Vertex

Template:Infobox LocationsThe six Vertices are ancient underground locations built by a race of Super-Ancient Beings, in which the six matching Pillars must be placed to set the Machine.

History

Early History

At a currently unknown point in Earth's history, a race of Super-Ancient Beings discovered the Dark Sun and through their research learned that it comes closer to the central Sun every few million years, but its' deadly radiation was blocked from hitting Earth by Jupiter and Saturn. However, they predicted that on rare occasions the gaseous planets would not protect Earth, and that any life on the planet at that stage would be wiped out.

The Super-Ancients then set about constructing a Machine, comprised of six Vertices containing an inverted pyramid, which would work in conjunction with six oblong diamonds to fire a concentrated lasers at the Earth's core, which would then send out a sonic vibration that was powerful enough to keep the Dark Sun at bay.

Though they were able to prevent the Dark Star from approaching in their time, the Super-Ancient Beings realised that even after they were gone from the Earth (by extinction, or otherwise departing the planet), there may yet be intelligent life, and so set about making the Machine's restoration their second trial to determine if a new sentient species did arise and were worthy of existing.

At some point during the rise of human culture, the Super-Ancient Beings provided a collective group with knowledge of the Dark Star, as well as the tools that would allow them to find the Vertices of the Machine, and the Six Sacred Stones that would reveal information about the Machine.

Some time after the Egyptians discovered the location of the First Vertex, around 1265 BCE during the reign of Rameses II, the Pharaoh ordered the construction of a Great Temple known as Abu Simbel, where the eye-lines for one of the eyes of his and Nefertari's statues would look directly at the entrance to the Vertex.

Over the millennia, however, much of the knowledge of the Machine, including the Vertices and their locations, would become lost, and very few managed to retain them. Compounding the difficulty was the rise in the world's sea levels, causing some of the Vertex entrances to be concealed and rendering most of the location data held on the trilithons of Stonehenge (as revealed by the Altar Stone) somewhat inaccurate by modern standards.

Before The Six Sacred Stones

The Four Legendary Kingdoms would pass on what knowledge they had maintained regarding the Machine and the Vertices through the generations, while also attempting to locate the lost Machine components, without success.

The third Vertex one the Hokkaido coastline was discovered shortly after Genghis Khan first arrived in Japan, around 1220 AD. The Japanese emperors and Shoguns would subsequently revere the Vertex as one of their most sacred shrines and pass down the knowledge of its locations for several generations, while also creating a trap system to protect the Vertex's matching Pillar within the fire maze.

In the course of his archaeological expeditions to uncover the Machine components, Napoléon Bonaparte came to believe that the final Vertex, the "Greatest Shrine of All", was somewhere in Egypt, unaware that it was all the way on the other side of the world beneath Easter Island.

On the atoll of Diego Garcia, the fifth Vertex was initially discovered by the French, who tried and failed to get to the inverted pyramid's peak. The British, after taking control of the atoll from the French, made their own attempts but fared no better. Finally, when the Americans took possession of Diego Garcia, they constructed a pair of cranes on the shrine's outer rim in order to view inverted pyramid's flanks up close, and they were able learn much regarding the Machine the from the symbols carved all it.

When Max "Wizard" Epper refocused his research on the Machine, he and his colleague Yobu Tanaka also attempted to identify the locations of the six Vertices. However Tank, in fact a member of the Japanese Blood Brotherhood, already knew of the Third Vertex's location, keeping the truth to himself due to the Japanese government's intention to let the world be destroyed.

In the course of various parties researching the locations of the sixth Vertex, Carnivore and Diane Cassidy, and Wolf and Mao discovered its location on Easter Island. The CIEF/China alliance made their own plans to secure the Vertex site for themselves during the return of the Dark Sun, and so Mao had China bribe the Chilean government for unrestricted access to Easter Island through several payments publicly believed to be aid relief funds.

However, members of the Japanese Blood Brotherhood had also discovered the existence of the inverted pyramid within the Easter Island Vertex. During the autumnal equinox, they performed a ceremony there with a second Capstone, which nullified the power of the Tartarus sunspot.

The Six Sacred Stones

On December 1st 2007, Wizard and Tank entered a chamber beneath Witch Mountain, where they believed the Philosopher's Stone was kept. Finding several carvings relating to the Machine, soon Wizard found one that noted that the first Pillar had to be set within its Vertex 100 days before the Dark Star's return. Realising that they were about to be accosted by Mao and his men, Wizard decided to send his notes on the Machine, including what little he had on the Vertices, to Jack West Jr.

After looking over Wizard's notes, Jack called together a new meeting of small nations to detail what the Canadian had discovered about the Dark Star, and iterate the necessity of finding the Vertices in order to restore the Machine. Despite the tidbits of information that were offered regarding the Machine, no one seemed to know about the Vertices

Zoe, Lily and Alby were sent to England to rendezvous with Julius and Lachlan Adamson and use the Altar Stone of Stonehenge with the Firestone during the next Titanic Rising, and their actions led them to discover the relative locations of each of the Machine's six vertices.

