The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines

The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines
Publication Information
Author	Philip Reeve Jeremy Levett
Illustrator	Aedel Fakhrie Jamie Gregory Ian McQue Maxime Plasse Philip Reeve Amir Sand Rob Turpin Philip Varbanov David Wyatt
Publisher	Scholastic
Release date	November 1st, 2018
Pages	187
Chronology
Timeline	1007ᴛᴇ

The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines (IWOME for short) is a guide to the world of the Traction Era, expanding on the previously released 2011 ebook The Traction Codex. Written by Philip Reeve and Jeremy Levett and designed by Jamie Gregory, it features illustrations from a variety of artists. Ian McQue and David Wyatt have both also designed covers for the Mortal Engines series. The IWOME also features illustrations by Amir Zand, Rob Turpin, Aedel Fahkrie and Philip Varbanov, and maps designed by Lowtuff and illustrated by Maxime Plasse. It was published by Scholastic in November 2018.

Setting

Main article: Events

The book gives an overview of the entire Traction Era, including following up on the aftermath of Scrivener's Moon, but the main body of the book mostly focused on the period leading up to and immediately following the MEDUSA incident in 1007ᴛᴇ, as portrayed in the original book. Unlike the previous 2011 release "the Traction Codex", the 2018 "Illustrated World Of Mortal Engines" does not cover the events of the Traction War, and as such does not go further in the timeline than Predator's Gold.

Publisher's Summary

Including dozens of beautiful colour illustrations and maps, this never-before-seen visual guide details the fearless adventurers, epic battles and disastrous cataclysms that shaped the world of Philip Reeve's award-winning Mortal Engines series, soon to be a major film.

Plot

London: The First Traction City

Main article: London

An introduction to the basic structure of London, as a static city in 475ᴛᴇ, its early form as a Traction City in 486ᴛᴇ, and its development by 1007ᴛᴇ.

London in the last years of it's static city was dominated by Godshawk's Head, the leftover of an unfinished, immense statue of the last Scriven King of London, later occupied by the Order of Engineers, who considered themselves the brains of the city, and the Barbican, the Scriven's mobile fortress and the city's governmental headquarters, which would later be incorporated into the command tier of the first traction city. The city state was surrounded by the defensive Orbital Moatway, a vast and impressive ancient structure that though reinforced was too long to be effectively manned, in times of crisis London's Trained Bands aided small permanently stationed Garage Bands operating from ancient milecastles including Mimms, Cobbem, and Welcome Break. London's public transport was primarily through Wind-Trams, used by Londoners who couldn't afford a sedan chair or post-chaise, and used oyster shells as tickets. Also the Motte & Hoople is noted to be London's oldest and least pleasant pub, and the ruins of Nonesuch House is highlighted, Godshawk's grand mansion in the Brick Marsh burned down in the Skinner's Riots.

The first Traction City in it's initial form was a far more militaristic vehicle than it's later evolution, it's heavily fortified command tier featuring a prominent battery of Gilbert & Johnson rifled muzzle-loaders and augmented by guns stripped from the Movement's fleet. The city is structured around the Great Under Tier (G.U.T), initially designed and used as a hangar for London's/the Movement's fleet of Armoured Landships and Monos before their use became obsolete and before dedicated venues were constructed was used for large public functions including military reviews and masked balls, and the Engine District, where the city is powered by Godshawk Engines, the largest engines ever built. Workers accommodation was initially arranged in tiers of mass produced habitation units, scientifically calculated as providing the exact amount of space required for an individual and constructed from non-strategic materials, but were unpopular and derided as "eggboxes for people". The tiers are linked by Elevators designed by Dr. Avery Teal, modelled after the water-powered funiculars of Mayda-at-the-Worlds-End, but initially were unreliable and faced water containment issues.

