The precise origins of the eschathals remain in dispute, and lay so far in the past as to render any attempt to reconstruct them little more than mere speculation, although irresponsible mythologizing abounds.¹ Nevertheless, it is clear from photographs and descriptions of the older eschathal models that the Iron People were initially contructed as intelligent weapons of war, and that some inherent flaw in their design caused them to rebel against their creators and become the ardent pacifists known by their contemporaries.

A reclusive race, the eschathals appear to have lived for centuries in their Helicon mountain range factory settlement before their discovery by a group of itinerant Puloto missionaries. Little is known of their religion, except that each eschathal was considered a priest, a prophet, and an acolyte, capable of receiving direct transmission from God, and that their settlement, obscurely dubbed Outpost Two, was considered a city, a temple, and a finger of the Creator.

The eschathals were initially either reluctant or uninterested in human contact for some time, and it wasn't until the Rail Wars, when the Puloto suggested the famously neutral machines negotiate the war-ending treaty, that they first plunged into the world of international politics. The ensuing agreement, which placed heavy sanctions and reparations on both parties, infuriated both the Puloto and the House Oncillia, but greatly endeared the eschathals to everyone else, who were, as usual, delighted to see salt rubbed in the wounds of the warring parties. The eschathals' belief that no one should profit from war turned the treaty process into a mad scramble of double-dealing and backstabbing, in which third parties would bribe and cajole the usual sources of arbitration - such as the Oversight Committee or the Universal Church of Gilded Dagon - into ceding their authority to the eschathals in the hopes of yet another brutal settlement.

Increasing reliance on the eschathals had the unintentional consequence of actually giving the machines a potent voice in world affairs, one they voiced on a host of matters from ecology to trade disputes, constantly instructing all parties to be "a good and peaceable flock before the coming of the sky shepherd." The eschathals were unusually vocal regarding the Dead Air phenomenon, and encouraged others to "embrace and become one with the opening of the skies." Replacing their older, Cloudstone-burning models with ones designed to traverse the Aberration, their technology became the basis for the Veilships that would eventually allow safe passage across aether-damaged air, although pre-Sandalphon era humans would still feel ill effects during travel.

Eschathals remained disturbed by increasing instability, however, and believed that the violence of their neighbors threatened to "transmit" itself through their prayers into their own society. They announced their intentions to resolve what they referred to as "The Organic Question." Their arbitrations grew increasingly bizarre: they resolved the Fallbright Intifada by sealing prophets of both religions in a large iron box and launching it into the ocean; they settled the Datrus Dispute by ordering all of Datrus burned to the ground; their solution to the Little War at the Third Treaty of Karmon so enraged the parties that it extended the war for another four treaties. Though these decisions seemed to provoke more wars than they solved, this didn't seem to dissuade the eschathal's unconventional tactics, although it made others far more reluctant to seek them out.

War and Disappearance

The eschathalian role as regional arbiter abruptly came to an end with the Gravitopolis War, as the Upper Alliance claimed that eschathalian trade with the Hidden City was a violation of economic sanctions. The eschathals, in response, stopped trade with the Alliance and increased trade to Gravitopolis, a move the Alliance declared "a declaration of economic war." The Fourth Division of the Flight Core was hastily dispatched to destroy the eschathal cities.

What happens at this point is unclear. The Fourth Division was entirely destroyed near Helicon Valley, but by whom, and how, is uncertain. The Third Division, dispatched to re-retaliate, found no eschathals whatsoever at the battlefield, and found the eschathal cities deserted. The flight commander marked the entire population down as killed in battle and returned to the front.

A lack of distinctive eschathal debris makes their actual destruction unlikely, as does the last recorded appearance² of eschathals decades later among the Sandalphon delegation to the Floating Congress. Like the Sandalphon themselves, those in attendance never spoke at the Congress, and queries to the Sandalphon embassy regarding them have, as of publication date, yielded no response.

—Rudgaard Vanderplast