Molten Machines

Information

Class: Sociology, History
Wc: 2,888

Publishing

Aut: Kaniovac ‘Andyda
Dt: 983 A.T.
Ogn: N/A

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• Poria

Firstly, I must begin by clearing up some misconceptions. The only applicable time the term “Poria” is used is when referring to the entire sentient species as a whole. When discussing cultural, architectural, governmental, or other eras, as well as multiple individuals or groups of them, the term “pori” is used. Please note the use of capitalization in both terms. Additionally, the terms for races are not to be used to describe singular or multiple pori as a shorthand. No pori is “a ylargi/yleia/yluiar”, their race is a physical presentation of one part of their conception. Any inaccurate or improper usage should be taken as quotation of another source presented in and reflecting their original usage.

With the issue of nomenclature cleared we can turn to the matter of this volume, the architecture and “design” as it is seen by those outside the culture, the fundamentals, and how it has changed over time. The fundamental point or purpose of pori architecture is to be a building. This may seem reductive or oversimplified, but instead it is concise. When picturing a building, you do not necessarily picture the way the light of Astran reflects off of the sides as it creeps over the horizon but instead the security it offers. A building separates “inside” from “outside”. When inside a building you rightly assume that it will not fall on your head as you complete your work, unlike a tree branch on a windy day or a shift in weather. Any derivation from this security is discarded and seen as unnecessary. While some architectural periods of pori history are only beginning to be understood—a topic approached in a later volume—we can look back on each successive period as we do with most elements of the Poria: a succession of improvement and refinement as more research and experimentation is undertaken.

Philosophically pori architecture is a building at its core, in terms of material it is metal. Natural materials are less available in both Parallelium and to the Poria specifically due to the heat threat that the species poses to natural materials such as wood or stone. Though Parallelium is relatively well-known for its stone cliff faces, this stone is much like that of Pale Shores and requires much time, patience, and expertise to use as building material. Since it has long been discarded as a potential material for pori to build from I will say that the pori lack many of these qualities for a number of reasons, most charitably the shorter lifespans compared to avocs. For several centuries this metal was rolled, cut, and welded into cubic and geometric structures with hard edges and right angles before other methods were developed. Unlike materials that could be chiseled, cut, or grown into more natural or curvaceous shapes, flat sheets or blocks of metal inevitably led to the shapes of early pori architecture. This architecture has since been referred to as haphazard by those who look back on early cultural achievements through a modern lens.

Most notably by the pori Hoyu (dul Nakeil), significant advancements were made in a field that came to be known as celestial physics. Coincidentally this development took place in the century after there were notable changes to the government and cultural organization. Some of these changes are well known outside of Parallelium, but these and others will be introduced and discussed at length in the final volume of this series. Hoyu’s major contribution led to the creation of the first manufactured continents around the star-planet Ohr. Prior to this development, star-planets were inhospitable to all Omneuttians, including the Poria due to any land being in too close proximity to the star core. However, these manufactured continents were made and orbit in the habitable range – as if they were continents on a planet-star. These continents are metal at their core, rather than the extremely dense rock that most other continents are made from, but covered with natural materials and resources as much as possible. With sufficient planning developed after the concept was proven, many buildings were built into the continent to begin with. While there were some unintended negative consequences with this method, having structures built into the continents themselves did increase their stability, especially in light of the instability of the initial continents.

On a related note, a non-pori might have wondered in our discussion on building materials why pori would choose to not build out of their own discarded molten material, as it hardens into a stronger and more durable rock than what the continents are naturally made out of. However, it is a long held belief of the pori that hardened molten material is not a proper building material. Any given pori when asked might list one or more of a number of reasonings including but not limited to any stonework being inferior to metal, being some kind of ethically wrong—when pressured most will not be able to explain this idea—or that it cannot be produced in high enough amounts to be considered as a resource.

In this volume, we must examine the pori themselves, and how their bodies shape their lives. Some pori have abilities characterized in other cultures as magical, or otherworldly in origin. This is untrue. Unlike the preternatural abilities of other sentient species, pori who are able to display these abilities are in fact undergoing careful manipulation of their bodies. While any pori can melt hardened material back into their molten-skin to expose part of their hand for example, or expose any other part of their body and heat something by contacting it, abilities beyond this usually require much practice and patience on behalf of the pori.

