Building Books

The Forces of Nature are wild and unruly but with iron and mind, they can be made to serve the weal of the Empire.
~ Opening phrase of Chapter 11

Known as Rebil Supo ("Books of Building") in the langue of the Ikona, Building Books are rare and soughtafter relicts from the days of the Old Ikona Empire.
Within their iron pages, they contain detailed and commonly beautifully illustrated instructions for the proper construction and maintenance of the countless gadgets, buildings, and megastructures that were once the backbone of the Ikona's world-spanning Ley Line network, which was shattered during the Second Spring.
While it is unlike that one will ever be able to fully rebuild the Ley lines in their entirety, even the partial activation of small portions of this network can provide massive improvements for the local trading and military infrastructure as can be seen in the case of the few Ley lines that are still operational.
Additional Building Books are also one of the few sources available, which contain accurate information about the inner workings of the Ikona's Spiritual Technology as well as the theorems of the numerous Dan'cha they are based on.

Purpose

Wihtout mind and a unity of purpose, the streams of Nature will never be shackled.
~ Opening phrase of Chapter 12

Following the advent of the Fifth River and the successful construction of the very first Ley Lines, it turned out that the planned upscaling of this system would prove to be far more complicated than initially assumed, as each of the various city-states that made up the Empire utilized their own often highly unique brand of Spiritual Technology.
This mindboggling amount of divers and different technology brands would naturally make the already highly complex and intricate operation of the future Ley Line network an absolutely nightmarish prospect as each relay, each junction and each little gear required to power, control and finetune this system would most likely be either incompatible if not outright counteracting to other pieces of the network.
Given that such a scenario would quite simply prevent the Ley Line network from ever working with any degree of efficiency -assuming that it would even work in the first place-, the creation of a general Ley Line operation guideline was decreed by the High Council of Atlantea in order to help to standardize the construction, maintenance, and operation of the numerous megastructures required for the orderly function of the Ley-Line network.
The Rebil Supo was the result of this decree.

Document Structure

Clauses

Following a number of partial rewrites and the addition of several new chapters in response to improvements and breakthroughs made in a number of aspects of Spiritual Technology, the most up to date copies of a Building Book contained a total of 496 chapters, with older version commonly possessing roundabout 484.
Given that the mechanisms used to condense and encrypt these sizeable amounts of information were themselves highly complex and delicate pieces of Spiritual Technology, only a fraction of the book's chapters can be accessed today, as the events of the Second Spring not only destroyed much of the technological knowledge required to correctly utilize these books but also caused irreparably damaged to the few surviving books.
Because of these complications, only a total of six chapters have so far been successfully recovered, with only two chapters being recovered in their entirety.

Publication Status

It's rare, valuable and people are willing to kill for it.
Sounds like fun.

Given that Building Books were already considered uncommon during the height of the Ikona's Empire, the fall of said Empire has turned them into precious rarities. While it is unclear just how many books managed to survive the cataclysm of the Second Spring, even the most optimistic estimates place this number at around 20 to 30 exemplars.
Thanks to their exceptional rarity, their immense historical significance and of course the potentially immeasurable worth of the information contained within them, Building Books are incredibly valuable, which has caused whole armies of treasure hunters and adventurers to search through even the most remote locations of Cenorad.
While the majority of these individuals come back empty-handed -if they come back at all-, the tales and stories about the rewards those individuals that were either skilled, lucky or ruthless enough to actually acquire a Building Book received will ensure that future generations of self-proclaimed book hunters will continue to search for these books.
In addition to those that search the books purely for gold, fame, and glory there are also those that search them for far more personal reason, first and foremost among them are the descendants of the Ikona that regard the books as well as every other piece of Spiritual Technology as their rightful possession, which causes at least some groups among them to go to great lengths in order to acquire them.
Depending on which of these groups an unfortunate book hunter encounters his "punishment" for daring to take possession of a Building Book, can range from merely unpleasant to strait up worse than deaths.

Historical Details

Public Reaction

Given the infamously prideful nature of the Ikona as well as the great importance they placed on the "their" definition of beauty, it would be a major understatement to say the publication of the Rebil Supo was poorly received, with reactions generally ranging from grudging acceptance to barely hidden execrations.
A handful of City-States even openly denouncing the book, viewing it as an unlawful encroachment into their city's internal affairs as well as a major affront of their own visionary sense of beauty.
In the end, it took the ambassadors of Atlantea a great amount of intricate political maneuvering, good old sweet talk and numerous reconciliations in addition to the deployment of several flotillas Samada Riverships in order to finally persuade the City-States to accept the standardized procedures laid out in the Rebil Supo.

Type

Manual, Technical / Blueprint

Medium

Metal

The Cogwheel Book

The so-called "Cogwheel Book" is the most well preserved and more importantly least encrypted copy of a Building Books that has ever been found.
It was discovered in the depths of the Iron Ring Atoll, where it had been hidden beneath half a dozen layers of fused together cogwheels, which made its recovery a quite difficult undertaking.