There is a map.
In a basement of a dusty Stormwind home, the floor set with truesilver and platinum arcs that circle and cross without seeming reason nor pattern, there is a map like no other.
It dominates the dark chamber, easily as wide across as a man is tall it pulls the eye towards it. Though it is only a representation of the world it looks as though it should weigh as much as the real thing. It is as if it has been placed on a taut sheet and that everything tumbles towards it.
It is a map of Azeroth. The finest cartographers and explorers were hired in its construction, years ago now. No expense spared as every inch of the world was measured and recorded. The scale is perfect, every mountain and valley rendered, rising and falling in craggy beauty. Looking down at the map is looking down at the world from a great height; look closer and there would be no surprise to see tiny figures going about their lives.
Earth has been shaped from bronze, still gleaming with warmth as if it were forged yesterday, while the ocean, with waves like a wind blown across it, is a sea of solid steel. Other metals and precious stones have been placed here and there, indifferent to the borders of politics and war, they indicate things not seen on any other map – the continent of Northrend, for one, is shot through with veins of the metal Saronite, the cancerous green seeming to throb in the dull light.
It might be dismissed as a mere curiousity, some folly to ruin the wealth of a tasteless nobleman, if not for the thrum that sets the hairs on the back of the neck to tickling, the oppressive closeness of the room that is air laden with magic.
The base of the map, on which the great circle of the world rests, is a solid stump, all twisting shiny brass, grates that glow with the purple blue of arcane energies, and clockwork. As yes, the clockwork. Cartwheel-sized gears that turn, each tooth inscribed with a theurgic symbols, they tick deep in the chest, a sound more felt than heard, the heartbeat of the world.
All of it, the paths on the floor that recreate the lines of energy that sleet through the Twisting Nether with cosmic apathy, the arcane engine laced with enchantment, the choice of metals and the efforts of dozens of master craftsmen…all in service of the other feature of the map.
Across the surface of this faux-Azeroth are strung hundreds of wires. Copper wrapped in gold, for those two metals strum with the rhythms of magic, encase the world in a net, a skein of sensitivity. Across the Eastern Kingdoms the net is complete, there is hardily a square inch that is not crossed by at least once – years of man hours by mages linking the real world to the Analogy. Northrend has fewer, and Kalimdor even less, though progress is being made.
It is a map of power.
Any large outburst of energy in the world, magical or otherwise, is sensed by the wires and recorded by the engine. Most minor magery is ignored, far too small to register, but there have been events that torn at the fabric of the map…
The opening of the Dark Portal played a discordant song
The reigniting of the Sunwell snapped wires and scorched the metal of the map
Tonight, something is stirring the Analogy. A wire twangs as it splits in two and then is followed by the hum as wire after wire vibrates the movement across the world like a shadow.