When everyone reunited at Mortimer Island, Julius and Lachlan worked to identify the first Vertex's location, but were baffled by their findings since it put it in Lake Nasser, to which Jack (having researched Abu Simbel earlier) helped to clarify the entrance's location. As the team headed out to lay the first Pillar, Tank and the twins remained behind to continue researching the locations of the remaining Vertices.

When the team arrived at Lake Nasser, Jack arranged for them to scale the statues of Abu Simbel and use the eye-lines of the correct statues (while also calculating the difference made by the second set of statues' relocating) to determine where the Vertex's entrance was set beneath the lake's surface. After discovering the doorway into the Vertex hidden beneath the lake's surface, the cleansed first Pillar opened the entrance when placed into the Machine symbol's carving. Jack, Wizard and Zoe proceeded through the Vertex, and when the time came, Jack placed the Pillar on the inverted pyramid's tip, activating its laser and readying the first corner of the Machine.

Soon after turning their focus to researching the location for the Second Vertex, Julius determined the second Vertex was somewhere beneath Table Mountain, and sent the data to Wizard. Unaware that he his own research had given him a clue to the fourth Vertice's position, Lachlan was distracted after noting that the third corner of a triangle he'd created to link Stonehenge, the neolithic stones and the Great Pyramid touched upon Lundy Island.

Following a series of confrontations over the next week, Wolf and the CIEF managed to obtain the second Pillar and made their way into the second Vertex, unaware that one of their soldiers, Switchblade, was a Blood Brotherhood operative. Having unwittingly given him the task of placing the Pillar, Switchblade instead prepared to drop the Pillar into the abyss below, which would keep the Machine from being able to be restored. It was only thanks to Jack's last-second intervention that the Pillar was placed and the Machine's second Vertex was initiated and ready for later activation.

The Five Greatest Warriors

In the course of the three-month gap between the placing of the second and third Pillars, Jack's team continued their research to locate the remaining Machine components, including the locations for the remaining Vertices. During this, the twins determined the location of the third Vertex on Hokkaido's coast.

A couple of days before the third Pillar's due placement, the CIEF prepared an invasion force to enter the Hokkaido Vertex, encountering heavy resistance from the Japanese Navy and the Blood Brotherhood. Agreeing to a temporary truce with Jack, Lily and Zoe, the group made their way through the third Vertex, continuing to fight off the Japanese forces trying to keep them from restoring the Machine until they managed to place the Pillar and ready the third Vertex.

As they were returning to England, Julius was able to determine the location of the Lundy Island Vertex, and as they were about to be apprehended by Iolanthe and her soldiers, Pooh Bear realised that the location of the Vertex could be used as a bargaining chip in case she intended to kill them.

Once Carnivore had gathered most of the people involved in the Machine's restoration in his base, he asserted that they would be working for him and provide him with the Pillars once they had finished restoring the Machine, revealing the fifth Vertices' location to those who weren't already aware in the process.

The manipulated members of the Coalition of Minnows were forced to work on Carnivore's behalf; working at the same time, they managed to place the fourth and fifth Pillars in their respective Vertices beneath Lundy Island and Diego Garcia simultaneously, leaving only one Vertex needing to be restored before the Machine was completely rebuilt.

At the exact moment the Dark Star drew close enough into the solar system to threaten the Earth, Jack and Lily set the sixth Pillar in place within the Easter Island Vertex. With the final Pillar set, the Machine initiated, and all of the Vertices around the world activated at once, striking the Earth's iron core with their beams of light and causing a wave of harmonic waves that quickly spread out from the planet and repelled the Dark Star.

Purpose

The six Vertices are massive underground Temple-Shrines, each connecting to a corner of the Machine. Each Vertex is individual, a unique testament to the Machine. The centerpiece of each Vertex is an inverted pyramid made of a bronze-like metal which has magnetic properties, suspended above a deep abyss.

The Pillars must be placed in the Vertices during a Titanic Rising, a celestial event which occurs when Saturn's moon, Titan, rises and falls behind Saturn. The locations of the Vertices were revealed via the Altar Stone of Stonehenge and the Firestone. The entrances to the Temple-Shrines were engraved on the walls of Genghis Khan's tomb.

Vertices

The First Vertex - The Great Viewing Hall

The First Vertex is located beneath Lake Nasser in Southern Egypt near Abu Simbel. Jack West Jr located the entrance to the Temple-Shrine using the eyelines of two of the statues at Abu Simbel.

There is a set of traps on the entrance stairway's landings, containing holes which are intended to release a liquid onto anyone who does not possess the Pillar. The Vertex is a vast hall built off the main abyss, allowing people to gaze out from where the hall meets the abyss, onto the inverted pyramid. The pyramid is reached by a bridge which rises from the abyss when a lock is triggered using the First Pillar. 

The First Pillar was placed on 10 December 2007.