In the next 5 centuries the traction city further developed. By 1007ᴛᴇ London's Top Tier would be crowned by three landmarks. The Guildhall housing the offices of the greater and lesser London Guilds, their monthly council meetings, and a collection of Tractionist Art, the Engineerium, a rational modern building used as the headquarters of the Guild of Engineers, and a reconstruction of St Paul's Cathedral, an ancient Christian shrine being renovated by the Engineers based on authentic plans rumoured to have been discovered by explorer and Head Historian Thaddeus Valentine. Below at the heart of tier two, the Guild of Historians have constructed the Museum of London, one of the greatest archaeological and ethnographical collections in The Great Hunting Grounds. The emergence of Airship technology and the airtrade in the preceding centuries has lead to Air-Harbours being constructed, most prominently the Port of London on Tier Five. The city's core structure, the Gut, has expanded following its new use, a resource processing district where captured towns are dismantled and new citizens are lectured and given registration numbers.

History Of The Traction Era

Main article: Events

An overview of early tractionist history, from the Sixty Minute War until the formal adoption of Municipal Darwinism. But primarily focused on the period around the Wheeled War, following up on the ending of Scrivener's Moon. Character profiles are given for Shrike, Cluny Morvish,, Lama Batmunkh, Auric Godshawk, Nicholas Quirke, and Gideon Crumb in this section.

Historian Chudleigh Pomeroy notes that though both the rulers of Traction Cities and the Anti-Traction League encourage the idea that their civilizations have lasted "A Thousand Years", the actual history of the traction era is far less neat, and that 1ᴛᴇ is a calendar convention used by archaeologists, not a fixed date for the beginning of the first Traction Boom. The knowledge Historians have uncovered from the ruins and rubbish tips of the ancient world suggest they lived in neither traction cities or fully static settlements, parts of their populations frequently moving in railed mobile neighbourhoods or small four-person cities. They built these hybrid settlements almost everywhere, from the bottom of the oceans to outer space, some records suggesting perhaps even other worlds. Ancient surviving celluloid shows how unparalleled their technology was, resurrecting the dead, creating mechanical men, conjuring food from thin air and using powerful energy weapons. Many Historians however dispute these records, arguing that they are religious artwork. Very little records survive from the later "Screen Age", suggesting that either literacy had greatly declined, or that the ancients somehow stored their knowledge in the vast number of screen baring machines found in this archeological period. The screen age however devastatingly ended, wiping out their civilization and most of human life, as well as other relics including the dinosaurs and the mythical spiders who's web once covered the entire world. The generations of the Black Centuries believed that the gods had punished the ancients for their cleverness and arrogance with a "Downsizing", but the true nature of the catastrophe was first suggested in the 480sᴛᴇ by scholar Fever Crumb, first using the term "Sixty Minute War". For many decades following the conflict, many purposefully diverted asteroid "Slow Bombs" struck the planet, mostly concentrated on North America, contributing to many geographical changes. The majority of this information and the history of the Traction Era in general was uncovered by the development of archaeology throughout the era. Many of the ruins of ancient cities became home to clans of scavengers who survived by sifting through the debris for valuable Old-Tech. As they began to become more prosperous some began to prefer to call themselves "archaeologists", but the difference between the terms has remained vague, rich and respected Historians such as Thaddeus Valentine are still often dismissed as "mere scavengers". Common findings from the ancient world include Blast-Glass, found in the world's great craters and highly valued for jewelry which is often said to be cursed and cause wasting diseases, and a wide variety of Old-Tech, including Set-A-Light Dishes, originally thought to be a form of illumination but now theorized to broadcast radio signals, Fools' Mirrors, the forementioned devices that became common during the screen age, Hobb's Caps, ancient status symbols that many Traction Cities try to imitate, and Seedies, strange reflective discs with a central hole, thought to have been an ancient currency. It is unclear whether the technology used to create Stalkers dates from before or after the Sixty Minute War, devices known as "Stalker brains" were scavenged from pyramids found in the arctic, which nomad warlords later found could restore a human corpse to a mindless semblance of life, using them to construct a limited number of armoured undead warriors. The longest surviving of these warriors was Shrike, resurected as part of the Movement's Lazarus Brigade by the legendary Snow Leopard, he went rogue after the Battle of Three Dry Ships and appears as a mercenary for various factions in the following five centuries, before again entering the service London and, perhaps, finally being killed.

