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Description

The world of Trantor is clad in seven concentric matryoshka shells, each offering a surface worth a planet on its own. Nested within each other, these layers of Trantor are each a world of their own, intertwined by a web of towers, pillars, tunnels, and entwined systems. All but the outermost layer look up to a sky forged by mankind.
The four innermost layers were made during the Dark Age of Technology and are, by all means, known to the Imperium, indestructible. The three outer shells were made during the millennia since the end of the Great Crusade. Though not as monolithic and indestructible as the ancient hulls below, these layers are inlaid with countless machines and weapons to protect this world and within them live mighty machine spirits, which may unleash the raw power siphoned from the planet's glowing core, to smite any foe daring to test the strength of their domain.

Hives Incandescent
The outermost shell of Trantor is aflame with golden light, shining like a jewel in the galaxy's relentless night. Here lie the greatest centers of population on Trantor, bar the Ecumenopolis of the Lithic Hives. On the surface live traders and void-farers, artisans and dockyard workers and all in service to the Administratum, who make contact with other worlds.
Its glittering surface and glistening spires, vast circles of palaces and docks, cities along fine tethers leading to the stars, may seem vulnerable and decadent to the unknowing beholder.
But in truth, the incandescent shell of Trantor is an unyielding bulwark of Civilization, tested in long sieges over the Millennia. Mountain ranges of adamantium rise from its surface, speckled with trillions of entrenchments, military installations, and firing positions. Energy lances, channeling the pure power of the planet's core, reach up from pits of glowing lava to mighty batteries atop. Invisible shields in overlapping layers cover every square kilometer of this shell, trenches deep as canyons await the enemy who should ever make landfall. Titans of the Legio Theomachia stand guard at the entrance gates of every city, and regiments of every hive on Trantor have their staging grounds here.
It is said in times of war when the enemy approaches, all the golden lights of the Hives Incandescent go out and the entire world falls black and silent. For days then the silence might hold, before the world erupts in the crimson red of war, the fiery flames of the Emperor's fury when the arsenal of Trantor is unleashed against its foes.

Vitreous Gardens
Just below the outermost layer lie the most vivid and flourishing realms of Trantor. The Vitreous Gardens are the food basket and pleasure garden of this world, home to a wide array of flora and fauna imported from the many different systems of Sector Gondwana.
Vast regions of the gardens may be likened to overgrown forests and plantations, stretching hundreds of kilometers in each direction and reaching as high as to touch the shell above, from where the glowing light of countless lamps emanates. These farming regions provide produce and crops to the upper classes, as well as rare spices and delicacies of which many are exported as well.
In the shadow of these luscious farmlands and jungles exist carefully designed horticulture. Hanging gardens and pleasure parks, small castles and palaces, summerhouses and venues for the wealthy have been erected amidst beautiful recreations of alien landscapes, continents of Holy Terra and even entire lands of pure imagination. Even the common masses who would never come to set foot in any such garden can at least enjoy their sight on the way when traversing shells, as many trains and transport are sent via transparent tubes through the gardens.

Lithic Hives
Where the roots of the Vitreous Gardens end, the high spires of the Lithic Hives begin. This is the first shell of Trantor to be built from the planet's native rock and stone, erected from the original surface many kilometers high to form the foundations and bulk of this massive planet-wide metropolis.
The Lithic Hives have long merged into one continuous city, covering not only the planet-wide surface of their shell but also the inner side of the shell above. As a result, the Lithic Hives know no sky, only the hanging spires of the cityscape above, almost as though the world had been folded onto itself, ready to meet and collapse at any moment. But the stone of Trantor is strong and has held for untold eons. The oldest buildings at the very bottom of this layer are said to have been made in ancient Dark Ages of Technology and are left alone by all but the devout servants of the Omnissiah.
In the Lithic Hives, the greatest part of all souls on Trantor live and die, without ever leaving their layer to ever see the stars above or the fires below. Here, the workings of the great Governance Machine are strongest felt, an ever watchful eye resting on every living thing. Soldiers, Arbites and Administratum Custodians are the most common sight among the general populace, and as a result, few beggars and ruinous denizens remain for long without being brought before the authorities below.

