The Spyndl Academy: Public Writ

When kin point so that other kin may see, that is the Spyndl Academy.

This document was created for making certain writ that doesn’t fit anywhere else publicly available. The actual Spyndl Academy doc is far, far larger and better structured than this, as the Spyndl Academy conceptually is equivalent to a Great Family in both narrative width and depth. Pending when that document is ready for public viewing, this document will contain bits and pieces chosen for their relevance to other subject matter that is available for public viewing.

The Switchboard’s Great Secrets

The greatest secrets in the canon, pondered by many persons past and present. Obtaining the answers to one of these great questions will provide the bearer of knowledge with immeasurable calcic dividends.

• “What did the Skydancers find in the Trinary Complex that so reshaped them?” - The Dawn of the Dancirah

• “What is the Star Corridor?” - The Astrolabe

• “What lies at the edge/end of the Switchboard?” - SB_Astromechanics

• “What is the origin of the Switchboard and the Astrolabe?” - SB_Astromechanics

• “How do we prevent Vitric Consolidation?” - Glass

• “How does the Amaranth Sultan build the black box, and how does it work?” - Void_5

• “Are there beings of pure glass in the Vitric Shelf?” - SB_Biota

A Coalition of ‘All’ Kin

The Dawn of the Dancirah is recommended reading before this section.

The Spyndl Academy has a long, storied history. Formed when the third kin faced extinction at the hands of the First Thinkers - eager to purge this new generation of thinking weft much as they did the last - the Spyndl was formed to pool the skills, minds and resources of the great families together to form a single spear pointed skywards.

It was successful, too. Following the formation of the Spyndl were the Praxis Conflicts between First and Third Thinker, taking the form of multiple grand offensives an innumerable minor ones as Third Kin forces pushed back the Minds and their chromeling minion swarms, culminating in a final confrontation on the Vitric Shelf, a victory lap to clean up the Minds, and the taking of the Switchboard as their own, ushering in the era of the Third Kin and the Chalkstrider. Calling it the era of the chalkstrider, however, might’ve forewarned the things to come.

Though the Spyndl was formed by all great families, it soon became clear to most that some held far more sway than others. It was a second-order consequence of the Astrolabe’s allotment of grace, perhaps, with some being Striders, some Weavers, and some with no authority both distance and matter. The Strider and Weave Protocols gave their wielders unrivalled command over reality itself, and this was inarguably valuable power to have in the militaristic context of the early Switchboard. The Arcad with their command over weave made great discoveries into the nature of chalk, and the Danseers with their godlike strength and the Strider Protocol became the de-facto leaders of the Spyndl and the majority of the fighting force. The Fishers - as the Lancasters were then called - and the Vahnkin were relegated to minor roles; mere vibration dampeners, odd screws and lubricant for the great machine that was the Spyndl Academy.

The handwriting on the wall was truly clear with the advent of the Skydancers, who led the Spyndl Academy, and were overwhelmingly Danseers and Arcad who could Stride. In any competition of merit where the power to stride or weave made even the slightest difference, Danseers and Arcad overwhelmingly dominated in manners of demographics. Those who raised concerns over this were summarily dismissed, as the Spyndl existed to guarantee the survival of the kin in the face of a formidable enemy, and they could only afford the absolute most capable persons sitting on the various seats that formed the Spyndl’s immense administrative structure. That those persons consistently came from the same two families was simply a quirk of the reality they lived in, and arguing until one was blue in the face wouldn’t change anything about it.

Inevitably, rifts began to form.