Immediately after the Sixty Minute War, with the great civilizations of the Screen Age and the fabled ozone layer wiped away, a savage age began. Life was cheap and most surviving people, scattered bands of savages hiding from plague-winds and poisoned rain in the cellars and caves of their ancestors' once-mighty cities, would have happily sold their own children for a tin of rice pudding. The period known as the Black Centuries. Many cultures and civilisations arose, often short lived, and unclear whether they were contemporary with early tractionists. Many machines and artifacts made of a blueish alloy were constructed by a culture apparently wiped out by plague, an Electric Empire linked with the Arctic Stalker-builders are thought to have initially retained the lost secret of transmitting energy without wires, and when the North Sea had drained away a marshland culture arose constructing giant Raffia Hats to protect from the toxic rains. Civilisation however most quickly reimerged in Africa, which though far from unscathed was not as comprehensively devestated by the Sixty Minute War, leading to the rise of "Spring Cultures" such as the Tibesti Caliphate, Ogbomosho and KwaZulu Kabusha. The most historically prominant of these Spring Cultures was what would become the Zagwan Empire. Holding faith in a surviving fundementalist offshoot of Christianity, they believed that the war had been sent by God to punnish the unbelieving heretechs, and it was the holy task of Zagwa to finish his work. Though reluctant to use weapons not mentioned in the Bible, the empire conquered most of the African continent, engulfing Timbuktu, Songhay and Hoggar, burning all Old-Tech they discovered (along with its owners). During the following centuries the Zagwans greatly prosperred, linking Slow Bomb mining towns across the Sahara with a network of well built roads, and by the 5th century ᴛᴇ Zagwan war galleys controlled the Middle Sea, extending their influence over much of Southern Europa. However the Empire declined following the technophobic revival under Archmandrite Mbakwe, purging most blacksmiths, millers, architects and scribes as crypto-technocrats and launching a disasterous holy war against the rising tractionists across the Middle Sea, later known as the Zagwan Deluge. Ancient Pyramids were also found in the Saharah, as well as Persia and the Thousand Islands, but unlike those in the arctic they've not been found to contain artifacts more interesting than fancy boxes full of dead kings.

But the Era would be defined by the nomadic tribes responding to "runaway climate change" who would later become known as the earliest tractionists. In what would become known as Fuel Country, the land revealed from the draining of the North Sea, many battles would be fought between early nomad kings, fighting over the remaining rich oil fields found beneath ancient watchtowers. In aproximately 1ᴛᴇ the technomancers of the itinerant nations of Europa learned to replicate the half understood engines of the past and began attatching the new motors to their wagons and mobile homes. People being people these vehicles were almost immediately used in battle, smaller nomad vehicles gathering around larger traction fortresses for protection, developing into Nomad Empires. Most noteworthy in later history were the nomad empire's known as The Movement, one of the smallest but most technologically superior faction who' last leader, Nikola Quercus, would convert London into the first Traction City, and the Arkhangelesk, among the largest and most powerful who's warrior Queen, Cluny Morvish, would lead a coalition against it at the Battle of Three Dry Ships, before constructing her own Traction City, Arkangel. The development of Anti-tractionism in eastern Eurasia would run paralell. The legendary founder of Shan Guo, Lama Batmunkh, also purpotedly living in 1ᴛᴇ, would begin the Mortar and Harmony period of wall building efforts tackling encroaching Rus Landships.