Dominion and Bastion
All wealth and splendor of the Hives Incandescent, all life, and greenery of the vitreous gardens and every last soul and living thing in the Lithic Hives are held up and governed by the power of the Dominion, wherein the authority and governance machine of this world lies.
The dominion shell contains endless structures predating the Great Crusade and even the Age of Strife, where all survivors of the erstwhile civilization sought refuge when the universe collapsed around them and the warp grew strong.
When Trantor was rediscovered, these ancient bulwarks were rebuilt to house the highest classes of administrators, the myriad councils and executors and not least the inner bastion of Trantor's military might. Here lie the secret cogitator banks and machine growths which constitute the governance machine, as well as the libraries and crypts of daily importance to administrate Gondwana. Few outside the select circles of power ever lay an eye on this shell and even those within rarely come to gaze outside the enclosed rooms of their surroundings.
It is said much of this inner shell has fallen to oblivion and is forgotten forever. Expeditions are mounted to seek out new Atlantean pillars, upon which rests the world above. But what knowledge they bring shall forever be concealed by the authority of Trantor.

Pandemonium Archives
Little is known about the original purpose of the world which is now called Trantor. Certainty only exists about the purpose of the Pandemonium Archives, the vast catacombs of knowledge which lie below the Dominion and Bastion of Trantor. When they were discovered by the Mechanicum at the peak of the Great Crusade, it was concluded their purpose lay in the preservation of knowledge until the end of time, against all possible destruction which could befall this planet, the system or indeed the whole of Sector Gondwana.
This layer is protected by a physically indestructible shell and gargantuan seals, as well as massive Gellar Fields warding off any warp-intrusion, should the world of Trantor be ever phased into the Immaterium. These and countless more precautions were taken for this layer alone, to protect endless databanks and crystals, capable of holding data far beyond the imagination of even the Adeptus Administratum.
However, the Explorators were confronted with a terrible enigma, when they found all the databanks and crystals – which had so chiefly been protected – empty.
The Imperium and Mechanicum utilized this curious find for purposes of their own and to the days of the 41st Millennium, still, new data are collected and recorded at the Pandemonium Archives. Blueprints, records, scriptures and all manner of knowledge thought to be essential for the next ten thousand years have already been preserved in the Pandemonium archives, alongside countless dead who wish to be entombed at this place in the hopes of having their souls protected beyond death from the ruinous powers.

Blackwater Grottos
For long, the Pandemonium Archives were believed to be the lowest artificial layer of Trantor, for below their foundations were found solid bedrock and caves of natural make. Blackwater had carved its way into the storm and formed grottos spanning all around the world. But their extent, at last, followed no random patterns. Instead, expeditions into the black water revealed in the sheer random arrangements of grottos and streams, signs of intelligent design.
The grottos appear to be a deliberate recreation of some natural system predating even the original colonization of Trantor by mankind. Few such relics of so venerable age exist, and fewer are of such size. Yet time had drastically changed these caves and left nothing technological to find but the faint imprints of unnatural particles and elements in the water.
In the 41st Millennium, the highest and clearest grottos serve as organic material farms and algae cultures to feed the entirety of Trantor should ever the Vitreous Gardens Burn. This function was already fulfilled by the Grottos once, during the last Siege of Trantor, when the diminished populace was fed for twelve years on the algae of blackwater alone.

Machine Aeviternal
Underlying the Blackwater Grottps are even stranger relics of the Dark Age of Technology. Machines exist here on the scale of continents, mechanisms larger than any star fort of a spacefaring vessel, larger even than some of the greatest machinations on Mars itself. But they lie all lifeless and dead, soulless without essential components left out of their heart. Before the end of all, when the Age of Strife reigned, the core components of these machines have been removed and their fate, as well as the purpose of the eternal machine, remains a mystery after ten Millennia of the tireless investigation by the Adeptus Mechanicus.
But among the dead machinery of the Dark Age, there exist new machines built by the Imperium. Most notable among them are forges, mines, and thermic energy plants, all fueling the continued life in layers above. The civilization of Trantor rests on a graveyard of mechanical giants, a clockwork standing still until the end of all times.

Pit
Deeper than even the Machine Aeviternal lies a place scarcely known. Only a handful of expeditions in the last ten Millennia made the descent into the Pit and returned, bringing nothing but news of death and torment which had befallen them. By all accounts, the Pit should be a lifeless place, where water exists only as steam and the stone is hot and beginning to melt.
And yet, in these depths, on isles of cold crust, there exist the last remnants of Trantor's old civilization, a race mutated and changed beyond even the abhuman. Not even the wise among the Ordo Biologis know with certainty if the creatures of the Pit are the last of a wicked Xenos species or an extremely abhuman strain of mutants, bred by heat and radiation.
Time and again, the pit is pierced by imperial machinery, scraping raw material of the lowest portions of Trantor. Whenever such excavations begin or end, they bring about a stirring of the creatures below and their corpses are brought up in droves. Their bodies are burnt and thrown back into the pit, from where none return.

