The Engineers

The Engineers are a race of highly advanced humanoids with most of their technology rooted in steam power. Their entire species is currently in stasis, and has been so since the God Wars. They do use some magic, but mostly they use steam-driven technology in their devices.

History
The Engineers are a very old race, and have been around since the dawn of time. However, isolated from the rest of the world they developed their own technologies that did not require magic, and by the dawn of the Second Age they were well beyond the technological status of the rest of the planet. Whilst on the mainland the Wheel was still a radical new invention, the Engineers were already using abacuses and building the first lenses. The Engineers quickly learned about the stars and space, whilst also developing intricate knowledge of the jungles that adorned each island they lived on.

As the Second Age progressed the Engineers became masters of architecture and brilliant scientists. These aspects allowed them to create vehicles and structures of amazing capability. In no time at all they were constructing massive bridges, even artificial islands, throughout their realm in the Southern Ocean. Their ships did not use clumsy sails or oars, or even paddles like the steamers of the 19th century - no, these ships were sleek and long and operated by spinning a long, spiralling strand very fast through water providing brilliant speeds. These ships grew in size until thousands of Engineers could occupy the largest of the ships.

Unlike practically every other race, the Engineers were never cursed with warfare - the sword was a totally unknown concept to them. The closest the Engineers ever came to creating a gun were the magnetism powered "colony transistors" which relied on magnetically acclerated pods being shot down a massive barrel on a calculated trajectory to a nearby island. Using this, the Engineers had created an extremely quick way of transporting cargo and people between their islands. Indeed, magnetism was a fundemental part of the Engineers' technolgy, as it was cheap, reliable, and very clean. When the Engineers started to create Silvorbs, magnetism was the main way of creating them.

It seemed as if this technological utopia would never end, but unfortunately, it did. War was brewing in the north, a conflict of such magnitude that the Engineers knew if they were discovered and their technologies put to use by the factions of the north the world would be utterly obliterated. So, to prevent this happening, the started to construct massive chambers and tunnels underground in which to preserve their civilization and everything that went with it. For thirty years their entire race began to dig and construct things underground. At the end of this period, every island the Engineers had lived on were practically hollowed out. The earth that was removed was used to create new islands where even more of their people could be stored. Then, in less than a fortnight, the entire of the Engineers' people migrated underground, where they used specialised Silvorbs to form protective shells in which the sleeping Engineers would inhabit until the world became safe enough.

In the meantime, the Silvorbs were left to deconstruct and store every the Engineers had spent millenia building. Over the period of a century, practically everything that had even been touched by the Engineers was returned to the state it had been before their coming about. In the end the few relics that remained of the Engineers' existence were a few massive stone heads and jungle paths that lead into the Engineers' sanctums. To protect each one, the Silvorbs deconstructed themselves and reorganised as seemingly inconspicuous rocks that littered each island, or formed the "cement" that held the blocks of stone together in the Sanctums or the lesser Sanctuaries. These networked together, and eventually their combined intelligence created an omnipotent power that watched over the sleeping Engineers. These intelligences each were embodied by Curators, who were aided by Receptionists, Staff and Monitors. Eventually each island became a glorified museum, waiting to be discovered.

Over the millenia that passed, the islands came to be inhabited, particularly by the GDG who used them as Sanctuary bases. During the Undead Assault almost every base was razed, leaving a few harbours and bases to show that the GDG had been on the islands. About a decade later, the islands came to be explored by the Sentient Squids and Bruce Brysworth, who came looking for the Orb of Riches. Unbeknownst to them, the Orb was actually the Central Magnetism Device, which was the keystone in the Engineers' economy. The Device used strong magnetic fields to influence surrounding atoms and formulate materials literally out of thin air. Originally, there had been many of these, but all but one had been destroyed by the Engineers since they felt that as their islands probably would be discovered they didn't want these very powerful devices to fall into the wrong hands. Consequently, only one was left, and it was guarded extremely well, because once the Engineers emerged from their aeons-long slumber they would need it to quickly restore their powers.