The Vahnkin were perhaps the most vocal about this gradual takeover, but eventually they ran out of the steam necessary to contest the front. They took solace in the fact the Dancirah was hardly their home to begin with, nor the Spyndl their foremost institution; Brother Vahn and his cohorts had already established a functional state in the Challenger Dark long before the First Thinkers made themselves known, and while some Vahnkin felt inclined to fight for the Spyndl and the Third Kin, the vast majority chose to retreat to the Void where they were the sole masters. Many Vahnkin were more than fine with ceding the Dancirah to the ‘Children of the Sky’ as the Danseers and Arcad came to be known, as the mechanics of space meant that most things - from peanuts to planets - found their way into the clutches of the Void, and the Vahnkin deemed this to be their fair share of the Switchboard that all the Third Kin had supposedly inherited. Of course, some Vahnkin were deeply unsatisfied with what they viewed as picking through the scraps flung down by those who came to view themselves as their betters, and the ill-will between the Sky’s and the Deep’s kin only grew, further alienating the Vahnkin from the Spyndl. The Antamaran conflicts waged by the Fel would be the final nail in this coffin, and many Vahnkin regard the Spyndl and the other great families with seething hatred.

The Lancasters, however, were considerably worse off. Lacking an entire other dimension to retreat to or an equivalent figure such as the Amaranth Sultan to wrench powers of their own from the Astrolabe, or the characters of the Skydancers or the infrastructure of the arcologies, they were forced to fight for every bit of relevance they have in the Switchboard. The emerging prejudice against those who couldn’t stride or weave fell on the Lancasters heavily, and most soon left the Spyndl once it became clear they were simply not the persons that the institution now truly represented. Ousted from the Spyndl, the Lancasters had to form parallel institutions of their own to guarantee their survival in the Switchboard. They did eventually come to relate with the Spyndl on almost equal terms via Lancaster Innovations, but there still exists an inescapable social distance between members of the great families.

In time, the Spyndl became a majorly Sil’khan institution, as they inherited the mantle of its administration from the Danseers from which they descended from. The Fel-Arcad join them in running it as well, serving as scholars, engineers and more, supporting the Sil’khan who are typically the field operatives as well as the administrative brass. And Lancasters and Vahnkin do still serve in the Spyndl - history and the present notwithstanding - perhaps out of a deep conviction in what the Spyndl represents and strives to achieve, or perhaps merely out of acknowledgement that there will always be work to do under its spires that someone is unwilling to do themselves, but ready to compensate someone else for. Even the oldest, strongest prejudices are weakened under the stale reality of hungry stomachs and how they’re fed.

The Spyndl Wheelhouse

“The things worth striving for in the Dancirah seem to pose themselves in one of three ways; above you, away from you, and inside you. The Wheelhouse is all three.”

The ‘Spyndl Operator’ was first formalized as more than just a concept following the defeat of the Trinary Minds in the Vitric Shelf and the commencement of the Mind Hunts, an ambitious endeavor to hunt and purge the scattered First Thinkers from whatever deep recess of the Switchboard they fled to. They first began calling themselves Operators after the formation of the Spyndl Academy’s chief organized military force, the Combined Strider Operations. They were the ones who set out into the deep Dancirah to vanquish the last of the Minds.

When so many of them had been destroyed such that finding more no longer seemed worth the effort, the first Operators of the CSO proclaimed themselves the victors, and commemorated both the day and those who were present, effectively rubber-stamping their right to exist and persist in the Switchboard. This day, many believe, is when the Spyndl Wheelhouse was formed; birthed into being by the very first Operators to journey across the cosmos under the banner of the Spyndl.

The Spyndl Wheelhouse - or simply Wheelhouse - is a secretive organization existing within the Spyndl Academy while yet being separate from it in a number of key ways. The most immediate is perhaps the Skydancers that either institution professes as their patrons. The Spyndl recognizes the Skydancers Shalkarah, Zahir, Shadri, Cicere and Nefele as its progenitors and patrons. The Wheelhouse, on the other hand, recognizes the Skydancers who formed Combined Strider Operations and took part in the Mind Hunts, those being Morrigan, Zahir, Ryjik and Cicere.

