky that had fallen down to earth. Even this would need reinforcing to withstand the demands placed upon it, however, and the next year was dedicated solely to this task.

Paired skink and kroxigor masons clambered up the monument's smooth sides with chisels and hammers, carving sigil after sigil into its surface. Ten times ten names and titles of the Old Ones they inscribed, and ten times that of longer invocations and calculations that matched to the particular portfolio of one Old One or another. The lizardmen carved pictographic representations of their history into the ample space the platform offered, synthesizing hundreds of thousands of gemstones and filling in the eyes and scales of their images with glittering jewels. So too did they decorate the many, many effigies and carvings of the gods that were invariably inscribed into the platform - the shining fangs of Sotek and the craggy shell of Ayotzl occupied proud, prominent spaces on opposite ends of the platform, each of them paired in a seamless yet decidedly subordinate fashion to the idols of Tlanxla and Potec respectively. The other eight sides of the base were left with decidedly noticeable empty spaces, an action which was commanded by the slann. Much gossip and speculation swept through the circles of the other lizardmen - mostly skinks, for that was their nature - as to what could possibly be meant by such a decree, though no answer was forthcoming.

Drawn by the sigils and gemstones and the sheer force of ritual embedded into the structure, the energies of the Geomantic Web suffused the gargantuan decagon with solidity and grounding and attractive forces, acting as a gargantuan battery and energetic reserve for the greater structure that was to follow. Like the roots of a tree that had grown deep into the ground, the structure drank deep of the earth's support, and became as immoveable and implacable as the planet itself. More work had gone into this one edifice than would have been needed to build five temple-cities entirely from scratch, and yet this was only the beginning.

With the foundation secured, all that remained for the Spire was to reach to the heavens - and reach them they did. Obsinite production slowed to a crawl across the empire as all non-essential resources not needed for ongoing expansion were diverted to the Spire's work site. There, gargantuan piles of refuse stone accumulated and were fed into specialized obsinite pits that were shaped to be both shallow and extraordinarily long. Mold after mold was cast, each of which had to be painstakingly reinforced with Chamon-derived sigils to prevent it from snapping under its own weight - each of them was almost a kilometer long while only being a few dozen meters thick at most. It was here that the kroxigor showcased their aptitude as a subspecies, for the pieces had to be maneuvered and installed, and no slann could spare themselves to lend the assistance of a Thunder Lizard or Quango. Instead, teams of kroxigor arrayed themselves in great formations like they were going to battle and laid great lengths of rope over each enormous slab in turn, pulling with the assistance of entire trains of Bastilodons while other kroxigors made use of colossal levers to hoist the slabs upwards bit by bit. Skink priests joined together into hundreds of Octarine Cabals to help, casting spells of buoyancy atop the obsinite pieces, but by and large it was the implacable muscle and will of the kroxigor that pulled them upright, and the subvocal hums and clicking of the otherwise-quiet giants that allowed them to coordinate and 'walk' the initial slabs over to their spots upon the base, using many, many kilometers of rope to control the movement of the obsinite.

The initial pieces were the thickest, and thus perniciously difficult to lift atop the base itself, for each weighed many millions of tons, but the ingenuity and strength of the kroxigors was immense, and the geomantic energy of the nascent structure helped in this as well - the slabs became impossibly light in comparison to their size when in contact with the base, and the stone seemed to hold them remarkably stable as well. This in tandem with the continued assistance of many Octarine Cabals, who calmed and manipulated the weather around the site to keep the air still, allowed for the first of the slabs to be hoisted and locked into place, each piece fitting into the base and their neighbors so smoothly that there were hardly any visible seams. They formed the first layer of a titanic scaffold around the edge of the base, with only the repeated grooves running down their interior surfaces leaving any hint as to their eventual purpose.

This process repeated itself a hundred times across the next several years, growing seemingly more precarious each time. The lizardmen, using nothing more than reinforced rope, cleverly-placed pulleys, and an ample dose of magic, muscle, and gene-forged intellect, erected a titanic, hollow spire that towered like an impossible black line high into the sky. Like many pieces of lizardmen architecture, it was shaped in a pyramidal fashion, if one that had been extraordinarily distended, for each of its layers was a kilometer high, and was thinner than the one below it only by a fraction. The work of hauling each new block upwards was aided greatly by the fact that the structure's geomantic framework held its component parts in place, and fed its builders with a steady flow of energy as they labored, but as the structure grew ever higher and the atmosphere ever thinner, it became necessary to strategize. A number of 'staging grounds' were established every ten kilometers or so, and temporary platforms embedded into the sides of the superstructure to rest pieces atop of while the work crews that had hauled them up that far were able to rest and exchange themselves with another creche of laborers. Octarine Cabals followed the kroxigors up, casting spells that calmed the gale-force winds that blew this high off the ground, and generating bubbles of breathable air when the work took them higher still.