Many mutant animals as well as people arose during the Black Centuries, but none were more notable to the development of traction cities than the Scriven, a short-lived race with speckled skin who conquered London in the third century ᴛᴇ before being purged in the fifth. Before being deposed the last Scriven king of London, Auric Godshawk, developed the simple-to-produce but highly efficient land engines which would become the basis of all city-engines. Learning of these engines, a minor warlord who would later be remembered as Nicholas Quirke, would lead his nomad empire, the Movement, in an invasion of London, breaching the static city's defenses at the Battle of Welcome Break in 477ᴛᴇ using Quirke's landships, traction fortress and Lazarus Brigade shock troops. London's Order of Engineers becoming an invaluable ally, the Movement began a vast project of tearing down the city and rebuilding it as the first traction city at astonishing speed despite sparking civil war within the Movement, with much credit belonging to Cheif Engineer Dr Crumb (or Crome), developing the Crome equations of tier geometry as well as social theories predicting the rise of Municipal Darwinism. A powerful alliance of northern nomads and rebel movement forces grew determined to stop Londons mobilization, but were soundly defeated by the moving city at the Battle of Three Dry Ships.

London's victory triggered an arms race of building other Traction Cities in response, culminating in a forty year 'Wheeled War', where the early Traction Cities generally tried to crush or eat their rivals as soon as their engines could be started. Walled towns and Nomad Empires built their cities within walled enclosures, with materials supplied by the industrial base of traction boom towns that mistook tractionism as a profitable fad. Responding to the chaos in Europe as a distraction from social problems at home, the Grand Synod of the Zagwan Empire declared holy war against the tractionists, But achieved nothing but uniting the early cities in a temporary armistice to defeat them. In attempt to avoid a return to the Wheeled War, the rules of engagement of Municipal Darwinism were decided on at the Diet of Ulp in 520ᴛᴇ. Modelled on the theories of Dr Crumb, Municipal Darwinists aimed to evolve cities through a process similar to natural selection, allowing stronger and better designed cities to weed out the worse and weaker, and allowing traction cities to adapt to and exploit different environmental niches. In the following years many cities developed novel approaches such as jousting, or shortlived experimental designs, and began reproducing by building offshoot traction suburbs.

The Age Of Traction Cities

Main article: Mortal Engines (book)

An expansion of background worldbuilding elements appearing prominantly in the original book, including the London Guilds and their associated characters and the military history of the Anti-Traction League.

London is governed by a Guild system, which is popular among the many varied forms of traction city governing, usually dominated by the Engineer and Navigator professions. London also has a very prominant Historian Guild founded in 525ᴛᴇ. In 998ᴛᴇ Thaddeus Valentine, originally an Out-Country scavenger who had rapidly risen through the ranks, was appointed Head Historian. A practical Historian known for long expeditiond away from London in his airship, the 13th Floor Elevator, Valentine was hailed a hero for his efforts to rescue survivors of The Big Tilt disaster, which affected many lives, such as the orphaned Tom Natsworthy. London also soon became the home of Valentine's daughter Katherine, as well as a rescued wolf-puppy called Dog.

More coming soon...

Cities Of The Great Hunting Ground

Main article: Traction Cities

A further expansion of other Traction Cities mentioned to be present in the Great Hunting Ground. More coming soon...

The Wider World

Main article: World

An exploration of the Traction Era world outside of the Great Hunting Ground. More coming soon...

Differences with the Traction Codex

More coming soon...

The Traction War

Main article: Traction War

More coming soon...

Editions

Initial cover design by Jamie Gregory.

External Links

• Reddit AMA with Jeremy Levett, co-author of the IWOME.
• Announcement on Philip Reeve's blog, featuring the cover image.
• To accompany the launch, the authors published a "An A-Z of the IWOME" on their blogs, discussing the development and creative process behind the book in four posts: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Mortal Engines
Mortal Engines Quartet: Mortal Engines • Predator's Gold • Infernal Devices • A Darkling Plain Fever Crumb Trilogy: Fever Crumb • A Web of Air • Scrivener's Moon Thunder City Duology: Thunder City • Bridge of Storms Mortal Engines Expanded Universe: Night Flights • The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines • Film