Gendin’s Journal – The Builders
a page from the journal of Gendin, son of Arissa and Temone of the dwarven Clan Gilderlo
Author’s note: Continents such as Trivana are considered “worlds” by their inhabitants, while the world is referred to simply as GeKeb. The point of view of Gendin is limited by his people’s concept of the term world, and his understanding of what GeKeb is.
The Builders
January, 1444 AWR
If anyone seeks an argument among the academics, mention The Builders. There are dozens of theories and most academics defend their pet theories rabidly.
The greatest difficulty in Builder theory is there is no direct information. A few claim to have met a Builder, but such accounts are separated by centuries or eons in time, and there’s no way to question the authors of those accounts, and many accounts are not believable. Some are obviously made up, while others appear to be a re-telling of actual accounts. Separating fact from fancy requires judgment calls.
I had the good fortune to spend some time with a member of the Circle of Jocelyne, one who calls herself Pua, who has spent centuries collating and analyzing accounts of the Builders. She has traveled to far reaching locales across GeKeb and verified that the structure of the world is what her analysis indicates. Her summary is the best of any I’ve read, and her conclusions are logical and fit the facts she has identified. However, she admits that her theory may be incorrect, as it’s based upon accounts that may be suspect. This journal entry is based upon my conversations with her over the course of several decades.
Note: Pua is a fah’amiga, one of the senior members of the Circle of Jocelyne, and her natural body died eons ago. She was a female of her original species, and when her body was failing she was of sufficient magical power to survive having her consciousness transferred into a constructed fah’amiga (which I will describe in a future journal entry). Her current body, such as it is, is nearly immortal, so unless killed by murder or accident, she expects to continue her research for many more eons.
Oddly, I asked her twice what her original species was, and in both situations she evaded the question. The fah’amiga are united in their pursuit of knowledge, and tend to ignore many things regarding their original species. I suspect that Pua was of a race normally inimical to dwarves, elves, and humans, so she avoids the topic. Other than being curious, I’m satisfied that she is an interesting conversationalist, although she has an annoying habit of latching onto a topic and asking numerous questions to elicit details. I supposed curiosity is the one defining characteristic of the fah’amiga.
Structure of GeKeb
GeKeb is a construction — it’s a wheel in space, roughly one hundred eighty million miles in diameter and one million miles wide, with a circumference of six hundred million miles. Trivana is a tiny mote that exists on the inside of this wheel.
A million is a number that I cannot honestly fathom. Take one hundred gold crowns, which is a goodly sum very, very few will ever see in their lifetime. Multiply that by one hundred, and the result is ten thousand. I have seen ten thousand gold crowns — it’s a marvelous sight to be behold!
Multiply that by one hundred, and the result is one million. That I just cannot fathom.
Let’s look at this another way — if a hippogriff flew one hundred miles per day, it would take nearly twenty-eight years to travel one million miles, from one side of GeKeb to another. To fly the circumference would take nearly seventeen thousand years. It boggles the mind.
How do we know GeKeb was fabricated? Supposedly natural worlds are balls that rotate like a child’s ball, while revolving around the sun.
Conversely, the structure of GeKeb is an adamantium wheel, adamantium in a quantity that is more mind boggling than the size of the thing.
If one were to hollow out a wagon wheel, expand it immeasurably, and construct it of adamantium? That is GeKeb. The “walls” to the far east and west are perfectly straight, and the “wagon wheel” is perfectly round. [I accept Pua’s word that these statements are true.]
GeKeb’s rotation around the sun is just as perfect, exactly 360 days in duration. While I had to accept Pua’s word regarding the construction, the position of the stars verifies the length of year. Additionally, day and night vary precisely during the year. The length of daylight on February 12th is precisely the same each year.
There is no possibility that GeKeb is a natural thing — certain things are far too precise.
Who were the Builders?
The short answer is the Builders are the ones who built GeKeb.
Pua has acquired 117 accounts of an encounter with a Builder that she believes are at least partially factual, and several thousand she discounts for numerous reasons. Most of these accounts are from worlds other than Trivana, and she said the oldest is roughly one million years old.
Again with that number, I’m gob smacked. Cieldren is the oldest living god, and his ascension was forty thousand years ago. He has said that the oldest gods at that time were believed to have been twenty thousand years old, so one million years is beyond reason.
But I believe Pua.
The story she assembled from all accounts is that the original sun of the Builders was dying. I understand not how a sun can die, but must accept that it can. In any case, the Builders decided to move to a nearby sun, and began construction of a huge ring in space, an object that became GeKeb.
