The Pillar

The entire world to a people exists in a vertical shaft. At it's furthest down there is an everlasting furnace fighting the cold condensed air of the lower sections of the pillar. This "war" creates powerful and dangerous updrafts that sometimes consume the lower layers of the shaft. As one travels further up said pillar the warm air returns and light can be seen beyond the scorching heat of the farthest traveled upper layers. Within this pillar is a city of steam and industrial engines, scraped together to sustain life.   While unexplained, through time old repetition it known that every week, at the notification of a tremor, objects fall from the upper reaches of the pillar. It is not known why things fall, or even why they fall at the same time every week, just that they do. Among these "things" may be raw materials, foreign items, and most importantly, food; the only source of food those in the pillar have. It is needless to say that because food falls from the top of the pillar, those farther toward the top have an obvious advantage.   Within this pillar there lives two distinct races. Those of a more reptilian nature and those of mammalian heritage. It is a common way of thinking among the people that regardless of how unfair, mammals live farther down the pillar while reptiles live in the upper sections; this is how it was, this is how it is, this is how it will be, and this is how it should be. The common excuse given is that reptiles can't live in the lower levels for extended periods of time and so they must live toward the top. It's an advantage to the reptiles that the mammals morally can't argue with.   Reptiles inherently control the flow of resources and food. While this is unfair, nobody is dying and so no one in large numbers rejects this way of living. We as views enter this story when a very strange item falls to the city. The reptiles cannot discern what they are so they assume them to be trash and throw them to the lower levels. A young boy finds them and through a series of accidents discovers something extremely dangerous. We know these strange objects as seeds.