Core
Below the pit lies only the molten stone of Trantor's mantle, a liquid ocean of Magma and at last – the core. The ancient heart of the planet, an undying flame of the raw cosmic forces binding this galaxy together – the Core feeds all of Trantor's industry and civilization. From its liquid layers, the material for all spheres and everything therein was siphoned and brought to the surface.

Atlas Pillars
Standing atop and below all shells of the world of Trantor are the Atlas Pillars, towering monuments to the creators of this wonder. The pillars hold up the heavens above all shells, facilitate transport and transfer of energy and are as indestructible and mighty as the core itself. There exist millions of them, scattered about each shell. On the outer ones, they stand in irregular patterns, raised by the Mechanicus according to necessity. But on the lower shells, they mark huge patterns on the shells, standing as close together as mighty trees, whose branches entwine into the next upper layer.
Often times the atlas pillar form the spines of mighty hives, bastions of military force and hubs for transport and trade. These pillars, at their heart, are still the brutalist monoliths as which they were created, but overgrown with gothic architecture and habitats, gardens and terraces of ten millennia.
Apart from the shells themselves, they are the most notable and mighty features planetside of Trantor.

Rings
Standing on the outmost layer of the world of Trantor, one could see golden pathways painted in the sky. These are the hallowed rings of Trantor, golden bands in orbit around the planet, where the havens of voidships and starward lanes lie. These rings are the anchorage for the People's Navy of Trantor and staging grounds for the PDF and Imperial Guard forces raised on the Administratum world, going out to fight wars under the light of different stars.
Suspended in the heavens by forces of the Omnissiah, the Rings are ever growing, just like the shells of Trantor itself. New rings are constantly being built, fine lines across the sky, which than band together and form wider rings, more and more, until one day they shall enclose the planet whole and form the outermost, final shell, a shell above the sky of Trantor and the Hives Incandescent, which will ward off all evils and make the planet anew.

Read the Full Article: brass-and-iron.fandom.com/wiki…

Warhammer 40k fanart.
All artworks of the Brass & Iron Fan project are created using assets by FrostBo / milavasileva / TextureX / Freepik

Description

The world of Trantor is clad in seven concentric matryoshka shells, each offering a surface worth a planet on its own. Nested within each other, these layers of Trantor are each a world of their own, intertwined by a web of towers, pillars, tunnels, and entwined systems. All but the outermost layer look up to a sky forged by mankind.
The four innermost layers were made during the Dark Age of Technology and are, by all means, known to the Imperium, indestructible. The three outer shells were made during the millennia since the end of the Great Crusade. Though not as monolithic and indestructible as the ancient hulls below, these layers are inlaid with countless machines and weapons to protect this world and within them live mighty machine spirits, which may unleash the raw power siphoned from the planet's glowing core, to smite any foe daring to test the strength of their domain.

Hives Incandescent
The outermost shell of Trantor is aflame with golden light, shining like a jewel in the galaxy's relentless night. Here lie the greatest centers of population on Trantor, bar the Ecumenopolis of the Lithic Hives. On the surface live traders and void-farers, artisans and dockyard workers and all in service to the Administratum, who make contact with other worlds.
Its glittering surface and glistening spires, vast circles of palaces and docks, cities along fine tethers leading to the stars, may seem vulnerable and decadent to the unknowing beholder.
But in truth, the incandescent shell of Trantor is an unyielding bulwark of Civilization, tested in long sieges over the Millennia. Mountain ranges of adamantium rise from its surface, speckled with trillions of entrenchments, military installations, and firing positions. Energy lances, channeling the pure power of the planet's core, reach up from pits of glowing lava to mighty batteries atop. Invisible shields in overlapping layers cover every square kilometer of this shell, trenches deep as canyons await the enemy who should ever make landfall. Titans of the Legio Theomachia stand guard at the entrance gates of every city, and regiments of every hive on Trantor have their staging grounds here.
It is said in times of war when the enemy approaches, all the golden lights of the Hives Incandescent go out and the entire world falls black and silent. For days then the silence might hold, before the world erupts in the crimson red of war, the fiery flames of the Emperor's fury when the arsenal of Trantor is unleashed against its foes.

