[18] Urguan's Hall

[Supremacy 3357]

Author/s: Lagomorphia

 

REGION 17: Urguan's Hall

 

 

The ancient city referred to nowadays as Urguan’s Hall was the capital of the prehistoric dwarves (known to scholars as the Forgotten Dwarves) and the centre of their civilisation. During the Iblees War, the dwarves experienced a schism. The dwarf known as Urguan led a faction of dwarves to join up with the other races. The larger body of dwarves were distrustful of the other races and prideful on their own abilities. They sought their own solution to Iblees’ invasion of Athera. They united their best runesmiths and technomancers and over ten years built their masterwork with which to defeat the Fallen One.

 

The huge device is known as The Seal, a room-sized machine capable of creating a pocket dimension.

 

 

 

The machine has four parts. Two colossal engines called Planeforges generate the pocket dimension. In the centre of the room is a huge horizontal gateway into the pocket dimension. On the far size is an enormous spherical disc known as the Ethereal Magnet. With enough power, it can draw any aengudaemon that corporealises in the city into the machine’s maw. In the corners of the room are massive arcane towers known as Soul Capacitors. They are aptly named, for the power draw of this machine is so great it requires living souls. Many, many living souls.

 

The Forgotten Dwarves tested this machine extensively. The power draw to create another world is colossal, and a huge number of dwarves had to be killed and their souls harvested to power it. In the first stage, only criminals were used, but soon the dwarves were slaughtering their own people en masse. A civil war broke out as the population resisted, but the death only provided more fuel for the machine.

 

 

 

The architects of the Seal tested it extensively. Firstly they used one of their own people. The test proved the machine worked, but as the pocket dimension was empty of everything it proved fatal to the dwarf they tested it on too. Later, they managed to deceive a minor aengudaemon and test the machine on it too. The wrathful entity broke free: the machine was not strong enough to hold it. The few Forgotten Dwarves left realised that more power was needed, more souls, and began to plan to raid the surface to bring back more sacrifices. They began building an army of golem constructs. However, the Seal machine was damaged during the aengudaemon’s escape. Vengeful souls managed to manifest as spectral creatures, possessing the dead, the golem constructs and some of the machinery. The surviving dwarves, consisting of the machine architects, the lords and king and the few surviving military were too few to fight them and were killed. The spectral manifestations of the sacrificed dwarves decided that the Seal could not be allowed to consume more souls. While they could influence the world, they did not possess the power to destroy the machine. Instead, they sealed the city and took the five keys to the Hall of the Ancients to the far corners of the world so that the city could never be opened again.
 

Later, Garzardiel would deceive Aeriel and trap her in the soul capacitors. An archaengul provided more than enough power to operate the machine. Garzardiel then used the Ethereal Magnet to capture Iblees in one last battle and sealed him into the pocket dimension, where he could not interact with the outside world at all. Aeriel soon realised Garzardiel’s gambit: while Aeriel could easily escape the soul capacitors, doing so would break them, freeing both Iblees and a countless bodiless dwarven souls which Iblees would then consume and reach his full power once more. She either had to stay and be the force holding Iblees out of the world, or unleash him wielding untold power (and that’s relative to archdaemon power).

So Aeriel stayed, slowly reaching out to the Ascended, hoping that her servants would find a way to free her without bringing about the doom of the world.