>>5391725Altar Spire
Machine Tower of the Warguild, where the fallen star-metal shrine is enthroned. The reach of the Altar Spire exceeds geosynchronous orbit, and consists of a tensile spindle support system that serves a dual purpose as both spike anchor counterweight and conversion of oscillations in the electrodynamic tether to power generation, whilst providing the tidally stabilised mast infrastructure for the administration of Lex Mercatoria.
Whilst the byzantine and bureaucratic strictures of Eschatonomists have become too bewildering to even begin to enumerate, comprising vast systems of governance pertaining to sumptuary law and ritual, tithes, term structure and rates of usances, the most notable role of the Warguild has been in the enforcement of the Apportioning, also known as a stricture of differential development in technological access for Highborn and Lowborn. The success of the Warguild is evident in the rust dunes and scorched wastes of the Flayed Lands, where the savage barbarian tribes dwelling there are rumoured to have lost all knowledge of metallurgy, fearing even to touch Iron.
The Warguild venerate the Near War, and maintain a transcendent state of vigilance, the ecstatic bliss before the battle-harvest. A common combat-hymn of the Warguild is the obscure ancient phrase "Si vis pacem, para bellum" translated as: To Prepare For War, You Must Want War.
The Warguild were founded upon the doctrine of the ancient wizard Morgenthau, based upon Animus Dominandi, which commands all vassals to abide by the principle: Live Propagate Dominate; some less civilised marauder factions in the Warguild have reinterpreted this mandate as Rape Feed Kill Repeat.
The enduring symbol of the Warguild faction remains a White Sword, a simplified variant of their ancient heraldry that consisted of a Hanging Sword suspended by a thread, sometimes depicted as a Sword knotted in a gibbet.
For this reason it is perhaps appropriate that the Altar Spire citadel appears as a colossal greatsword piercing the land itself, when observed from a distance upon the Astral Sea.
Some mercenary subsidiaries and affiliates of the Warguild include Felsenmeer, Versipelles-Gorlagon, Ciphrae, Axiom-Galdra, Urthekau-Sylabari, Raufoss, Chernaya (under sanction) amongst many others.
