✅ This article is spoiler-free for Book 1.
"Do you know of the Gashdagan, Your Majesty?"
"I know it's your clan's greatest achievement. Beyond that… Your people keep their secrets well. They keep praising that mysterious structure you've built and refuse to tell me what it is. I call it typical Deepfolk behaviour."
"Yes. It is."
— Chief Barash and Empress Maren De Valoren
Gashdagan — in Hurud, the Deepfolk tongue, meaning approximately The Great Made Thing — is the supreme achievement of Deepfolk civilisation. It was completed by Clan Monolith within living memory, under the direction of Chief Barash, after a construction period of one hundred and fifty years. All eight active Deepfolk clans — including the famously proud Clan Abyss, which agrees with almost nothing on principle — consider it the greatest thing any living race has ever built. Barash's completion of the Gashdagan is what made him chief of Clan Monolith. No greater honour exists in Deepfolk society.
What it actually is, no Deepfolk will say.
The surface world has assembled the following facts about the Gashdagan through the usual means available for extracting information from a people who do not wish to provide it: diplomatic inference, commercial negotiations, and the occasional unguarded sentence from someone who did not quite realise what they were letting through.
It is enormous. It is underground. It took one hundred and fifty years and the combined effort of Clan Monolith — the greatest builders among a people who consider architecture a sacred act — to bring to completion. It required the use of a Bloodstone, granted by the clan to extend Barash's life beyond the natural limit of even Deepfolk longevity, so that he could see the work finished. The clan permitted him to keep the stone afterward — the first time in living memory this had been allowed — as a reward for work that apparently warranted unprecedented gratitude.
Since its completion, contemplating the grandeur of the Gashdagan has become a recognised Deepfolk practice: a meditative stillness that Deepfolk enter without apparent warning and hold for hours, from which they emerge unchanged, offering no further explanation. Whether this constitutes prayer, aesthetic appreciation, or something for which surface languages have no word, has not been established.
Beyond this, the surface world knows nothing. Maren De Valoren, with access to the best intelligence apparatus in the Empire and a personal conversation with Barash himself, still received:
"It is Clan Monolith's masterwork. The greatest construction any Deepfolk clan — any living thing in existence — has ever undertaken."
Followed by complete silence on the relevant question.
The mystery has not gone unaddressed. Surface scholars, travellers, and people who simply find the question interesting have proposed numerous explanations over the years. None have been confirmed. Most have been ignored, which the Deepfolk consider confirmation enough of how far off the mark surface speculation tends to run.
The theories in widest circulation:
A city. The most cautious theory, favoured by scholars who prefer not to embarrass themselves. An underground settlement on a vast scale — perhaps a new capital, or a masterwork of habitation engineering. Deepfolk would not find this theory interesting enough to deny. This is considered suspicious.
A weapon. Clan Bastion's arsenal already includes cannons capable of threatening floating cities and arsenal of war machines whose purpose has never been satisfactorily explained — prepared against what enemy, for what war, remains three overlapping mysteries. A project of this scale, supervised by the most skilled builders alive, could plausibly be something Clan Bastion commissioned. A device that makes their existing weapons look modest by comparison. What it could target, and from how far below the surface, is left as an exercise for the reader.
A cannon that can shoot sky cities down. The specific version preferred by people who have thought about Clan Bastion's arsenal carefully and arrived at its logical conclusion. Highfolk cities float at altitude, sustained by their Cores. A sufficiently large projectile, launched from underground with sufficient force, aimed upward — the engineering is, Thalis notes, theoretically possible. Deepfolk technology routinely achieves things that are theoretically possible and practically unthinkable. The Highfolk have heard this theory. They have not commented publicly.
A giant golem. One hundred and fifty years of the finest Deepfolk construction, completed with the involvement of Clan Fervor — the priests — points some theorists toward something alive, or close enough to alive to matter. A construct of unprecedented scale, built for purposes the surface world is not meant to know in advance. The war that Clan Bastion's arsenal seems to anticipate may require something that can stand on the surface and fight, not merely fire from below. The ancient texts the Order of Confessors claims to hold — describing a coming conflict on a scale the world has not seen — do not specify whether the Deepfolk intend to fight in it or simply to survive it. A golem large enough to change the answer to that question would be one hundred and fifty years' work, minimum.