In many ways the Wheelhouse straddles various lines in an attempt to define itself, but in practice they can be viewed as a cult-like religious sect within a much larger sect. They profess a number of unique customs, traditions and rites surrounding both becoming and being a member of their ranks, and they’ve come to exert a large amount of influence over the Spyndl and the Dancirah at large using both overt and covert methods. There exists some confusion about whether the Wheelhouse ‘runs’ the Spyndl Academy - and in turn, who ranks higher between the administrators of the Wheelhouse and the administrators of the Spyndl, more properly known as the Deck Brass. It is better to imagine the Wheelhouse as a tightly-knit Spyndl splinter group; tightly-knit yes, but their aims and the aims of the Spyndl Academy may not necessarily align. In situations where such happens to be the case, a fair bit of conflict tends to arise.

The Wheelhouse is additionally a deeply Danseer institution, having been founded by the Skydancers and compromised of nearly exclusively Danseers in the first few processions of its existence. The Curse of the Refrain saw the Skydancers retreat and the Old Danseers gradually die off, which condemned the Wheelhouse to a period of decay before the Sil’khan arose and retraced the paths their ancestors took, leading them to rebuild and revitalize the Wheelhouse. For this reason, membership of the Wheelhouse is conditional upon the taking of Spokes; physical signifiers of one’s strength and capability with weft, but more so a measure of how much like an Old Danseer they’ve become. Expectedly, the leader of the Wheelhouse - the Wheelmaster - is a Sil’khan who has taken nine spokes and is an apostolic of the Skydancer Morrigan.

To become a member of the Wheelhouse requires first even being eligible to ‘apply’, and this requires having taken at least four spokes. Considering the work that must be done and the circumstances that must perfectly align to even take a single spoke, the Wheelhouse’s ranks are terribly slim. Those who meet the requirement are able to participate in a ritualistic gauntlet held at periods decided by the Wheelmaster and their cohorts, where they compete against other applicants to secure the right to a place. These hiring rituals however, are infrequent and random, and terribly competitive to the point of frequently harming - or worse - those subjected to them. The vast majority of Wheelhouse members were brought in by other members of the Wheelhouse, and then judged to be worthy or not by its senior members. As such, it has led to the formation of various micro-sects within the Wheelhouse where a senior member leads a number of younger members that were brought in by them.

The immensely demanding requirements to join means that the Wheelhouse is perhaps the largest concentration of freakishly powerful Striders in the Switchboard, and it is from the raw subjugating might of its individual members that the Wheelhouse gets much of its strength. They simply have the various kinds of capital needed to unquestionably subjugate any errant Switchboard element that they feel challenges their authority or impedes their amorphous ambitions. Spyndl Operators responding to a situation often spells catastrophe for anyone who drew their ire, but Wheelstriders are an entire dimension of nightmare for much of the Switchboard. The sheer concentration of competence means that the Wheelhouse is often processions ahead of the Spyndl Academy in terms of tactics, technology, and virtually all else, and the Spyndl is already well ahead of most of the Switchboard in identical subject matter.

Many on the outside still remain in the dark on what really the Wheelhouse is - and that is those who even know of its existence. The Wheelhouse is many things, and in many ways it is just a much smaller, more dogmatic Spyndl Academy. They profess immense loyalty to the Skydancers and worship them fervently. They inquire deeply into the workings of chalk and the farthest fringes of the known - ledgerial casts, starless ritualism, glass and more. They pull strings in the shadows to orchestrate workings in the light. They strike out against problematic elements - they often being both judge, jury and executioner - and maintain the Switchboard in a manner that they view as aligned with their ideals. Should the Wheelhouse decide a star should simply wink out - snuffed from liveliness like a cup over a candle - it simply happens, and there is very, very little that the wider Switchboard can do about it.

