PUBLICIDAD (LINEA DE ACCIÓN 4) PUBLICIDAD EXTERIOR

Kamak’s chambers are both unusually shaped and laid at odd angles, like a fistful of three-dimensional puzzle pieces tossed into a jumbled heap. Shapes range from regular polyhedra to kinked and twisted tubes to amorphous, irregular spaces. Sizes likewise vary, with shafts fifty miles long situated alongside cysts less than a mile in diameter. Their conjunctions often lead to mild temblors.

Flat horizontal surfaces rarely occur naturally in Kamak. Most of those which exist have been engineered into that shape over the millennia. Some of the nation’s settlements stand atop slick metal summits or saddle-back ridges; others cling to narrow ledges or jut out from escarpments. Still others are spread across multiple ledges or outcroppings, connected by swaying metal bridges. But most lie embedded within the nation’s walls: networks of corridors and chambers built of concrete and steel, tucked away from the cold and the winds and the stark cliffs and chasms.

Sophisticated trams and funicular lines run across the icy slopes and through miles of illuminated tunnels, steam rising from their heated tracks. Obelisks of red jade three meters tall, their surfaces inlaid with convoluted thauma- turgical sigils of orichalcum, hover above settlements and stopping points, emitting zones of warmth to stave off the encircling cold.

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Kamak is the coldest of the Eight Nations. Its course through the Reaches takes it through areas whose temperature often drops well below freezing. When combined with water vapor ejected from steam conduits, this makes it the only nation whose larger chambers are subject to snowfall.

Unlike Creation, Kamak has no regular seasonal cycle. Temperatures change erratically as the nation moves through the body of the Machine God. Nonetheless, its people divide its climactic variations into three seasons. “Warm season” encompasses those times when the temperature is above freezing. Sometimes these periods are actually warm, or even hot, but they never last for more than a few months. “Snow season” encompasses times when the air is cold and dry; breath steams in the air, while frost crackles on metal and glass. Worst is “ice season,” when rime and freezing rain encrust every exposed surface with ice.

In settled areas and along thoroughfares, red jade obelisks and steam conduits are employed to alleviate the worst of the cold. Surfaces that need to be kept free of ice—such as tram tracks, walkways, stairs, ladder rungs, door frames, and the like—are typically warmed with an Essence-charged mesh of red jade alloy embedded in a layer of corrugated artificial rubber.

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The founder Kamak was a hunter, a warrior, a traveler and an adventurer. He was not a leader. While his peers led tribes of followers and disciples to new homes, he and his handful of companions gathered those hapless mortals whom the Maker had snatched against their will. While he

organized his ragtag band, the other founders claimed the choicest nation-chambers. Many of Kamak’s followers trickled away as he sought a refuge; still more left after he found it, dismayed by its vertiginous proportions.

In the following decades, the new nation suffered from civil unrest. Renegade bands rejected his authority, dispers- ing the population into small, scattered towns. Upon his death, neighboring nations were quick to lay siege to the nascent state. Only the appearance of its first Champion, the founder’s soul-successor Transient Emancipator, spared it from conquest and assimilation.

When the nations split apart to drift through the Reaches, Kamak’s course took it far from the others, out into the cold places at the edge of the Pole of Metal. Unprepared, the Kamaki people suffered terribly. Thousands died of exposure; others were afflicted by frostbite or perished in accidents on ice-slicked metal. Dangerous biomechanoids and fractious elementals took their own toll.

Then the Conductor’s Guild discovered the great veins of the Magical Materials that lay hidden in the cold Reaches. With such resources at hand, Kamak could manufacture more new Alchemicals. Better, it could trade with the other nations for all its needs: food, tools, surplus workers to take advantage of its new resources. In this Era of Expansion, Kamak generated vast surpluses and increased its population and manufacturing capacity.

Other nations sought to win Kamak’s riches with military might. When paying tribute only inspired further attacks and the nation’s Alchemical guardians proved insufficient, the nation’s leadership dug deep into Magical Material reserves to build more Champions—enough to outnumber those in service to any other nation.