The Second Vertex - The City of Bridges

The Second Vertex lies beneath Table Mountain, at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. It was located by Lachlan and Julius Adamson before they were captured by the Japanese Blood Brotherhood. Also, the Neetha Warlock claimed to have seen the Second Vertex, and he took Wolf's forces to it.

The layout of the 'City' within the Vertex was replicated by modern humans for the Mesopotamian city of Ur. The 'City' is a network of towers connected by bridges which use Aristotle's Riddles to determine the correct path through them. To reach the inverted pyramid, suspended above another abyss off the main cavern, one would have had to get to the ziggurat at the center of the city, through the traps in the towers, then climb a thin ladder to the roof, and swing along hand-rungs which ran to the pyramid and down to its apex.

The Second Pillar was placed on 17 December 2007.

The Third Vertex - The Fire Maze

The Third Vertex is located beneath Hokkaido Island in Japan. It's location was known to the people of Japan since around the time of Genghis Khan's encounter with their Emperor, and became one of their most sacred shrines.

Surrounding the Vertex is a maze suspended over a lake of molten magma stretching all the way to the entrance, and the creators of the Machine built bridges out of an unknown stone that doesn't melt into the magma. These bridges are set in rows of three with only one safe bridge extending to the cavern containing the Pillar, and the safe route was transcribed onto the plaque describing each Vertex. The Vertex itself can only be reached by a river of lava from a kind of dock using boats made out of the same unmelting stone, and whoever places the Pillar is expected to fall off the end of the bridge and into the abyss. The Third Pillar was hidden within a trap system created by the Japanese, which was in turn within the Third Vertex.

The Thrid Pillar was placed on 11 March 2008.

The Fourth Vertex - The City of Waterfalls

The Fourth Vertex is located beneath Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel, England. The location of the Vertex was hinted at by Julius and Lachlan's isosceles triangle they used to connect the Great Pyramid with Stonehenge and the hills their stones were brought from, with third corner of the triangle touching the island on their map.

The 'City' is a set of ledges within the Vertex's cavern, and there is a viewing platform on a side wall to the entrance. The people on the platform must guide their allies through the maze of ledges, using the transcribed safe route from the plaque describing each Vertex. This forces the Pillar setters to beat the rushing water entering the cavern at the time of the Titanic Rising.

The Fourth and Fifth Pillars were placed simultaneously on 18 March 2008.

The Fifth Vertex - The Realm of the Sealords

The Fifth Vertex is located beneath the island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean. This vertex was under the control of the U.S. for years, during which they made several attempts to reach the inverted pyramid's peak, only to be kept back by the trap system's awareness that they did not posses the Pillar.

There is a set of paths through which the Pillar setter must have the Pillar itself to reach the bottom safely. If the master trap is set off, a wave of water enters circular shape cavern and runs around it, picking up the intruder and washing them into the abyss below the inverted pyramid. 

The Fourth and Fifth Pillars were placed simultaneously on 18 March 2008.

The Sixth Vertex - The Greatest Shrine of All

The final Vertex is located beneath Ahu Vai Mata, the North-Western corner of Easter Island.

The cavern is shaped like a funnel, and there is are spikes lined around it which hides the safe route, which is transcribed onto the plaque describing each vertex. At the bottom of the 'funnel' is the abyss and an outlying ledge which lead to the inverted pyramid, and contains a battlement at the edge of the spiked zone. Once the Pillar is placed, the incantation etched into the Twin Tablets of Thuthmosis must be spoken aloud to activate the Machine. 

The Sixth and final Pillar was placed on 20 March 2008, not during a Titanic Rising as the others, but during the Dual Equinox, when both the Sun and the Dark Sun were shining on the Vertex.

Trivia

• It was implied by Wolf, though it has not been confirmed, that the pyramid of the Sixth Vertex was used by the Japanese Blood Brotherhood to perform a ceremony to counteract the effects of the Tartarus Sunspot.
  • However, this may not be the case as the second 'capstone' fired a beam of light into the sky, not into the abyss, and the Brotherhood would likely have not have been able to make it through the trap system.
  • In addition, Wolf's statement makes it seem like the inverted pyramid beneath the island is common knowledge; if this were the case, Jack's team might have figured out its location sooner.
• It is suggested that at the time the Super-Ancient Beings built the Vertices that sea-levels were lower than they are presently, but that they predicted the rising sea-levels to some degree, as evidenced by;
  • The entrances (or at least the second entrance) to the second Vertex near Table Mountain were hidden beneath the waterline.
  • Alby Calvin determined from a Thoth-carved text found in the First Vertex that tsunamis would rise to the deference of the last four Vertices, as happened with the Hokkaido and Easter Island Vertex entries.
• While the Stonehenge location data showed slightly altered coastlines from what they are presently, the Super-Ancients were clearly able to predict how the rising seas would affect the Vertices, but apparently chose to leave the trilithons of Stonehenge unchanged from what they knew, suggesting they wanted to create a challenge for those seeking to restore the Machine.
• It is unknown if the trap systems of all the Vertices are still in effect following the completion of the Machine's restoration.