Their secrecy has led to an abundance of rumor, chief amongst them being whether it actually exists. Junior Wheelstriders take praxis impositions from the Wheelhouse’s minor Skydancer pantheon that make it incredibly difficult and dangerous to divulge information on the Wheelhouse’s workings, members and nature. As such, all information on the Wheelhouse comes from leaks, speculation, and the rare defaulting senior member, who are a precious rarity. Beyond the question of their existence comes far more - their symbology, rites, membership, infrastructure, weapons, knowledge, capability and above all else, their ultimate aims. Many in the Switchboard act towards their own ends wholly unaware that these ends interfere with the ends of the Wheelhouse, and their shadowed eye is now trained upon them - watching them, always watching - and in a flash a hand can close around their neck, dragging them into shadow, never to be seen again. Contributing more to their shadowy nature is the fear of merely speaking of them, but questions abound in their multitudes, and the mechanics of praxis means that the ponderance of the Wheelhouse’s various unknowns only makes them stronger.

Some information has been confirmed and become public knowledge however. The Wheelhouse works closely with the Spyndl Academy and the HighCastle to achieve many of its more mundane aims. Freely spoken about are the various privileges that being a Wheelstrider earns its members, such as access to various luxury goods, artisans, exclusive treatment in various facets of the larger Spyndl apparatus and more. In many ways, being a Wheelstrider is like being a member of a country club, conferring upon its members the amorphous sheen of prestige as well as various far more tangible benefits. Some suspect that most Wheelstriders aren’t even in it for the grand ambitions they believe they have, but rather simply for the feeling of being in an in-group and all the good alcohol that brings.

Wheelstrider Operatives tend to have to appear in public, and thus there exists some certainty around various facets of how the Wheelhouse conducts its various paramilitary and covert operations. Chief amongst the gleaned information is something known as the ‘Firefly Regalia’, believed to describe some kind of suit or uniform worn by Wheelstriders when operating in the Dancirah. Some speculate it actually refers to a ceremonial attire worn by Wheelstriders during the Wheelhouse’s various secretive rites, ranging from inaugurations to anniversaries to religious ceremonies. Most Wheelstriders also carry glaive-style weapons - polearms in general - such as the praxlance, as an act of homage paid to the Old Danseers that formed the Wheelhouse initially. And those who have watched them fight - or, rarely, survived encounters with one - claim that many have impositions with the Skydancers Morrigan and Ryjik, which are believed to be far more demanding than impositions with other Skydancers, but also yielding considerably more power and capabilities. Much of the Wheelhouse’s own religious codices surrounds the motifs of the Skydancers Morrigan and Ryjik, the former believed to espouse the perfection of the kin, and the latter, their only true source of annihilation; the negentropic material phenomena of glass.

Being a majorly Sil’khan institution, the Wheelhouse is allied with the various Sil’khan cultural and religious leaders, and recruit frequently from the ranks of the Sabai - the Sil’khan ever-nomads who see travel as a kind of worship unto itself - in conducting the various rites that keep them in the good graces of their pantheon. Considering how much of the Wheelhouse membership confers the finer things of life upon it’s members, the Skydancer Leilani is treated as the informal fifth member of the Wheelhouse’s pantheon - a practice that grew in relevance when it was discovered that the riotous Skydancer of mirth and victory confers powerful boons of her own upon her apostolics.

Of course, that does bring us to what exactly is the Wheelhouse’s endgame. History so far has shown that the Wheelhouse generally goes where the Wheelmaster steers it, with most believing that once a third kin has taken nine spokes, they are privy to insights that are simply beyond both the reach and the conceptualization of others beneath them. That being said, the Wheelhouse has a colossal amount of cultural momentum behind it, in that it is quite difficult for any one individual - even a taker of nine spokes - to steer it too greatly off its current, ancient course. And its course remains a strange one, with the Wheelhouse seemingly existing to merely preserve the status quo of the Switchboard and perhaps to aid the very discordant Sil’khan. Usually, their aims are simply aligned with the Spyndl Academy’s, and they serve as a sort of ‘big brother’ figure that the Academy can call upon when facing something shaped in just the right manner to strike fear even in the heart of the oldest house.