There are pori who are able to create the illusion of producing fire in their hands out of seemingly nothing, and derivations of this. To be as clear as possible, this is inherently different from making molten-skin contact and burning or lighting something on fire. The most basic form of this ability is to be able to manipulate their molten material into a droplet that when exposed to pressure and friction is capable of burning the surrounding air for a very limited time. More experienced pori can develop larger droplets, concentrate different minerals in their droplets to produce flames of varying temperatures or colours, and create droplets without the need for friction, enabling production of a steady flame.

Creation of fire of any size for any period of time takes a physical toll on pori and is not similar or to be confused with other magical abilities across Omneutta. Additionally, there is much academic writing to be done—though discussions among biologists are frequent—on the subject of whether there are certain pori who can physically perform this task, certain pori who are capable of learning, or whether some pori are more apt than others to learn the processes involved. Currently, there are several tests during general education to find the pori who seem to inherently be able to produce fire at a young age. However, there is little room during education for pori who are not immediately capable of producing fire to learn how, as the time is seen as better spent on getting pori who are capable further developed.

Given the current understanding of pori abilities we now share, it follows that the pori architecture developed from what the pori could themselves accomplish with only the abilities of their bodies. Initially pori built cubish shapes, roughly welding flat pieces of metal together to provide shelter and create places where knowledge could be stored. Porrair’s third and fourth directives were the impetus to create buildings and their current purpose has not deviated far from that. What has changed, are the advent of new tools and process that enable different – and ultimately better – building processes.

Gone are the days where a metal slab was staked into the ground and five more slabs welded together to make a box, though modern architectural designs might looks nearly as rudimentary or “ugly” to those not used to pori culture. Before the advent of modern support structures, these early designs of cuboid shapes of roughly similar sizes welded to each other in all directions for security could only build two or three vertical units high safely. Again, the fundamental purpose of pori architecture is to be a building, not a collapsed building. These haphazard stacks after research turned into self-supporting stacks where a number of floors a structure had would be preordained in order for the size of each floor to be calculated for maximum support for the one above while balancing strain on the one below.

It took moving away from volcanoes and onto plains before pori began to engineer the beginnings of modern supports. Part of this research was developed from better understandings of manufactured continent stability throughout the 200s A.T. along with proprietary experimentation. In hindsight these improvements that enabled what we now see as modern pori architecture could have been developed sooner. While it is true that pori are not inherently reluctant to changed or biased against it as some other cultures are and in fact welcome change – if and only if it means a gain in productivity or efficiency – these building methods were so efficient since hey required little tools outside of pori bodies. This systemic bias wighted the original building methods in their own favour such that improvements to structural integrity and longevity had to be shown to outweigh the increased cost of new technology, materials, and time.

If you make your way through pori history with a deep enough understanding of context and from the lens of modern thought, you will find yourself with this same conclusion in a few other instances. It should be noted that in each case, the the more efficient method or practices does ultimately become adopted. One wonders – if only briefly – how much progress could have been made in all the experiments and lives across Parallelium if changes we know today as the right choices were made sooner.

Despite a reputation for being the most detail-oriented and research-focused of Omneuttia’s Sentient Species, the culture of the pori is at times enigmatic or abstract. To be clear, this is not to say that the culture is mysterious or that we have a hard time defining it, but rather the items we usually define a culture with are subject to change at any time for the Poria. Rather than having longstanding cultural traditions such as food, music, fashion, festivals, literature, the consistency in their culture is their attitude and approach to the utilitarian ideals and efficiency as an overarching concept. To see this attitude and how the approach to what normally defines long-term culture changes over time and across Parallelium, we must discuss some changes.

The governance of Poria was at first makeshift before coalescing into a rough system of governance around 200 B.T. This system was complex and convoluted, roughly marrying the empiricism of the work tasked by Porrair up to that point with the nearly-religious relationship the Poria had with their maternal Deity. The first major change Poria experienced as a quick shift to a system reminiscent of a monarchy, with one pori taking the role of a pseudo-Porrair. This system was first approached and saw adoption before 160 B.T. but took until the 80s B.T. to become fully adopted by all of Parallelium. This system’s draw for many pori—as we know from contemporary literature—was the pseudo-Porrair as the Deity herself had less time to interact with each planet-star, community, or individuals. The constitution holding up this monarchy was agreed upon in 74 B.T. and less than a generation later in 46 B.T. the political system had radically shifted into something entirely different for everyone but the pseudo-Porrair.

