Black Mountain
And finally, gentle reader, we come to the third part of Eliéra's ecological management system. We have already discussed the mechal elementals, the tireless worker-spirits who tend to our world every day. We went on to examine the lórérra, the mighty World Trees, the system's information gatherers and repositories of wisdom.
But there is one last component that deserves our attention. The dweomerbergs, the black mountains, which are the logistic and industrial heart of that system. Within these massive artificial structures, wrapped in Eliéra's own gut-rock, the mechal elementals are built, charged, repaired and reflashed. Signals flash forth and return to these hubs - mighty kami in their own right, high emanations of Lakhac, Dragonlord of Metal, in the service of Sylithandríël - to maintain the ecological network.
Is it any wonder that our ancestors thought these mountains were the abode of spirits? Black and towering, perpetually mist-veiled and shadowed, they were mysterious and haunted places even before one considers the rarer phenomena: deep caves lit from within by mechanical lights - "spirit-glows" - from which no adventurous soul returned with a whole memory; auroral rainbows tracing strange patterns in the mists; and angular pools of living metal, glowing faintly through the darkest nights.
Today, of course, we have a greater understanding of all the technologies of the dweomerbergs. We recognize the mists as the thermal exhalations of the mountains' industry, stirred into strange rainbows by electromagnetic fields. We understand the mechanics of the machine elementals built in those caves and beneath the summit vent, and can wander those factories at will, if with great caution in a place not designed for organic feet to tread. And we can recognize the white-silver glow of the pools as the active nanotechnology it is, baths for repair and construction.
Does this greater understanding make the dweomerbergs less of a place of awe, and wonder, and sacred mystery?
Not in the slightest.
– A History of Nature’s Artifice and the Thaumaturgy of Machines, Enneagram Press