The Worldeater Saga, Part XL: Thinking Engine Matrix Alignment

As the six-hundredth day of the Creators’ Monomachy came to a close, the when became the now.

A large crowd of adventurers assembled at the northern end of the Dia’varr Manufactory to accompany Copperhead of the Third Spoke inside the Kalchos Centrifuge. Before its first step within the immense Thinking Engine that it served, the Cogger clarified to all present that they were not to touch anything and went so far as to issue a precautionary warning level of four – a state would mean any false move resulted in violence-adjacent suppression for any unfortunate mortal not to heed its instructions. With such measures out of the way, Kalchos’ emissary opened the way inside and proceeded towards its centre, where it stood awaiting those Sapient mortals who lagged behind.

When each visitor finally found their way to the heart of the engine, Copperhead stepped forward and connected its circuitry with the Kalchos centrifuge, proving once and for all that it was the emissary it had claimed to be. Communing with the tremendous engine all around, it relayed some preliminary information necessary for Sapience to grasp the warning it would later impress upon them. Reminding mortals that Varian the Celestine had engaged in cosmic usurpation in an effort to see His Creation live on in spite of Oblivion’s all-consuming power, the Cogger soon clarified that Sapience itself existed within its own world – a bubble nestled atop the true world of Aetolia.

Copperhead went on to provide evidence to suggest the veracity of this assertion: the manner in which the elements filtered into the continent, the way most of its gods could never go beyond its continental boundaries, and how Sapience possessed its own laws of reality that were in conflict with Aetolia’s own. Likening Sapience to a bubble and and a parasite, the Cogger explained that Aetolia’s proper natural order often took precedence, allowing Albedi gods to breach this bubble and operate within it without any concerns. Pressing on, the Kalchos emissary also insisted that Sapience was so deeply rooted to Aetolia now that its removal would result in complete multiversal collapse – more generally: an end to the Eschaton’s Creation.

Before anybody could further question Copperhead and its all-knowing centrifuge, however, it conveyed a far more pressing fact: the bubble encapsulating Sapience was running dangerously thin, threatening the obliteration of Sapience and Albedos alike.

Blaming the Monomachy, the previous Theomachy, and Spirean ylemnic devastation as the threefold causes of this thinning, Copperhead pressed forward, citing a high likelihood that the continuation of the Monomachy would spell an eighty-eight percent chance of absolute annihilation. Concerned for their lives and their legacies, Sapience’s adventurers did not take this news lightly. The Cogger cut through the panic and insisted to those gathered that this danger presented a need for the Thinking Engines of the Endless to interfere and provide solutions and advice.

The emissary of Kalchos made it clear that intervention was necessary – either by Varyan Celestine or the Eschaton Whose name was mysteriously redacted from all records kept by the Endless. In an effort to make its advice more readily understood, the Cogger first outlined the Engine’s observation that the twin Creators currently fought within a different world cordoned off from the Prime Material. When the gathered mortals nodded along in a dumbfounded manner, Copperhead offered Kalchos’ four solutions to Sapience’s adventurers.

The first solution proffered was the obliteration of ‘maker entity Varian’. Classifying the chance of Aetolia’s success in managing this task as slightly under fifteen percent, the Cogger entertained little question or commentary before moving on to the second: the destruction of the Eschaton. This too was rated at a low likelihood, its statistical chance calculated to be an even lower nine percent.

Sapience’s gathered mortalfolk waited with bated breath as Copperhead communed with the Kalchos centrifuge’s calculations, hoping that the third and fourth solutions would prove much more manageable than the notion of slaying a Creator.

The third solution, claimed Copperhead, was ‘enforcing manifold reality adjustment via mass cognitive collaboration event’. Confusion was the only reply the Cogger received as the gathered audience sought to grasp the ramifications of such an undertaking, with some eventually relating it to the Grand Artifice and others attempting to get more information from the mechanical spokesperson. Citing the likelihood of success as fourty-eight percent, Copperhead went on to elaborate that this likelihood was misleading, as Sapience had demonstrated an extensive history of unwillingness to cooperate to achieve goals and thus ‘Basrai would not recur’.

The fourth and final suggestion, with all the hopes and dreams hinged upon it, arrived soon after: the Kalchos centrifuge swiftly suggested destroying the world enclosing the two Creators and cited that a previously unknown agreement could once more be adhered to in the name of keeping Creation orderly. This solution was rated at a seventy-eight percent chance of success, so said Copperhead, and thus it seemed the most attractive to the Thinking Engines and the Cogger itself.

Sapience remained sceptical and argued amongst itself, though this was quickly cut off by a sudden whirr from the Thinking Engine as it supplied Copperhead with an unexpected fifth possible solution: the emergence of ‘a third maker class entity’. Though Kalchos rated the likelihood of success as almost one-hundred percent, it stressed via the Cogger that the actual likelihood of this occurring was virtually zero. When questioned on the matter, the coppery emissary refused to answer aside from stressing that fixation upon ‘sub zero likelihoods’ was an exertion of already limited Sapient intelligent quotients and thus seemed highly inefficient.

Though Copperhead remained active for a short period after disconnecting from the centrifuge, it did not entertain a great deal of conversation. When questioned on historical records of the Great Theomachy, it admitted to possessing access, but did not feel it was pertinent to the current timeline and thus refused to release them into Sapience’s care. It brushed off other questions about unrelated topics, though inquiries on Ilimos the Rampant drew its attention – and its warnings, for the Cogger claimed that the Thinking Engines classified the imprisoned god as a ‘cosmological threat’ that should not be released.

After once more classifying Legyn as a traitor, Copperhead issued one final remark about continuing its search for its Sapient asset and then turned its quiet attentions to this task – and any other that the centrifuge might deputise it to handle in the interim moments betwixt confluential happenings.

Soon, the realm’s adventurers hurried to report back to their city-states and their gods – gods that Kalchos had urged them to beseech the aid of. All throughout the continent, the Divine of Sapience heard reports and pleas from Their followers, Who one and all decided that They must heed the warnings of the Third Spoke. Each of the gods turned to Their own business, a single goal between Them in spite of a lack of cooperation: find a way carve a way through the arena world and bring an end to the Monomachy.

It was then that the first of Varian’s children motioned to prepare for the task ahead.

Penned by my hand on Quensday, the 7th of Arios, in the year 513 MA.