Note: When I say “nearby”, the distance involved is far less comprehensible than the size of GeKeb, by many orders of magnitude. I won’t repeat the numbers Pua stated. I am an educated man and have the added benefit of tutelage by Pua and other Fah’Amiga, and even with that the numbers are so large as to be meaningless.
The new sun — our sun — had many planets, spheres of rock and dirt. These were broken up and transmuted to adamantium to form the shell. Another “nearby” sun was extinguished, and it and all its planets were also moved to the Builders’ new home to complete the shell.
Their home planet was moved, intact, along with its teeming trillions of Builders, and plants and animals. A “billion” is one thousand million, and a trillion is one thousand billion. I mention this to give a hint of what was accomplished.
Their home sun was extinguished and moved, along with all other planets, to be broken up to fill the inside of GeKeb, and give it air. Once the shell was filled with air, plants and animals were moved from their old planet to the finished sections of GeKeb.
This entire process took forty thousand years — a duration the same as Cieldren’s lifespan, some twenty generations of the Builders.
Another ten thousand years was spent populating GeKeb, ensuring plants and animals reproduced and spread out all along the surface.
Pua says that Trivana and its many neighboring worlds were originally laboratories for experimenting with animals and plants. These were among the first areas created, as populating plants and animals was considered more critical than creating cities for the Builders.
I find it fascinating that the Infernal Lands, the home of devils, daemons, and the like, were another laboratory located exactly opposite on GeKeb’s surface.
The final action of their great project was to break up their former home and spread it as fill for GeKeb. With that completed, the great project was declared complete, and a grand celebration began.
The War
Seventy-five trillion builders began a great celebration that was expected to last a century or more.
Sadly, as powerful as they were, the Builders were not exempt from factionalism, division, and hatred. Pua gathered that old enmities were set aside to focus on the great project, but most were not forgotten. Old feuds were kept alive, and arguments during the great project produced new feuds.
During the centuries prior to the completion of the great project, hundreds, maybe thousands of factions made their plans to eliminate their enemies. The means are unknown, but obviously quite effective.
The war lasted four minutes.
In that span of time, seventy-five trillion lives were extinguished. Thirteen of that vast number survived, only because they were on maintenance duty on the rim of the wheel. Vast areas of GeKeb were leveled and burned to ash, leaving nothing of value behind. Many of these areas took millions of years to recover.
Oddly enough, the two great laboratories were mostly unaffected. They became the source of plants and animals for repopulating GeKeb.
In their shock, the survivors set aside their differences and made common cause. Their goal was to preserve GeKeb and repopulate it. They would maintain it.
The war occurred nearly one billion years ago. Twenty-five thousand times larger than Cieldren’s reign. A totally meaningless number.
Reclamation and Rebuilding
The survivors began repairing the least damaged areas, and repopulating them. Oddly, the survivors themselves did not reproduce, and the reason for this has not been passed down. However, their normal long (by our standards) lifespan was extended, and instead for living a mere few thousand years, they lived for hundreds of thousands of years.
It took an amazing interval of time, but the survivors completed all repairs.
However, the long struggle wore on them, and they began to die, one by one.
As far as we know, the last survivor has been alone for over nine hundred million years. I will refer to him as “he”, but have no idea if that is accurate or not, but it will do for my purposes.
The Builder
The last survivor, called The Builder, is the last of his kind, maintaining an eternal vigil over GeKeb. At internals he appears to some few people and either uses them to accomplish tasks he cannot do alone (which sounds bizarre) or just talks to them.
It is certain that he is lonely, and one might question if he’s sane in his solitude. But I also consider that his version of sanity and mine may have little in common.
The accounts Pua treats as most accurate are ones that try to record his words as accurately as possible. These accounts are recorded in over one hundred languages, all but a few are dead languages. One of her determinations for accuracy is certain phrasings, which is difficult to determine as languages can be so different.
Pua tried to teach me to do what she does, but I lack her discrimination and ability to match phrases in disparate languages. Her efforts made me much more capable of dealing with unknown languages, but I failed to learn to do what she does. Happily for me, she enjoys trying to teach me, so she contacts me every five or ten years, when she finds a new account that appears valid.
She and I would both love to meet The Builder, but it’s not likely. But if we do, he will be easy to recognize — he resembles a satyr, having cloven hooves, and has six fingered hands with two opposable thumbs. His skin is a blue so dark it appears black, and he is covered with similarly colored fur from the top of his hooves to the base of his neck. He has long flowing black hair on his head and a tight curly beard (also black), and his eyes are a solid white with sky blue pupils. The small horns on his forehead give him a demonic appearance.