Now known as the Hanullzis, the pseudo-Porrair was mostly stripped of power but had ceremonial duties and was a monarch in name only. In a series of legislative changes that repeatedly and dramatically changed the system of governance, pori government spent several decades in turbulence. This period included violent and physical debates and came to a conclusion roughly around the Timekeeping Reset. Unfortunately, contemporary chronicling these events does not include what we believe to be the last few years of this period, resuming only in the first decade After Time to mark the trilateral agreement between all parties on a new constitutional monarchy. This document restored some power to the Hanullzis and stabilized the governing body, and adopted some basic standards across Parallelium. The most notable of these standards adopted an organizational structure that exists to this day, in which the Hanullzis oversees groups of planet-stars (and eventually star-planets) called Systems. Officials in these systems rule over Regions, usually comprised of a few planet-stars and star planets. Each celestial body is then divided up into Wards (though smaller ones may only have one or two), and officials of Wards oversee settlements including cities, towns, and villages.

The last major change to the pori political structure occurred just before 100 A.T. when the concept of “political pull” was introduced. This concept is still in place more than 800 years later and gave the citizenry as a whole the most political power, while individual citizens have the least. In simple terms, any legislation that affects a level of the structure must be agreed upon by each level beneath it. For example if a Region with two planet-stars and a star-planet desired to pass legislation, every settlement in each Ward on all three celestial bodies must put it to vote, and as all citizens are required to vote; all affected omneuttians would vote on the proposal. To this day there continues to be debates over whether a given piece of legislation does or does not affect specific parts of the structure, usually to gain or remove anticipated votes in a show of political posturing, but the concept itself remains intact.

There are a few other cultural changes that do not involve changes in governance that are of note. Initially believed to be a wide-reaching change, pori initially elected to reject moving to grid-based cities several times at different levels in the early 600s A.T., finally adopting the move specifically in large cities that met a specific list of requirements, and other settlements that did not meet the requirements were allowed to restructure their cities as a whole at their choosing. This proposal in 619 included the caveat that any settlements constructed after this date would have to be constructed in accordance with the grid system, and that any large-scale development in existing cities would need to do the same. This proposal’s initial refusal likely had to do with long-held frustrations over the move to plains-based cities rather than volcano-based cities around 300 A.T.

Though the Poria had large-scale adoption of each of these moves, there are several instances on Ciryloic, Egur-Hlasarl alone (including Yoenajeelu where the Egur-Institute is located) that reconstructed portions of their settlements to return closer to volcanoes after another proposal partially reversing the move away from volcanoes was ratified in 421. For many settlements this has only led to developing the area between molten processing plants and the “rest” of the city. On the subject of moving entire settlements, pori and other omneuttian historians, archaeologists, and ethnologists remain confused at the increasing number of settlements found in interior chambers of volcanoes—the majority of which do not appear to be natural. What little records can be found in these settlements offer numerous contradictions to what is currently recognized as pori culture, most notably the construction of place-names having been at one point incredibly similar to how it is believed individual pori names have “always” been constructed. This is to say that whatever occurred—of which we have little-to-no record of the when or why—the Poria adopted this change uniformly, quickly, and efficiently insofar as to the previous way of living having been completely erased from records.

There is however, very little to indicate that in the last few hundred years there are any well-practiced or observed pori functions, holidays, or customs that are inherent to the culture as a whole. For a time from the creation of Poria to several hundred years After Time there was widespread belief in Porrair as a figure worthy of worship in comparable ways to how other Sentient Species worship their own (or others’) parental Deities. Surprisingly, this worship waned gradually over time, with records indicate no official prohibition on worship of Porrair, and recorded instances of worship, celebrations, and the arts crafted for these purposes diminishing after the Timekeeping Reset until disappearing in the 300s. Some monuments and worship sites still dot the landscape across Parallelium, and rarely one might be spotted within a settlement, all having fallen out of their original use by the locals. While large-scale assumptions and demarcations can be made about their culture, you will find subtle but potentially important differences upon traveling from one pori settlement to the next, as I would encourage.