MotM: Clockwork

Hey guys!

    Time again for Moon of the Month!  For this month's installment, I'm
exploring Clockwork, a strange world that is home to all sorts of golems and
clockwork critters (got the idea while reading the entries for clockwork
swordsman & clockwork horror from MC Annual III). The idea snowballed into a
fullfledged MotM, complete with a potential new, very dangerous ally or
enemy for PCs to play with, depending on the whims of the DM.  Enjoy!

Adam


Clockwork
Planet Name: Clockwork, the Celestial Clock
Planet Type: Spherical mineral body
Planet Size: D
Escape Time: 4 turns
Satellites: None
Distance from Primary: 250,000 miles
Day Length: 24 hours
Year Length: 28 days
Population Analysis: the Clockmakers

            One of the more unusual moons discovered thus far is Clockwork,
the Celestial Clock.  The entire moon is one gigantic clock with four
 "faces"; one that measures hours and minutes, one that measures days and
months, another to measure years and decades, and finally one to measure
centuries and millennium.  The clock is based on a standard day of 24 hours,
a standard month of 28 days, and a standard year of 365 days (with accounts
for leap-years and an extra day every year).  The four faces are set
equal-distance around the equator, with no faces under either pole.  The
clock is 100% accurate to the time it keeps, which seems to match up closely
with "standard campaign" worlds like Krynn, Oerth, and Toril.
            Clockwork is a spherical moon with a diameter of 4,000 miles,
giving it an equator of about 12,560 miles or so.  There is no polar
flattening, so the moon is a perfect sphere.  The faces are flat discs of
3,000 miles in diameter, located under ten-mile thick crystal domes.  The
hands are each almost 1,500 miles long and 10 miles in diameter, rotated by
enormous gears found deep inside the moon.  Some hands move so slowly as to
appear never to move at all, while the minute and hour hands can move at
break-neck speeds at their tips.
            The moon is a mass of metal and crystal.  The outer shell is
made of brass, iron, and many other, unidentifiable, metals.  Other than the
faces, the shell is largely a dark gray metal with a thickness of several
dozen miles, perhaps about 100 miles thick in most spots.  Inside is a maze
of gigantic, several-mile high gears and machinery reminiscent of Mechanus.
The sound of machines in operation is ever-present, along with the hiss of
escaping steam.  While it is easy to navigate a spelljammer through this
maze of gears and cogs, it also quite easy for a ship to be caught between
two gigantic gears and crushed.  Some cogs are home to the survivors of
these accidents, eking out an existence until they can be rescued.

Climate and Weather
            The weather of clockwork is cool and dry.  There are no clouds
or standing water; the only water can be found inside the moon as part of
the means of keeping the machine going, usually in steam form.  Thus, there
are no storms of any sort or even any climate zones.  The whole moon shares
roughly the same temperature, slightly warmer in the day and slightly cooler
at night.

Appearance from Space
            The clock-faces of Clockwork glow a bright white, even at night.
The hands of the clock glow with their own light, with a different color for
each hand.  The rest of the moon is dark gray, even on the day-side of the
moon, which makes the clock faces easier to read.  A human with good
eyesight can accurately read the clock from a distance of 500,000 miles.
Use of spyglasses can extend this distance to up to 10 million miles.
            The hand-colors are as follows:
Minute-Hand: Crimson-red
Hour-Hand: Cherry-red
Day-Hand: Orange
Month-Hand: Yellow
Year-Hand: Green
Decade-Hand: Light blue
Century-Hand: Royal blue
Millennium-Hand: Indigo

Continents and Landmarks
            There are no distinguishable continents on Clockwork, although
some consider the four faces as continents of a sort.  These artificial
continents are named Diurni (the hours/minutes face), Peroi (the days/month
face), Centuri (the years/decades face) and Epochi (the century/millennium
face).
            Dotting the surface are temples to various time-related deities,
primarily Cronus, Lendor, and Labelas Enoreth.  These temples are large,
imposing structures that are ancient beyond years.  Some dwarves have even
commented that they do not believe the temples were ever built by mortal
hands; the precision is too great, the resistance to weathering is so
perfect that the buildings look almost new, the materials used are not of
the material world.  Some sages point to the Juna or another ancient,
powerful race as the primary architect, pointing out that the structures of
those races share some of the same characteristics as the temples of
Clockwork.  They claim that the Juna originally built the temples to
whatever deities they worshipped, and that the clerics of modern time
deities simply moved in much like hermit crabs.