The Romi Theory. Jovan's daughter, who has spent more time than most in the company of Deepfolk traders and has opinions on everything, noted during a scholarly discussion that no Deepfolk woman has ever been seen at the surface and proposed the following: Deepfolk have no women. Therefore their greatest creation is one. The Gashdagan is a giant artificial female, the only one they have, built over a century and a half by a civilisation that felt the lack keenly. Thalis of Aeloria, to whom this theory was addressed, laughed. This is noted as the only recorded instance of Thalis laughing at a theory she was unable to immediately disprove.
The construction consumed most of Barash's life. He was past one hundred and thirty when it began — accomplished by any measure, but still in the active prime of Deepfolk years. He did not expect to finish it. No single individual could expect to outlast a project of this scale. The clan gave him a Bloodstone to extend his life, a gift of extraordinary rarity: Bloodstones are clan property, not personal wealth, granted for great works and returned on completion. He accepted it. He continued.
He was past two hundred and ten, the Crumbling already beginning in his silicon tissues, when the end came into sight. The stone had already given him decades he would not otherwise have had. He asked for more. The clan gave it. He finished.
"This year," he told Maren, some months after the completion. Something moved in his crystalline eyes when he said it. "My life's work. The thing I was born to build."
The clan not only permitted him to keep the stone — granting him perhaps thirty further years of life — but elevated him to chief of Clan Monolith: the highest honour his people could bestow on a builder. In the Deepfolk meritocracy, the greatest work produces the greatest authority. There is no greater work.
Contemplating the grandeur of the Gashdagan. In Deepfolk usage, this phrase refers to a specific state of stillness — held for minutes or hours — that Deepfolk enter when asked certain questions, when the world has been particularly surface-like in its behaviour, or apparently at random. It emerged as common usage shortly after the completion. Observers who have asked what it involves have been told, with complete consistency: that one is contemplating the grandeur of the Gashdagan.
🔒 INTERNAL NOTES (Remove before publishing)
What the Gashdagan actually is — an established mystery to be revealed in a later book. Do not add specifics here or anywhere in the public wiki. The comedy of total Deepfolk refusal to describe it is intentional and should be maintained.
Clan Fervor involvement — their role in the Gashdagan's planning stages has never been explained. Their spiritual authority is absolute; their involvement implies the project has theological significance beyond habitation or engineering achievement. This is the key hint. Do not expand in public text.
Clan Tremor's crime — the working hypothesis is that they refused to participate in the Gashdagan's construction at a critical moment, and the Nullification was partly a consequence of that refusal. Even Gurzil, who knows what happened, has never told anyone. Leave ambiguous.
The Romi Theory — confirmed in worldbuilding notes as an in-universe joke that is also structurally unrefuted. Thalis laughs. This is noted as rare.
The cannon theory — connects to Clan Bastion's arsenal. Deepfolk already have cannons capable of threatening floating cities per deepfolk.md. The Gashdagan as an escalation of this capability is not ruled out by anything established.
The golem/doomsday theory — connects to the three Clan Bastion war-preparation theories in deepfolk.md: the old attack, the coming war (Confessor texts), and the thing below. Any of these could require a construct of the scale the Gashdagan implies. Leave the connection implicit.
"Contemplating the grandeur of the Gashdagan" — confirmed canon. Shardam uses it every time without variation when asked what he is doing during his stillness periods. Whether it is genuine description or culturally sanctioned deflection has not been established. Both may be true simultaneously.
Construction timeline — confirmed: began when Barash was past 130, took 150 years, completed the year before Book 1 opens. Barash is 280 at Book 1. He was therefore roughly 130 when construction began, 280 when it ended. The Bloodstone extended his life across the construction period.
Surface access — no surface person has seen the Gashdagan. It is not accessible to outsiders. The level of Deepfolk secrecy around it is absolute by their standards, which is saying something.
Cross-references: → deepfolk.md (Clan Monolith, Clan Fervor, Clan Bastion, Clan Tremor/Nihil), barash.md, bloodstones.md
This article is about a Location — Deepfolk
| World Overview | World Index |
| Peoples | Deepfolk · The Three Races |
| Key Characters | Barash |
| Religion | The Forge-God |