In 821 DA, while Transient Emancipator was abroad, several young Champions declared a coup d’etat. This

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The nation’s irregular cycle of freezing and thaw- ing damages exposed surfaces—whether concrete, metal, rubber or plastic—by broadening existing cracks and fissures. As a result, fix beetles and other biomechanoids are more prevalent here than in other nations. They boil out from the Reaches just after significant temperature changes, swarming into Ka- mak’s nation-chambers to repair damaged surfaces and subsystems, and are often so agitated that they can overcome minor wards against their presence. Kamak’s townsfolk know to stay indoors in swarming weather. Whenever possible, Kamaki regulators lure invaders into contact with biomechanoid swarms, and Octet generals know that a protracted siege of a Kamaki city risks being caught by swarming weather.

began the nation’s brief Age of Exalted Ascendancy. The newly established Alchemical Assembly, untouched by Clarity, initially seemed an able governing body. But within a generation, schisms between Champions tore the Assembly asunder. The leaders of the body were as- sassinated, presumably by one another, and the survivors divided Kamak between them into individual cantons. (Unknown to history, this was largely the work of the Adamant Caste, fulfilling their silent duty to keep Al- chemicals from power.)

The cantons suffered greatly over the next few decades, individually unable to defend against raiders. Within a century of the Alchemical Assembly’s founding, Kamak had reunited under a single mortal government.

Aside from Estasian campaigns and other invasions, Kamak’s later history has been relatively sedate. The First Progressive Era passed quietly; Kamak suffered no great disasters, so while its Sodalities throttled back on research to avoid suffering the same fate as Nurad, they continued building advanced automatons and other magitechnology. Revolutionary groups have also sent the nation into turmoil every few centuries; one such group succeeded in 2993 DA, leading to the Communal Revolution under the authority of its short-lived Populat Communal Council. But Kamak remains largely above the strife that so often embroils the rest of the Octet.

AN ICY FACADE

Kamaki architecture is plain and subdued. Metal and concrete are left bare or painted in muted grays and blues. Structures go unadorned except for essential informational glyphs and simple, understated architectural motifs—stylized gears, huge bronze masks depicting the austere, emotionless visage of the Maker, and the like. The propaganda posters and murals found in other nations are conspicuously absent. Only the ubiquitous red jade obelisks splash the scene with color. There are exceptions, such as grandiose administra- tive buildings and ostentatiously ornamented Sodality chapterhouses. But most Kamaki facades convey little and conceal much.

The same applies to the public face of the Kamaki people themselves. In public spaces, they wear dark, heavy garments even in the rare spates of warm weather. Sleeves are worn long enough to cover the wearer’s gloved hands; hats are large and shapeless, covering most of the traditional Kamaki hair-braids. Collars are trimmed with fur; boots are massive, with detachable cleats for icy weather. Most importantly, the lower part of the face is always hidden behind a voluminous scarf or half-mask, exposing only the eyes and soulgem.

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This secretive quality extends to all features of Kamaki public life. Privacy—an alien concept in most of Autoch-

thonia—is all-important here. Citizens generally avoid one another in public so as not to intrude. When they must inter- act in public, they speak softly, as loud speech is considered crass. Much is conveyed by body language: subtle gestures and postures that mean little to outsiders but speak volumes to a native. Public personal space is quite large, such that coming within arm’s reach of anyone but immediate family is deeply offensive. Prying questions are never asked, while circumlocutions are employed to avoid using proper names where someone might overhear.

Noise is inevitable in cities and workplaces, but machin- ery is fitted with sound-damping baffles to minimize noise pollution. Commuters hear only the groan of distant engines, the faint hiss of pneumatic trams and the muted chiming of the shift-change gongs. Citizens known to labor in noisy environments suffer some social stigma, as though the clamor of the workplace clings to them like a bad odor.