Native Creatures
            Almost no natural creatures make Clockwork their home; there are
precious few sources of food for natural creatures.  There are some pockets
of small animals like pigeons and rats, and maybe a few medium-sized
predators such as coyotes, hunting cats, and wild dogs.  There pockets are
far apart, such that there is no unified ecosystem, but rather several small
independent ones not unlike closed cave systems.
            The lack of natural creatures is more than made up for in
unnatural creatures, primarily golems, clockwork creatures, modrons, and
like artificial creatures.  These constructs can be of any shape and size;
there is an immense variety of forms.  One can encounter humanoid iron
golems, clockwork hunting dogs, steam-powered elephants, and even delicate
gemstone songbirds.  Almost every construct imaginable can be encountered on
Clockwork save one: clockwork horrors.  There are no clockwork horrors
anywhere on Clockwork, and any that arrive are very quickly hunted down and
destroyed.  The Clockmakers (see Guide to Groundlings below) are the sworn
mortal enemies of clockwork horrors and ruthlessly oppose the mechanical
menaces.
            Clockwork is a good place for a DM to introduce any manner of
construct that he wishes to add to his game.  The PCs might encounter the
creatures on Clockwork itself, or were constructed on this moon before being
sent out into wildspace.  Most of the creatures have programmed intelligence
(a.k.a. at most as smart as an animal, more likely given only a few orders).

Guide to Groundlings
            Clockwork is ruled wholly by a mysterious group known only as
the Clockmakers.  This enigmatic organization is rarely seen, instead using
metagolem middlemen to conduct their business dealings.  When a clockmaker
is seen, he is heavily cloaked with form-obscuring robes and deep cowls that
hide all of their features.  Their robes are trimmed with symbols of
Mechanus, sprockets, cogs, gears, clocks, and hourglasses.  Usually they
keep to the factories, where they busily build armies of artificial
monsters.
            The Clockmakers are vaguely human, and have their origins in
events in a distant sphere long ago.  That now-forgotten sphere was the
birthplace of the Clockwork Horrors; the Clockmakers are the survivors of
that fallen culture.  The founder, Ithacus, was the son of the inventor who
crafted the adamantium horror.  His father's last act was to send his young
son away, just as he was disintegrated right before Ithacus's eyes.  Vowing
revenge, the survivors fled to Clockwork aboard the sphere's only ships to
rebuild and recover.  To their horror, the monsters that destroyed their
civilization escaped the sphere and began to spread throughout all of the
Known Spheres.  Ithacus took over the mantle of leadership of the survivors
and began construction of an enormous army of golems and clockwork
swordsmen.
            Since the time when the Horrors began to spread, the Clockmakers
have crafted several armies to field against their hated foes.  Their
efforts have been met with mixed results; they have stopped dead the advance
of the Horrors to some spheres, while elsewhere their armies have been
crushed by the relentless horde of the Horrors.  Despite this, the
Clockmakers continue to build their armies and set them against the Horrors
in hopes of destroying them, once and for all.
            As a race, most of the Clockmakers have died off.  The most
powerful members have transferred their consciousness into clockwork devices
of their own making.  Such creatures have the same statistics as a clockwork
swordsman with 10-20 HD and the abilities of wizards of 10th to 20th level.
Many have crafted clockwork clones of themselves; a clone is identical to
the original, but has 5 less hit dice and 5 less levels as a wizard.
            Somewhere deep in the bowels of Clockwork are hidden chambers
with vats that hold many members of the Clockmaker race in status.  Most are
women, children, and a handful of men.  The Clockmakers keep them in status
for a time when the Clockwork Horrors have been destroyed, and they can
begin to rebuild their civilization.


Resources and Trade
            It is unknown from where raw materials are gained, but the
natives produce a steady supply of clocks, clockwork creatures, and golems.
The clocks produced at this moon are more advanced than normal and very
reliable in keeping time.  This includes the Mystical Clock of Clockwork, a
type of magic clock with four faces that keep time to Clockwork's time with
a 100% rate of accuracy.  A Mystical Clock sells for 10,000 gp and is the
primary means for many spacefairers for keeping accurate time throughout
dozens of spheres.
            All manner of golems are crafted for sale at Cogs (see Ports of
Call below).  When a golem is sold, it has a magic token of some sort that
gives the holder of the token control of the golem.  Iron, gemstone, stone,
and minor variant golems are most commonly available for sale, while clay
and flesh golems are never for sale.  The price of a golem is usually the
cost of constructing the golem plus a 20-80% profit margin.  Thus if a golem
cost 100,000 gp to build, it will be sold at a price of 120,000 gp to
180,000 gp.  In the case of clockwork creatures, the price is 1,000 gp to
2,000 gp per hit point the monster has.
            In exchange, the Clockmakers purchase magic items and
spelljammer ships of all sorts, especially warships.  Astute observers have
noted that it seems that the Clockmakers are building an enormous navy,
complete with armies of golems, clockwork swordsmen, and like monsters.
Recent audits of Clockmaker purchases by the Arcane have revealed a
startling fact: the Clockmakers have bought more helms and ships in the past
year than the Elven Fleet have for an entire decade.  The Arcane have kept
this fact a secret, but worry about the rise of a new power in wildspace.