Vitreous Gardens
Just below the outermost layer lie the most vivid and flourishing realms of Trantor. The Vitreous Gardens are the food basket and pleasure garden of this world, home to a wide array of flora and fauna imported from the many different systems of Sector Gondwana.
Vast regions of the gardens may be likened to overgrown forests and plantations, stretching hundreds of kilometers in each direction and reaching as high as to touch the shell above, from where the glowing light of countless lamps emanates. These farming regions provide produce and crops to the upper classes, as well as rare spices and delicacies of which many are exported as well.
In the shadow of these luscious farmlands and jungles exist carefully designed horticulture. Hanging gardens and pleasure parks, small castles and palaces, summerhouses and venues for the wealthy have been erected amidst beautiful recreations of alien landscapes, continents of Holy Terra and even entire lands of pure imagination. Even the common masses who would never come to set foot in any such garden can at least enjoy their sight on the way when traversing shells, as many trains and transport are sent via transparent tubes through the gardens.

Lithic Hives
Where the roots of the Vitreous Gardens end, the high spires of the Lithic Hives begin. This is the first shell of Trantor to be built from the planet's native rock and stone, erected from the original surface many kilometers high to form the foundations and bulk of this massive planet-wide metropolis.
The Lithic Hives have long merged into one continuous city, covering not only the planet-wide surface of their shell but also the inner side of the shell above. As a result, the Lithic Hives know no sky, only the hanging spires of the cityscape above, almost as though the world had been folded onto itself, ready to meet and collapse at any moment. But the stone of Trantor is strong and has held for untold eons. The oldest buildings at the very bottom of this layer are said to have been made in ancient Dark Ages of Technology and are left alone by all but the devout servants of the Omnissiah.
In the Lithic Hives, the greatest part of all souls on Trantor live and die, without ever leaving their layer to ever see the stars above or the fires below. Here, the workings of the great Governance Machine are strongest felt, an ever watchful eye resting on every living thing. Soldiers, Arbites and Administratum Custodians are the most common sight among the general populace, and as a result, few beggars and ruinous denizens remain for long without being brought before the authorities below.

Dominion and Bastion
All wealth and splendor of the Hives Incandescent, all life, and greenery of the vitreous gardens and every last soul and living thing in the Lithic Hives are held up and governed by the power of the Dominion, wherein the authority and governance machine of this world lies.
The dominion shell contains endless structures predating the Great Crusade and even the Age of Strife, where all survivors of the erstwhile civilization sought refuge when the universe collapsed around them and the warp grew strong.
When Trantor was rediscovered, these ancient bulwarks were rebuilt to house the highest classes of administrators, the myriad councils and executors and not least the inner bastion of Trantor's military might. Here lie the secret cogitator banks and machine growths which constitute the governance machine, as well as the libraries and crypts of daily importance to administrate Gondwana. Few outside the select circles of power ever lay an eye on this shell and even those within rarely come to gaze outside the enclosed rooms of their surroundings.
It is said much of this inner shell has fallen to oblivion and is forgotten forever. Expeditions are mounted to seek out new Atlantean pillars, upon which rests the world above. But what knowledge they bring shall forever be concealed by the authority of Trantor.

Pandemonium Archives
Little is known about the original purpose of the world which is now called Trantor. Certainty only exists about the purpose of the Pandemonium Archives, the vast catacombs of knowledge which lie below the Dominion and Bastion of Trantor. When they were discovered by the Mechanicum at the peak of the Great Crusade, it was concluded their purpose lay in the preservation of knowledge until the end of time, against all possible destruction which could befall this planet, the system or indeed the whole of Sector Gondwana.
This layer is protected by a physically indestructible shell and gargantuan seals, as well as massive Gellar Fields warding off any warp-intrusion, should the world of Trantor be ever phased into the Immaterium. These and countless more precautions were taken for this layer alone, to protect endless databanks and crystals, capable of holding data far beyond the imagination of even the Adeptus Administratum.
However, the Explorators were confronted with a terrible enigma, when they found all the databanks and crystals – which had so chiefly been protected – empty.
The Imperium and Mechanicum utilized this curious find for purposes of their own and to the days of the 41st Millennium, still, new data are collected and recorded at the Pandemonium Archives. Blueprints, records, scriptures and all manner of knowledge thought to be essential for the next ten thousand years have already been preserved in the Pandemonium archives, alongside countless dead who wish to be entombed at this place in the hopes of having their souls protected beyond death from the ruinous powers.

