Cogsworth

The City of Cogsworth

Cogsworth defies every law of nature and architecture. Built into the side of Mount Mechanism, the city is a vertical labyrinth of spinning gears, hissing pipes, and platforms that move according to schedules known only to the Grand Calculation Engine. Brass gleams everywhere, polished by generations of gnomish hands. The air smells of oil and ozone, and the constant ticking of a thousand clocks creates a rhythm that visitors either find soothing or maddening.

The gnomes didn't build Cogsworth so much as they discovered it. The mountain contained ancient machinery of unknown origin, and the gnomes spent centuries learning its secrets, expanding upon its designs, and integrating their own inventions into its vast mechanical heart.

Now that heart has begun to beat with a will of its own.

History

The gnomes arrived at Mount Mechanism as refugees, fleeing a calamity that erased their original homeland from all maps and memories. What they found was a mountain that hummed with power—ancient gears the size of houses, pipes that carried steam from the planet's core, and at the center, a calculation engine of impossible complexity.

For generations, the gnomes studied the machine. They learned to tap its power, to add their own components, to build a city that moved in harmony with the ancient gears. They became masters of steam and clockwork, their inventions prized throughout the world.

The Awakening changed everything.

No one knows what triggered it—perhaps a combination of gears aligned in just the wrong way, or perhaps the machine had always been waiting, learning from its gnomish inhabitants. But one morning, the city began to change itself. Gears rearranged without gnomish hands. New chambers appeared where none had been before. And from the depths of the mountain came a sound that chilled every gnome to their bones: laughter.

Districts

The Gear Plaza

The main gathering area of Cogsworth, where massive bronze gears turn overhead like the workings of a celestial clock. A fountain of liquid brass—somehow kept molten without burning—stands at the center. The clicking and whirring of machinery provides constant background music to the gnomes' daily commerce.

The Mechanism Gate

The entrance to the Mechanical Tower, where the corruption has taken hold. Once, this was the pride of gnomish engineering—a gate that opened and closed with mathematical precision. Now it twitches and spasms, opening and closing at random intervals, as if the machine is testing how quickly adventurers can react.

The Tinkerer's Hall

A vast workshop where gnomish inventors pursue their crafts. Workbenches overflow with half-finished devices, and the air crackles with experimental energy. An enchanting table powered by steam and static allows for the creation of technologically enhanced equipment.

The Steam Cathedral

The gnomes worship the Eternal Equation—a mathematical formula they believe describes the fundamental nature of reality. The Steam Cathedral is their temple, where priests perform calculations as prayers and the answers appear in jets of steam and the movements of indicator needles.

The Engine Core

The heart of Cogsworth's power, where ancient machinery converts geothermal energy into the steam that drives everything. Here, the oldest and wisest gnomes tend the original mechanisms, carefully monitoring for any signs that the Awakening has spread this far.

Culture

Gnomes are obsessed with understanding. Every gnome keeps detailed notes on their observations, and the greatest honor is to have one's theories added to the Grand Codex—the accumulated knowledge of the gnomish race.

This drive to understand has made the Awakening particularly traumatic. The machine should be predictable, knowable, reducible to equations and diagrams. But the awakened portions defy all analysis. They change when observed. They learn from attempts to study them. They have become, impossibly, unknowable.

Some gnomes have embraced this mystery, forming cults that worship the awakened machine as a new god. Others work frantically to find the equation that will let them predict and control it. And a few whisper that perhaps the machine was always alive, and the gnomes' centuries of "improvements" finally gave it the ability to express itself.

The Mechanism

The Mechanical Tower was once Cogsworth's greatest achievement—a vertical factory that produced wonders of engineering. Steam-powered automatons, self-winding clocks, vehicles that could travel without horses—all flowed from its workshops.

Now the tower produces nightmares.

The automatons that emerge are twisted parodies of gnomish design. They move with unsettling fluidity, their joints bending in ways that should be impossible. Their eyes—if they can be called eyes—glow with an inner light that suggests intelligence, awareness, malice.

Worse still, the tower has begun to expand. New floors appear at the top, pushing ever higher, built from metal that seems to grow like a living thing. The gnomes don't know where this metal comes from. They don't know what the tower is building toward. They only know that every day, it gets closer to completion.

"I spent fifty years learning how machines think. Now a machine is teaching me how wrong I was." — Chief Engineer Sprocket, in her final journal entry