Ports of Call
            At the northern pole is the iron-towered city of Cogs.  It is a
metropolis surrounded by factories where the constructs are built.  The city
is run by roughly 2,000 metagolems, who run the daily maintenance, the
government, and the Clockmarket.  Other permanent residents include
communities of modrons (who number 10,000 or so), tinker gnomes (who number
about 15,000), clockwork swordsmen (a community of about 3,000), inevitables
(about 1,000), miscellaneous intelligent clockwork devices (about 7,500),
and various humans and demi-humans (about 20,000 in all).  Thus, the city of
Cogs has an overall population of 58,500.  Temporary visitors swell this
population to well over 65,000.
            Cogs is laid out like a set of flat gears, with cog-shaped
buildings and streets zigzagging between the buildings.  Raised platforms
are built to allow water-landing ships to land safely land and conduct
trade.  Those seeking to purchase clocks or golems are directed to the
Clockmarket, a huge 10-story building with an open-air center where
merchants haggle over the price of their wares.  Patrols of metagolems,
backed up by iron golems, keep the streets safe from thieves and violence.
The metagolems take a zero-tolerance policy towards crime, and harshly
punish even minor offenses.  Sentences range from months of hard labor to
death.  Justice is very swift in Cogs.

History
            Clockwork has been used as the primary timepiece for much of the
Known Spheres for untold centuries.  Legends state that this gigantic clock
was, in fact, created by the gods themselves when they first created worlds
like Krynn, Oerth, and Toril to sync up the measurements of time between
these and other worlds with similar measurements of time.  Other sages
dismiss these claims as utter bunk; after all, they claim, most worlds do
not have the same day or year as such "minor" worlds as Krynn or Toril.  As
the gods are silent on the origins and nature of Clockwork, the question
remains unanswered.
            The Clockmakers are recent arrivals, showing up only perhaps a
few centuries ago.  They immediately set up shop, establishing factories and
building the city of Cogs.  Once the scourge of Clockwork Horrors began to
threaten the Known Spheres, they moved their most important operations
underground and started war production.  Thus far many fleets have departed
from this moon to do battle with Horrors, and construction always continues
on future fleets to sustain their eternal war.

Satellites
            None; Clockwork is a moon without moons of its own.

Other Considerations
            The Clockmakers are primarily interested in their war against
the Clockwork Horrors, to the point of blinding obsession.  This obsession
has driven them to see everything in the light of destroying the Horrors;
everything else is secondary.  If a world is infested with the creatures,
they would simply destroy the world if they can.  Of course, all life that
would perish in the meantime would be chalked up to "collateral damage".
The Clockmakers have become increasingly ruthless in their war, resorting to
means that would shock and appall other races.  The Clockmakers do not care;
if such tactics appall other races, it is because those races lack the
stomach to fight a war against the Clockwork Horrors.
            The Clockmakers can enter a campaign in many ways.  It may be as
simple as the PCs wish to purchase (or are hired to purchase) a golem at
Clockwork.  Or they might find a metagolem that is secretly an agent of the
Clockmakers, who quietly observes the PCs for whatever sinister purposes its
masters have.  Alternately, the DM may wish to center his campaign around
the war between the Clockmakers and the Clockwork Horrors.  In such a
situation, the Clockmakers might find the PCs useful as skilled agents sent
to disrupt the Horrors' invasion of a world by destroying the higher up
Horrors.  Or the Clockmakers might take things too far, blowing up a heavily
populated world using a newly crafted device.  The PCs would be sent by
survivors of that world (or even the gods themselves!) to reign in the
Clockmakers before their tactics leave all of the Known Spheres as a
wasteland.  In such a campaign, the PCs can expect to encounter endless
mechanical monsters, harassment from the Clockwork Horrors, and battle with
the very powerful Clockmakers themselves.  And what of the Clockmakers in
status?  What would be their fate?  After all, they are innocent of the
crimes of their fellow Clockmakers.  And forget not the Clockwork Horrors as
well; defeating the Clockmakers would leave them unchecked in wildspace.
The creatures might begin a campaign of terror the likes of which have never
been seen.  Indeed, the PCs might defeat the Clockmakers only to discover
they must deal with an even greater threat before peace can return to the
stars.