Blackwater Grottos
For long, the Pandemonium Archives were believed to be the lowest artificial layer of Trantor, for below their foundations were found solid bedrock and caves of natural make. Blackwater had carved its way into the storm and formed grottos spanning all around the world. But their extent, at last, followed no random patterns. Instead, expeditions into the black water revealed in the sheer random arrangements of grottos and streams, signs of intelligent design.
The grottos appear to be a deliberate recreation of some natural system predating even the original colonization of Trantor by mankind. Few such relics of so venerable age exist, and fewer are of such size. Yet time had drastically changed these caves and left nothing technological to find but the faint imprints of unnatural particles and elements in the water.
In the 41st Millennium, the highest and clearest grottos serve as organic material farms and algae cultures to feed the entirety of Trantor should ever the Vitreous Gardens Burn. This function was already fulfilled by the Grottos once, during the last Siege of Trantor, when the diminished populace was fed for twelve years on the algae of blackwater alone.

Machine Aeviternal
Underlying the Blackwater Grottps are even stranger relics of the Dark Age of Technology. Machines exist here on the scale of continents, mechanisms larger than any star fort of a spacefaring vessel, larger even than some of the greatest machinations on Mars itself. But they lie all lifeless and dead, soulless without essential components left out of their heart. Before the end of all, when the Age of Strife reigned, the core components of these machines have been removed and their fate, as well as the purpose of the eternal machine, remains a mystery after ten Millennia of the tireless investigation by the Adeptus Mechanicus.
But among the dead machinery of the Dark Age, there exist new machines built by the Imperium. Most notable among them are forges, mines, and thermic energy plants, all fueling the continued life in layers above. The civilization of Trantor rests on a graveyard of mechanical giants, a clockwork standing still until the end of all times.

Pit
Deeper than even the Machine Aeviternal lies a place scarcely known. Only a handful of expeditions in the last ten Millennia made the descent into the Pit and returned, bringing nothing but news of death and torment which had befallen them. By all accounts, the Pit should be a lifeless place, where water exists only as steam and the stone is hot and beginning to melt.
And yet, in these depths, on isles of cold crust, there exist the last remnants of Trantor's old civilization, a race mutated and changed beyond even the abhuman. Not even the wise among the Ordo Biologis know with certainty if the creatures of the Pit are the last of a wicked Xenos species or an extremely abhuman strain of mutants, bred by heat and radiation.
Time and again, the pit is pierced by imperial machinery, scraping raw material of the lowest portions of Trantor. Whenever such excavations begin or end, they bring about a stirring of the creatures below and their corpses are brought up in droves. Their bodies are burnt and thrown back into the pit, from where none return.

Core
Below the pit lies only the molten stone of Trantor's mantle, a liquid ocean of Magma and at last – the core. The ancient heart of the planet, an undying flame of the raw cosmic forces binding this galaxy together – the Core feeds all of Trantor's industry and civilization. From its liquid layers, the material for all spheres and everything therein was siphoned and brought to the surface.

Atlas Pillars
Standing atop and below all shells of the world of Trantor are the Atlas Pillars, towering monuments to the creators of this wonder. The pillars hold up the heavens above all shells, facilitate transport and transfer of energy and are as indestructible and mighty as the core itself. There exist millions of them, scattered about each shell. On the outer ones, they stand in irregular patterns, raised by the Mechanicus according to necessity. But on the lower shells, they mark huge patterns on the shells, standing as close together as mighty trees, whose branches entwine into the next upper layer.
Often times the atlas pillar form the spines of mighty hives, bastions of military force and hubs for transport and trade. These pillars, at their heart, are still the brutalist monoliths as which they were created, but overgrown with gothic architecture and habitats, gardens and terraces of ten millennia.
Apart from the shells themselves, they are the most notable and mighty features planetside of Trantor.

Rings
Standing on the outmost layer of the world of Trantor, one could see golden pathways painted in the sky. These are the hallowed rings of Trantor, golden bands in orbit around the planet, where the havens of voidships and starward lanes lie. These rings are the anchorage for the People's Navy of Trantor and staging grounds for the PDF and Imperial Guard forces raised on the Administratum world, going out to fight wars under the light of different stars.
Suspended in the heavens by forces of the Omnissiah, the Rings are ever growing, just like the shells of Trantor itself. New rings are constantly being built, fine lines across the sky, which than band together and form wider rings, more and more, until one day they shall enclose the planet whole and form the outermost, final shell, a shell above the sky of Trantor and the Hives Incandescent, which will ward off all evils and make the planet anew.

Read the Full Article: brass-and-iron.fandom.com/wiki…

Warhammer 40k fanart.
All artworks of the Brass & Iron Fan project are created using assets by FrostBo / milavasileva / TextureX / Freepik