In these times, the Wheelstriders descend from their lofty thrones on high, draped in their regalia, armed with their lances, and remind the Switchboard of one its oldest rules; that authority is given solely to the audacious, and those who strive to become as their once living god-like ancestors - despite knowing that the stars themselves killed and buried them - may just very well achieve it all the same.

The Firefly Arsenals

Some tentative, exploratory lore that’s used to justify a narrative product of a worldbuilding mechanics design decision. Or maybe the desire for the product drove the design of the mechanic. That is of little consequence.

Weave and Warfare is recommended reading for this section.

A more comprehensive section on the Spyndl Academy’s Fireflys is planned for the future.

Passive, continuous enforcement of the tangibility of Spyndl’s existence in the praximechanical space is achieved in a number of ways, least of them - of course - being their tendency to interfere rather powerfully in manners that interest them, whether they are truly their concern or not. Other manners exist, such as their presence and control in the DevitNet, their activity in the fields of commerce and manufacturing through the proxy of HighCastle, their reach into the Void, and more. One of the more subtle ways they enforce their reality, however, is in the kitting of Spyndl assets and Operators.

Spyndl Operatives are outfitted in a variety of weapon permutations for service in their numerous duties. From operations at the Challenger Horizon to the edge of planetary orbit, a variety of weaponry has been combined and put to task in the service of the Spyndl, and a variety of persons have distinguished themselves in the usage of these weapon permutations. Spyndl’s best high-orbital snipers, their best covert operatives, their best stride-interceptors, their best praxlancers, best arcology backpipes runners - they were the Spyndl Academy’s Fireflys. Time and time again did a manner of arming actors produce an actor that justified the manner in which they were armed. The assertion of these manners of arming as successful led to their propagation as patterns, and taking up new relevance in the praximechanical logics.

Names would soon follow for them, thus creating the Firefly Arsenals.

More simply put, the Spyndl has a number of weapon loadouts for various personnel, these loadouts bearing the relevance they do due to noteworthy figures in the past that did exploits with them. Praximechanics came to enforce them as doctrine, and thus they earned power as a product of their shape.

Firefly “HACLEA” - Handcannon, Cleaver

One of the earliest Wheelstriders. A Reveler of Lei, she was a born

Perhaps the most popular of all of them, as it is the baseline kit used to train virtually all Spyndl personnel, and is still used extensively by Spyndl’s Operators, even their highest echelons. It is a fairly balanced loadout consisting of the oversized, revolver-style handguns that have been the Spyndl’s fancy for quite some time, and the specially engineered Spyndl Academy Service Cleaver.

The Spyndl Service Cleaver is a unique, bespoke weapon engineered for the sole purpose of killing striders. A straightsword by class, it comes in single, and double-edged models, and distinguishes itself with its unusual heft and squared-off tip that makes it virtually unusable for thrusting. A handle more reminiscent of a pistol grip, plus a guard that bends to connect to the pommel with hard metal completes the assembly of the unusual weapon. The intention behind the design is both elementary and deliberate; to hack away at limbs and similar. To slash, hew, and cut. The single-edged designs are more popular among Spyndl personnel as the blunt edge is square off, and gripping the sword, plus another hand on the end of the blade allows for fairly effective guarding - something given value by the fact Spyndl assets and Striders in general don’t carry much by way of defensive options.

Spyndl Academy revolvers are high-caliber eight-shot configurations, the usage of a rotating barrel believed to be a subtle means of siphoning praximechanical power from the idea of ‘wheel’ itself, given relevance by the Spyndl Wheelhouse. High-caliber ammunition is used exclusively, giving the handcannons decent heft, but such is a necessity if one intends to kill Striders with them. The usage of explosive ammunition isn’t too uncommon as well.

Pairing a handcannon with a cleaver in this manner gives an Operator effective control over close, medium and long ranges with just their weaponry alone. All Spyndl handcannons are engineered with accuracy in mind, allowing them to operate even at extended ranges.