As the Spire ascended into the upper atmosphere, it began to become impractical to haul the great slabs up its sides, and a new method of transport was needed. Assistance in this matter came from the one skink who was perhaps more familiar with the Spire even than Awanabil'tat, for it was an unmissable feature in his sky. Tiktaq'to brought the aerial corps of Hexoatl and several other cities to bear upon the project, using his Mask of the Winds in tandem with the Octarine Cabals and their magic to compel vast swarms of Terradons and Ripperdactyls to lift and maneuver the higher reaches of the slabs into place. Even the Loquatl saw use, when they were not called away to have their essences scanned by the slann for incorporation into the spawning pools - the gargantuan flyers used their wings to buffet the slabs and keep them from toppling over. Tiktaq'to's skink pilots proved their worth here as well, able to scuttle bravely across precarious expanses of obsinite to tie knots, secure loose equipment, and fetch medical aid should they spot any danger.

The Spire grew, and grew, and grew. First it towered above the surrounding temple-cities, even drawing in a curious Thunder Lizard on one occasion as the colossal beast stared inquisitively at something rivalling its own size. Then it towered over the clouds, and acquired the curious effect of diffusing and interrupting many storms that blew through it, something in the hum of geomantic energies playing through it calming their tumultuous currents. Then it towered yet higher, into the upper reaches of the atmosphere where even the Quango rarely drifted. Kosamalotl, the younger of the two sky-eels, coiled around it from time to time, unused to having a companion in the cold, empty expanse of the deep sky. Then the Spire grew even further, and broke through the intangible boundary between planetary space and true void.

There was more at play to this than just the mere delineation of where the atmosphere effectively ended - on a metaphysical level, the Spire no longer existed solely within the confines of Mochantia's conceptual envelope, and was thus no longer wholly subject to its laws. The Octarine Cabals could feel it instantly when they walked upon the Spire's highest reaches, and Awanabil'tat, who continued to monitor and coordinate the entire operation from the ground, confirmed their reports - there was magic running through the void just as it did the substrate of the earth, and though the greater scope and breadth of its flows was at present incomprehensible, it was indelibly similar to its planet-bound kin. It was Astromantic energy, and its first documented manifestation was the shell that the lizardmen had just broken through. Like layers of oil and water, the geomantic energy of Mochantia sat in a comparatively dense shell around the planet, its structure too dense to permit the comparatively 'light' astromantic energy to mix with it. This, aside from confirming a number of complex magi-mathematical theorums among the Sublime Communion that Awanabil'tat had been made privvy to over the years - as well as disproving dozens of others - had the curious effect of insulating magical effects that originated in the void from having planetside effects, and vice versa. A thin skin, fragile as a bubble of soap yet as strong as any Preservation Barrier, had formed along the boundary line between planet and space, and unless shaped and directed with exceeding force, most any spell would surely fizzle out when attempting to cross it.

Fortunately for the Spire's design, the presence of magic native to the void had not been a totally foreign thought to the lizardmen, and the tower's structure had been built with this possibility in mind. It took only a few comparatively minor adjustments - a few thousand adjusted glyphs, a thorough review of the magical processes, and a trifold divinatory reading by the hand of Azyr mages, priests of the gods, and the altars of the Old Ones - to be certain the process would function correctly, and Awanabil'tat gave his approval for preliminary activation and testing of the orbital supply transport function of the Spire.

From its base, the Spire was rooted into the earth, its metaphysical signature melded with Mochantia's until it was as indistinguishable from the planet as a mountain. As its layers climbed ever higher, that geomantic connection ran through its hollow outer layers, holding obsinite slabs together with titanic levels of certainty. Even as it punched through the viscous layer of separated magic at the edge of the atmosphere, its geomancy held strong, the comparatively denser planetary energies repelling astral skeins of magic like magnets of reversed polarity. This was beneficial, for it would, once the Spire was complete, allow for the placement of atmosphere-generating enchantments upon its surface. For its primary purpose, however, the lizardmen would have to temporarily nullify this property.

At Awanabil'tat's command, the Spire thrummed as spells built into its very foundations spooled up into life. Intricate arrays of sigils glowed with cold blue light, and a network of empty spaces - void enchantments much like the ones adorning the Star Chambers of many slann - expanded through the hollow interior of the Spire, thereby clearing that space's metaphysical signature of any association with Mochantia. It was as if a vacuum had suddenly formed, a straw leading directly down the length of the Spire until it reached the planet's surface. It was an irresistable draw for the astromantic energies of the void, and the spaceborne magic rushed down the Spire's central column like falling water until it had filled it to the brim. There it stayed, trapped within the structure by the pressure of Mochantia's geomantic envelope, like a bubble of air held underwater.

