[Daemon] Garumdir - Daemon of Craftsmanship, Progress and Innovation

[squakhawk 7888]

 

FATHER OF MACHINES

Birth of Innovation

 

The advent of innovation started with the emergence of Garumdir; drifting in the endless and vast cosmos - lacking form or purpose. His realm, an empty canvas without the fruition of ideas nor the spark of change that would bequeath new creations. For a long while, the lonesome Daemon dwelled on his purpose - and once his purpose was carved into his soul, the cogs of his work began. 

 

In his dotage, the Daemon did not leave his realm. His limbs became worn, and his palms expressed his hard work and diligence to his craft; Garumdir mindfully laboured for years, too obsessed with innovating and improving his work. Slowly, his realm expanded with his trade; walls and furniture, abnormal spires or odd tools without functionality. The craftsman felt a lust - a selfish desire to create, to destroy, and to better his work in pursuit of perfection. 

 

The forge god never tired of his endless role of innovation, yet became exhausted for ideas - but knew there was limitless potential to his work. Garumdir had minimal interaction with his divine brethren, yet noticed their infatuation with the mortal world; ignorant to what it was, but happy to relish in what he came across. Like a father to a son, he proudly gazed at the epoch-making tools, workshops and ideas that mortals came to form. 

 

With newfound concepts, the Daemon upheld mortal conventions and tools, and improved them by a hundred-fold. If man could make a pickaxe, Garumdir could make a drill for a refinery of ores to be chipped and gathered. If man could make a sword, Garumdir would somehow make it sharper than it could be. 

 

Slowly, the other Aengudaemon came to respect the obsessive craftsman, and he became a point of contact for help - to use his crafts for their own selfish gain. Garumdir was uncaring, as long as he could progress his work, and find new ways to bring innovation to life. Dragur, the Daemon of Knowledge, came across the lonesome craftsman, who saw potential in his brother's craft. Whilst Dragur was interested in the facet of innovation, Garumdir was impressed by the existence of dragons yet saw it as too flagrant and open; he wanted to refine Dragur’s creative outlet into something less violent and risk-worthy.

 

Garumdir began his largest project - the Spark. Each day, he worked on his newfound passion with meticulous planning and knowledge gathered from observations of Dragur’s work, or conversations with his divine comrade. He began to refine the Spark until it became whole, and centred it within his realm. From his work, came the existence of cogs, wheels, machines, and automaton. All who gazed at his creation knew him by many titles - the Craftsman, the Machine-God, and the Innovator. 

 

With the rise of the Archdaemon, Garumdir did not have an active or present role; he felt it was no obligation of his own to intervene, and only proved his usefulness by procuring weapons and tools to allow his brothers and sisters a fighting chance - not out of a selfless desire, but to see the existence of descendants prosper, and to provide him with ambition and ideas to work. 

 

To stem his observations on descendants, Garumdir manipulated his divine creation to bring rise to his patrons; the Reevers habitually manifested and overtook his realm as their home, and worked to stalk descendant creations, and to craft like their father does. However, the Daemon feared that his godly brothers and sisters would cull him for his ungodly work, and so did not utilise the Spark outside of his world. 

 

Even now, the Machine-God tinkers with cogs; plumes of smoke, churning of wheels, clinking of levers and the hammering of metals burn within his realm.

 

 

SIEGE OF VAL’GARIS

War Against Ixris

 

Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. As Garumdir continued to observe innovation and spend time making extravagant machines far beyond mortal comprehension, demons watched like wolves from afar at a target weak, and alone. Ixris, knowing The Father of Craft’s isolation and emboldened with his overflowing Inferi forces, plotted to plunder Garumdir’s realm. The Daemon’s realm was rife with knowledge, machines, artefacts, masterworks- most importantly, The Spark. 

 

It came at an hour quiet after The Second War, unusual as the war in heaven continued to violently rage on between the pantheon as they wrested control over the power vacuum left behind. One, two, a thousand, a hundred thousand, demons began to swarm and infest Val’Garis as Ixris opened the gateway with overwhelming force. The Craftsman was unprepared, but as his mind began to think, his metallic hands began to work. The Craftsman set his Reevers to the defenses whilst he crafted more, shaving off details and intricate technique as he produced each automata with increasing speed and efficiency. In days as Inferi began to raze and pillage his realm, The Craftsman had amassed an army of thousands- seeming almost cobbled together with each unit slightly different from the last, Ixris had made a sore mistake. He mistook these creations for disorganized, and Garumdir himself for desperate. 

 

As the outermost parts of his realm were surely destroyed, being scrapped and pillaged for whatever wealth they had, Garumdir and his ever-increasing army attacked in kind. Each automaton matched ten demons, even in the earliest models of his creation- with observation of the battle came experience, and the next model would  match a hundred. His technological marvels went from individually crafted masterpieces, taken the shape of his greatest craftsmen, to rapidly produced and hyper-efficient killing machines which continued to evolve and change as Ixris changed his tactics.

