Planet
Zelqaton
The graveyard of machines: plains of dead metal left by a vanished civilisation, where a few devices still light up — and where the Cyborgs come on pilgrimage.
Zelqaton was once inhabited. A people lived there, built, ruled — then vanished leaving neither bodies, nor graves, nor writings. It left only its machines, in their billions, switched off so long ago that even the rust has finished its work.
The plains of metal
Across entire continents the ground is no longer visible: it is buried under abandoned devices, stacked and collapsed one upon another. Some are as large as towers, others fit in a hand. None resembles anything the known peoples build, and no one has ever worked out what they were for.
The pilgrimage of the Cyborgs
The Cyborgs hold Zelqaton to be a sacred place: to them it is proof that an entirely mechanical civilisation existed before them. They go there in silence, touch the hulks and leave. Here and there a device still lights up as one passes — an indicator, a hum, then nothing. The Cyborgs call this “the answer”.