The pressure within the Spire stabilized, and the next phase of enchantments began to activate. Glyphs lit up on the Spire's inner walls, drawing in the ample astromantic energy around them and converting it into spells of lift and weightlessness. Under their ministrations, the immense platform placed at the bottom of the Spire's interior began to float, gently rising upwards. Here the architectural prowess of Awanabil'tat revealed itself - under his guidance, the Spire had been built to such exacting specifications that there was no gap between the edge of the hovering platform and the inner walls of the Spire. They drifted past each other with no more than an atom's width between them, and yet glided upward without a hitch. As the platform rose, it left another void beneath it, one that Mochantia's planetary energies rushed in to fill. This buoyed the platform upwards, as if it were being carried by a rising tide. With the void's magic pulling and the planet's pushing, the platform ascended the Spire in less than a minute, and Awanabil'tat walked to the edge of his creation. Before and below him, Mochantia was laid out like a gently curving disc, an endless band of green ringed on either side by deep blue. It was a view that only a few had previously had the privilege to witness, and none in such a fashion.

From that point on, the pace of construction sped up rapidly. Spatial alteration magics had been employed to allow for the platform's full width to rise to the top, even as the Spire itself narrowed with height. This enabled the lizardmen to transport great shipments of material and workers to orbit and back within minutes, rather than having to have Tiktaq'to's crews fly everything up in their claws. A settlement swiftly took place atop the Spire; not a true temple-city, but a formidable outpost nonetheless that could not possibly have stood aloft at such a height were orbital mechanics and the physics-defying enchantments of geomancy not at play. This was Tlililuikakalli, the House of the Black Sky, and it would become the primary hub for lizardmen ventures into space during the next centuries.

At its heart was an inverted pyramid covered in a sheet of translucent, glossy ice condensed from moisture in the upper atmosphere, with the hollow skeleton of a true ziggurat built of the same material rising above it. Though there was no air in the void, a whistling wind constantly ran through this structure, coming from nowhere and cutting to the bone. The apparatus drew in currents of void magic like a drain, piping it down into the central column of the Spire to keep the structure operational. This was by far the biggest structure in Tlililuikakalli, and such was its importance that an entire batallion of Temple Guard watched over it at all times.

Ringing the outside of the settlement were a series of spires topped with obsinite domes, stretching into the void like black trees. In these, the finest telescopes lizardmen artifice could fashion were placed, and those astronomers who won the fight for such a coveted place ensconced themselves to observe the stars from a greater vantage point than ever before. Without the occlusion of the atmosphere, the divinatory portents given by the stars could be properly interpreted, and though these would take decades if not longer to bear fruit, even the first signs were promising.

The rest of Tlililuikakalli was made up mostly of housing, barracks and aviaries and other such sundries to accomodate those who would be staying upon the station as it rotated through the eternal night. Thanks to the Spire acting as a giant elevator, a permanent crew was not a requirement, and most of Tlililuikakalli's inhabitants would cycle in and out as they would any other temple-city, but some would stay for longer periods of time, most notably an extension of Tiktaq'to's air forces. The skink general had forseen that his fliers would soon not only be required to make their rounds through terrestrial skies, but traverse the void as well, and he was determined to ensure that the lizardmen would not suffer a dearth of experience in that realm when the time came. Even now, wings of Terradons, Ripperdactyls, and Loquatl flew around the Spire in great flocks, practicing what it was like to fly in a space free from gravity's grip entirely. There was much progress to be made on that front, for although magic could provide the aerial corps with air and some amount of lift to propel their way through the airless void, the distances of space combat were anticipated to be far, far greater than anything on the ground. They would need further advancements in enchantment and equipment alike to truly wing their way through the black realm of space.

Within a decade, it was done - perhaps the greatest feat of construction made by lizardmen hands since the crafting of the Polar Gates, accomplished in large part by the work of a skink. Awanabil'tat had a dwelling made for himself on the edge of Tlililuikakalli, where he could both watch the stars above and the planet below, twinkling like precious gems in the infinite depths. His vision had always been perceptive, even for an architect, from the first, and yet it seemed that the more he learned and accomplished, the more he realized there was yet to do. Gazing at the stars, knowing that one day he would reach them, and the worlds around them, and bring each and every one into line with the Great Plan, Awanabil'tat felt the weight of duty settle ever deeper into his soul. "All I have done up until now has only been the beginning," he mused to himself.

"The road before us stretches ever onwards, and only now do I begin to see its shape."

The Spire has been fully constructed! It stretches from the ground to beyond the envelope of Mochantia's atmosphere, allowing for the transport of materials and personnel to orbit within minutes. Tlililuikakalli, a rudimentary spaceport, sits atop the Spire, housing astronomers, workers, and a rudimentary corps of space-flying lizardmen founded by Tiktaq'to, who will one day become the pilots and crew of starfaring vessels. Multiple options unlocked.

Glossary:

Tlililuikakalli - House of the Black Sky