The Shaking Land
The Rolling Lands, the Domain of Perpetual Motion
Realm of Tekemikazuchi
Location: Mechanus
The realm of Tekemikazuchi, known as the Shaking Land, is a bit of an oddity in Mechanus—a place where order coexists with chaos in a tenuous kind of balance. Unlike the uniform, ticking-tocking layers of gears that make up the rest of the plane, the Shaking Land is in constant unpredictable motion. The landscape is an intricate jigsaw of massive stones and metal plates, which shift and click together and apart in endless cycles. Every step here causes vibrations, and the ground pulses with a rhythmic energy, as though it were a living thing—and one that could turn violent at any moment. Why? Well cutter, that would be because of the giant immortal catfish, obviously.
Now, you’re probably wondering how a giant catfish kaiju ended up in Mechanus, powering the gears of the multiverse no less. The chant goes that the Namazu is a beast of the Deep Chaos, originally swimming beneath the mud of the Prime, causing earthquakes and tsunamis when she wasn’t in a slumbering mood, which was most of the time. The beast was too wild and destructive for the mortal realms, so when Tekemikazuchi ascended to Mechanus, he took her with him, binding her to his realm in the Plane of Law and giving her wild nature a purpose.
The Namazu is a creature of paradox—a symbol of both destruction and order. She writhes in the muck beneath the ground of the Shaking Land, occasionally breaking the surface in a flash of scales, whiskers, and furious eyes. The catfish is enormous—her body stretches miles across the whole of Tekemikazuchi’s realm, and her tail alone could shatter a mountain, if she were able to unleash her full power.
But Tekemikazuchi keeps her mostly contained with the help of the enormous Kaname-ishi, or Pivot Stone. It’s usually suspended in mid-air by invisible forces, but when he needs to, Tekemikazuchi can press it down upon the Namazu if she gets too rowdy. Surrounding the stone is a complex network of pivots, levers and counter-weights that stretch for miles, all intricately designed to dampen her destructive tremors, and turn them into kinetic energy to power the Great Machine itself. It’s an uneasy alliance, to be sure—it’s a cert she despises the restraint, thrashing whenever Tekemikazuchi is distracted and she thinks she can get away with it. This is the cause of planequakes in Mechanus and even the Prime. But in her more lucid moments, it’s said she understands that her role is now part of a greater whole. When she thrashes just the right amount, it’s a perfect rhythm—a clockwork beat that causes the Shaking Land to vibrate in a sympathetic motion which powers the rotation of the plane’s heaviest cogs.
Namazu —
what does it take
to keep you quiet?
The Petitioners
The inhabitants of the Shaking Land are as strange as the realm itself. Tekemikazuchi’s petitioners are cutters who pledged their lives to the protection of communities from natural disasters; architects, humanitarians, brave rescuers. They appear as humanoid figures, but are part machine, with brass pistons and pivots that click and whirr in time with the shifting plates beneath their feet. These cutters move with purpose but seem lost in a trance, their minds focused on maintaining the delicate balance of the land, repairing cracks in metal plates and fine-tuning the pistons and gears that store up and convert energy.
Unusually, there’s a second type of petitioner here as well. These bashers are very different, with bodies that look like they’re made from shattered glass, the pieces held together by invisible forces. These petitioners are almost like ghosts, they never speak and barely interact with anything. Chant goes that they’re the spirits of poor sods who were killed before their time by earthquakes. Their forms are constantly shifting, as if caught in mid-transformation between solid and liquid forms. Whether they’re here because Tekemikazuchi feels sorrow for not protecting them, or whether they’re sent here to remind him of his duties, nobody knows.
Tekemikazuchi’s closest attendants, called the Mollific, are more aware than the average petitioner. They embody pure mathematical precision, their fractal bodies made of geometric patterns that shift in rhythm with the Namazu’s movements. They carry out the god’s will, overseeing the machinery that powers the plane and ensuring balance is maintained. Some graybeards ponder that they’re less servants and more extensions of Tekemikazuchi’s own mind, like living equations with only one purpose: to calculate the precise way to manipulate the machinery of the Shaking Land to keep the chaos contained.
The Shaking Land is not a place of predictability, but nor is it a place of chaos—it is dynamic balance incarnate, forever trembling on the edge of collapse. At its heart, the eternal vigilance of Tekemikazuchi holds everything together, just about.
Canonical Source: On Hallowed Ground [2e] p179. The source book only gives a name, all the details here are homebrewed—but inspired by the Japanese myths of Tekemikazuchi and the Namazu.
Source: Jon Winter-Holt
