New Faction · Coming Fall 2026

Guilds of Zarruhk

“The sun is dying. And the Mehkina with it.”

Underneath the gleaming city of Zarruhk, guild Mehkaniks labor for an entire year to prepare for a single moment.

It's here they produce Al-Flux — the orange ichor that fuels the Mehkina, and the only thing standing between civilization and a very awkward conversation about what to do next.

The Preparations

The preparations begin in the cold months, when the desert nights are at their longest — and, conveniently, getting longer every year. Countless mirrors inlaid with intricate brass and crystal are aligned according to precise astronomical tables, star charts the guild mathematicians have kept and updated for centuries with the kind of obsessive care usually reserved for grudges.

In recent generations, the mathematicians have added new notations in trembling hands. The sun's zenith sits lower than it did a century ago. Its light is thinner. Its warmth diminished. The charts have been recalculated three times in living memory, each revision more desperate than the last, each one politely titled something like “Updated Reference Tables” rather than “We Are In Trouble, Volume III.”

The Convergence

On the appointed day, when the dying sun reaches its highest zenith of the year, the Mehkaniks gather to discover whether twelve months of labor will be rewarded — or whether they'll be drafting some very uncomfortable letters to the city council.

The mirrors converge toward a single crucible. More mirrors each year. Ever more precise alignments. Ever more apprentices flung up onto scaffolding to nudge a panel three degrees left because a senior Mehkanik squinted at it and made a face.

The elder Mehkaniks remember when the crucible would brim. Now it yields barely half what it did in their apprentice years. They mention this often, and at length, to anyone who will listen and several people who will not.

Al-Flux

Inside the crucible rests a precise blend of ochre-veined minerals, crushed glass from the deep quarries, and a titrate of three volatile liquids — ferric brine, distilled moonwater, and the rendered fat of the sand beetle — layered in exact proportions according to formulae that the elder Mehkaniks guard with their lives. Under the focused sunlight, this volatile mixture reacts, the liquids boiling away as the minerals fuse and weep a viscous orange fluid. The first and only drops of Al-Flux.

Collected in glass vessels capped with copper sigils, the Al-Flux is left to cool. By dawn, it has become a smooth, glowing fuel — a year's entire supply, ever more precious, ever more rationed into the veins of the Mehkina, the god-machines of Zarruhk.

How many more harvests remain, none can say.

But the star charts speak plainly to those who can read them: the sun is dying, and the Mehkina with it.

The Mehkaniks have, for the most part, agreed not to bring this up at dinner.

The Mehkina

God-Machines of Zarruhk

Fueled by Al-Flux, these mechanical creatures serve the guilds — each one a marvel of brass, crystal, and dwindling sunlight. Awe-inspiring. Civilization-defining. Operating on a fuel budget that gets tighter every fiscal year.

Tactics

Tools of the Trade

Guild tactics focus on precision: the perfect synergistic solution for every problem they encounter. When you can only afford to fire your god-machine a finite number of times before the heat death of your civilization, you learn to pick your moments.

Mehklets

Not All Mehks Are Towering Fighters

Mehklets handle the day-to-day around Zarruhk — fetching, carrying, gently reminding their owners about appointments. In game, they grant free actions to your fighters, because even a dying empire still needs someone to hold the wrench.