 

The war has not gone on without a toll taken on Garumdir, however. In his construction of greater defenses, such as walls, machines, and soldiers, he has grown stagnant. Innovation still rapid and wild, his purpose has become a shadow of what it formerly was. No longer could he create magnificent crafts, taking time and observing what Descendants or his Reevers may be crafting to improve upon, but was left to continue warping and recreating the same designs en-masse to combat the threat which continues to overwhelm his realm. While the losses are incalculable and the damage catastrophic, Val’Garis holds and The Craftsman continues to work in the blazing heat of his foundries, a symphony of stamped metal and pressurized steam the music of the stagnant war.

 

VAL’GARIS

The Clockwork Realm

 

Val’garis is a realm far beyond mortal comprehension, but a terrible temptress of mortal curiosity. Separated into two, incomprehensibly sized cogs forever turning slowly, Val’Garis is home to countless denizens of both mortal and immortal make. Populated by Reevers, the greatest of mortal craftsmen, and soulless automatons, Val’garis seemed teeming with life while being made completely artificial. Tubes and pipes ran for miles as a realm of pistons and clockwork went on infinitely. The ticking and whirring of machines stirred the hearts of those chosen to see his realm. Mortal craftsmen and alchemists renowned for innovation and learning would find his realm a treasure trove of ideas and inspiration. The cogs were a marvel, with distinct cycles of day and night upon each that followed a strict clock cycle with the eternal turn they were stuck within. 

 

The Avant Sphere

The greatest bastion of workmanship and craft come together, The Avant Sphere would be the home to a majority of Val’Garis’ populace. The cog sized as a continent was thriving with creation, composed entirely of a massive city split apart into districts. Districts had their specialties and unique flair, as travel was efficient and work done around the clock. Foundries never stopped smoking, the streets never emptied, the lights never turned off. The most famed district of Mordron, now fallen into disrepair, was formerly the congregation of the greatest minds known to Aengudaemons and Descendants alike. A think-tank of a select few who made incredible work and machines, now fallen by the wayside as The Forge-God fought for his survival in the sieging war. Progress among descendants and even in Val’garis seemed to halt as every spark was put toward their ensured survival, rather than progress for all kind. Within the centre of the district lay a massive and beautiful spire known as The Progress Engine. Extreme few know what lay within the spire or it’s thousands of floors and rooms, none but Garumdir himself could even fully comprehend it. Visitors to The Progress Engine seldom return out, and those that do, describe it as a plane unlike any they could even imagine. Their crafts and thoughts conceived with utmost clarity, invention and inspiration coming as if it were easy as breathing. Critical thinking was subconscious thought and hands worked without the energy to even tell them to. The Avant Sphere even under siege was a beautiful and illustrious place, where it’s industry and defenses had been greatly bulked with The Siege. Large walls now surrounded much of The Avant Sphere, manned by guards with complex systems to rapid defense and response. The demons seemed to take more than The Father of Machines seemed to give back in repair and improvement, and the outermost districts would be completely swallowed in brimstone and hellfire.

 

The Dissonant Sphere

Referred to as The Graveyard of Crafts, the Dissonant Sphere is a scrapyard the size of a continent, littered with broken parts and creations. Even still filled with impressive creations and crafts mortals could only dream of, The Dissonant Sphere has turned into a savage continent of junk and scrap under constant Inferi threat. Cut off for most parts of their day cycle from The Avant Sphere, The Dissonant Sphere is a land where resourcefulness and utility take precedent over all. Machines that run on less fuel, Reevers specialized in self-repair and improvement utilizing the infinite scrap of abandoned and failed creations, and mortal craftsmen using these unfinished projects to create something new, and unintended. One craftsman can never think exactly like another, and thus, many scrapped works from previous inventors are reimagined, and remade, into something incredibly far from what was originally intended. The endless gray waste of various metals and clockwork heaped together is inhabited only by broken machines and wandering constructs, alongside Garumdir’s most self-sufficient Reevers and resourceful craftsmen. Within the heart of the continental cog the scrap-heap sits atop of lies an artefact which makes the destitute land worthwhile. A backup of all knowledge within the world, gathered and made in Val’Garis and the mortal realm. Immoveable from it’s set place, Garumdir keeps this artefact not only as a resource, but an option- Should he ever fail, his machine heart meeting its last beat by malfunction or destruction, his mantle may be taken up once more. Progress, at any cost. 

 

 

PRESENT DAY

Era of Abandonment

 

Even now, Garumdir diligently works in improving his crafts. In an eternal war against the Red Prince who attempts to claim his work and his domain, the Daemon has become self-obsessed with the creation of great weaponry that would bring rise to mass destruction. It seems, the Machine-God has strayed from his youthful obsession of innovation, and has deviated into a path of war and bloodshed against his foe.

 

With rising temper, the Craftsman has lost his progression. He grows strained by the second, as his obsession with the war against the inferi has faltered in his creativity; the Daemon being unable to find something new to create, nor having the time to do so. Stagnant in his work, it is no longer planned or thought-out. They do not reach their full potential, as automated factories and his patron Reevers work endlessly on the same constructions, blue-printed and reduced to machine-work. 

 

The extravagant work of ambition is now replaced by a lack of potential; Garumdir is able to make great constructions, yet does not have the time or thought of mind to do so – for he continues to fight in an eternal war against Ixris.

 

Garumdir weeps for his creation.

 

Written by:

Werew0lf - Writer

SquakHawk - Writer