Motometro

Inaccurate artist's impression of Motometro from a front profile. Note the medley of architectural styles (that are not to accurate scale), the asymmetrical legs, and the extruding chutes and cranes. It is also worth noting that precise diagrams of the Striding City are almost impossible, not only due to its scale and complexity, but also owing to the irksome drive of the inhabitants to constantly append to the design.

The Striding City

An iconic and almost universally recognisable sight on Lume, Motometro is a bipedal automaton able to navigate the obstreperous landscape of Lume. Motometro is, in essence, a city on legs. This mobile township is a relic from the age of the Schism, and home to the race of learned Slenders. Assisted by its qualified occupants and caretakers, it traverses the Continent, sourcing supplies and interacting with various settlements for the purposes of trade, research, diplomacy, and to recover resident Slenders required to work on site.

The exact details of its origins are still unclear, even to those who call it home. Motometro was reputedly built from appropriated Deumana devices in order to house the Slenders, and the storehouse of knowledge their former rulers charged unto them. Its construction was reputedly performed by the Gardeners and Frost Giants, and overseen by the Slenders, who were still adjusting to their new-found autonomy. Motometro was the platform - with the Slenders serving as its voice - from which the Giants conveyed their message of liberation to the other fledgling Races. It is in part due to this heritage, combined with their altruistic nature, that the Slenders aboard their Striding City are a sight welcomed by all but the most hostile inhabitants of Lume.

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The Strata of Motometro

This towering construct is divided roughly into three levels: topside is the bustling, rustic metropolis affectionately referred to as the Works, sitting above the Plumbing midsection that contains the maze of machinery powering the city, all borne by the Shanks, two enormous legs entirely dedicated to propulsion.

View of the Works from on of the taller towers on Motometro, now long since outdated.

The Works

The top-side of Motometro is a sprawling amalgamate of architecture spanning the many cycles since the Schism. Roughly 1000 spans (or 800m) wide, this roaming metropolis boasts many lanes and multiple tiers of workshops, studios, residential and commercial areas, an observatorium, and the Great Library itself (where this compendium is written). From here the Slenders ply their respective crafts, living out the majority of their lives consumed by their chosen pursuits. Visitors to the city are restricted to this level; exceptions must be accompanied by an approved resident. The perimeter is ringed with balustrades, and sports multiple cranes for convenient transportation of goods. The Works only thinly conceals the machinations below; elevators ferry occupants and small stores between the levels, the Library has storerooms that permeate the city's crust (a.k.a. The Dump), and visitors to Motometro must enter from the lower levels. Residents also utilize the machinery of the ‘Plumbing' to power their workshops, revealed in the imposing cranks and gears that lend the town a clockwork appearance.

The Plumbing

Below decks is a maze of pipes and access tunnels, liberally splattered with lubricants and punctuated by the whistle of pressurised steam; this is the operational section of the city, and arguably the most crucial. At its very heart is a gyro that assists in minimizing the rocking movements of the city's rolling gait. The complex systems necessary to the Striding City's sense of balance and locomotion required the builders to equip the construct with limited sentience. A crew of technicians is nonetheless required to oversee details and provide navigation, and this level houses some of the more technically-minded residents. The team works in shifts, attending the cognitive core to provide coordinates and supplement its logic with nuanced reasoning. Suffice to say, there is a friendly rivalry between the 'dandy' top-siders, and the 'neurotic' gearheads, one that visitors are best advised not to get drawn in to.

Old and battered sketches of the Shanks, found amongst the older diagrams in the Library, and currently pinned in the Plumbing's tea room. It is likely that these date back to the creation of Motometro, and may even be conceptual designs by the original builders.

The Shanks

Linked to the Plumbing’s furnaces and chambers of impossible clockwork, are the Shanks; towering hydraulic legs that propel the Striding City. Fashioned from two distinct bipedal colossii, the mismatched legs are strung with hydraulics that allow for a surprisingly gentle canter, considering the bulk they're charged with. The remaining span of Motometro’s underside is riddled with broad, prehensile pipes and chutes that convey minerals and resources from the landscape in for sorting within the Plumbing. The Striding City can be said to graze across the Continent; the great Shanks fold down, lowering the city to allow for siphoning of necessary minerals from predetermined areas. The Slenders are careful when performing this operation, first scouting the location, and later replacing mined spaces with unwanted materials from onboard deposits. Motometro settles to feed only in suitably barren landscapes, and well away from communities and forested areas, specifically during diplomatic engagements. For this reason, among others, the Slenders prefer to navigate the Verge Plains and outskirts of the Inland Forests, the ground-shaking footsteps providing plenty of warning for any stray creatures who might happen to be in their path.