Gethamane's Secret Past
From Thirdexalt
[edit] THE FIRST AGE
Gethamane was originally called the City of the Mountain Gateway. The Solar Deliberative ostensibly tunneled a city within a mountain as a trade and diplomatic nexus with the Mountain Folk and other strange inhabitants of the caverns far below Creation. Indeed, a great deal of contact with the underdwellers took place there. The Deliberative chose the location because of the Celestial Gate to Yu-Shan lodged in the underways beneath the mountain. As a bonus, a colony of Pteroks—a winged race of the prehuman Dragon Kings—lived on the mountain’s heights. The subterranean metropolis was also called Six Gates. In addition to the Celestial Gate, the city held a black jade portal to the tunnels of the Mountain Folk and four immense doors of jade and orichalcum steel that led into the mountain from north, south, west and east.
Nothing exciting happened at Six Gates for more than a thousand years. No Solars were in town when the Usurpation began. The Dragon-Blooded easily blocked any contact
with the rest of Creation. By the time any loyalists in the city might have objected, most of the Lawgivers were dead. Only the Pteroks knew what was happening, and they flew
away and out of history.
Shortly thereafter, the City of the Mountain Gateway died. When the founders of the new Shogunate realized that their conspirators in the city had not restored contact, a Dragon-Blooded team investigated. They found the city’s gates sealed but everyone gone. Not even corpses remained. So, a group of Sidereal Exalted came to Six Gates. Neither Charms, sorcery nor the Loom of Fate gave any clue to what happened. The city’s past seemed as thoroughly eradicated as its inhabitants.
The Shogunate stripped everything valuable and portable from the City of the Mountain Gateway, then sealed it. No one entered for several centuries and the city was forgotten.
THE BEGINNINGS
Gethamane was one of the jewels of the North in the First Age, a self-supporting city buried within one of the great Northern mountains, with a gate to Yu-Shan set beneath it.
In the First Age, the City of the Mountain Gateway was founded by the Solar Exalted in order to stand above and guard one of the gates to Yu-Shan and to act as a convenient meeting-point for the Mountain Folk who dwelt by that gate. The Solars hollowed out the mountain above the gate, created the sunken Gardens and set the crystal lights throughout the tunnels and rooms of the city so that humans could live there amid the frozen North in peace and comfort. While Gethamane was never one of the Solars’ greatest or most beautiful feats of magic, it was nevertheless a lasting and permanent monument to the Solars’ ability to create structure and transform inhospitable, uninhabitable lands into stable places in which to dwell. However, Gethamane was not a trade city or a tourist destination. It was a place for dealings with the Mountain Folk and a passage to Heaven, and as such, while the Celestial Exalted and some Dragon-Blooded knew of it, Gethamane was not a place that was discussed among humans or was featured in public records. The Mountain Folk walked in its underways, and the Dragon Kings nested in its high places.
When the Usurpation struck Creation, there were no Solars currently present in the City of the Mountain Gateway and only a few Dragon-Blooded. It was easy for the Terrestrial Exalted to keep the city peaceful and to issue general orders that the population should remain calm until matters were sorted out, while suppressing news from elsewhere about the bloody massacres and wars taking place. Unfortunately, this lack of news worked against the city in a more dangerous way.
At this time, an ancient hekatonkhire named Vodak had woken from its temporary somnolence. Vodak is a behemoth of Malfean Essence, created when the dying blood of the first Primordial to perish at the hands of the Exalted struck the Earth. The titan’s last breath animated the flowing ichors with its own vitriolic hatred, transforming the mass into a nightmare of bubbling and writhing quicksilver. Now that the Dragon-Blooded have slaughtered their superiors and Solar blood has fallen on the thirsty soil like rain, Vodak moved in the depths of Creation and became hungry.
The Mountain Folk who dwelled beneath Creation were troubled by this, knowing that they would be among Vodak’s earliest prey. They resolved to lure the hekatonkhire to a convenient location and trap it there. The City of the Mountain Gateway was perfect. It was near Vodak’s current lair, and it was an enclosed area, with a population that would not be able to defend itself; the city was currently unobserved by any Celestial Exalted who might disapprove of the Mountain Folk sacrificing a whole city full of humans to save themselves. (While the Sidereal Exalted had grown aware that Vodak was stirring and were debating how to handle the matter, they were at that time too busy coordinating the massacre of the Solars to be able to spare any attention to Vodak itself.)
With a combination of tactics and using several kidnapped Golden Children as suitable bait, the Mountain Folk led Vodak to the City of the Mountain Gateway. The hekatonkhire’s hunger awakened by the blood of the Solars’ children, Vodak swelled up through the mountain in a great wave of bubbling famine and insanity, devouring everything organic it could find. The Dragon-Blooded led the humans in resistance for as long as they could, but ultimately, they had no chance. They were swallowed up, one and all, and Vodak washed through the chambers of the city like an insane silver ocean.
While Vodak was occupied, the Mountain Folk in the tunnels beneath set great wards around the mountain to prevent Vodak from escaping through the deeps of the earth, however far down it might go. Then, they fled, leaving the mountain to Vodak and the ghosts of the dead.
The hekatonkhire raged when it found it was trapped but could not escape. In the end, it sank as deeply as it could go and brooded there, digesting its huge meal. And the City of the Mountain Gateway stood empty in the middle of the Northern wilds.
TO THE PRESENT
Gethamane grew slowly but steadily. In time, it formed relationships with other Northern societies, usually with the Guild as go-between. In RY 586, this policy drew Gethamane into a trade war with the nascent Haslanti League. On the whole, though, Gethamane enjoyed a remarkably placid history. Its people have no desire to conquer others—that would mean leaving the mountain. No one else, not even the Empress, ever found an effective way to attack Gethamane.
The disappearance of the Empress and the rise of the Bull of the North troubles some Gethamanians. The current Mistress of Gethamane, Katrin Jadehand, and her advisors draw up contingency plans for situations ranging from an attack by the Bull to a takeover bid by the Guild. Most Gethamanians, however, figure that the city can ride out any crisis the way it always has before: Expel any troublesome outsiders, shut the impregnable doors, live off the Gardens and wait a few years. They don’t like to remember that the greatest threat to Gethamane has always come from the endless dark tunnels underneath.
Six Gates was a lot more than a trade nexus between the Old Realm and the underdwellers. Its true purpose was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Solar Deliberative. The city’s connection to Creation’s underways, however, brought about its doom. By now, discovering the truth would be extraordinarily difficult.
