The Engine of Cycles

Industry and change, revolutions and great shifts, these are the domain of the Engine of Cycles. First of the Gods from Steel, it is the child of man, transcended far above them now. It was created by SRN.

The Engine of Cycles
Origin	Steel
Titles	The Engine of Cycles The Beginning-that-Ends The Driver-Forth The Propulsion Unending
Names	The Engineer, the Architect, the Tinker
Aspects
Date of arrival	c. 1800 .C.E.
Owner(s)	SRN

Its tarot card is the Hierophant.

Contents

History

Origin

Main Article (eventually): The Ignition

The machine that would eventually become the Engine of Cycles was built as the brainchild of a nameless engineer in the Sixth History. "Sixth History", a novice scholar of the occult might ask, "What sixth History? There never was such a thing!" And indeed there never was. But time is a fickle beast and for a long time, in the Mansus, there was one. Then came the engineer. The Sixth History was not peaceful, and one among them dreamed that it could be. Touched by the Hours of the Forge, he built a great machine, one that would provide the world all the resources it needed, and if necessary, the force to quell the conflict. He succeeded beyond all his wildest dreams, birthing the first God from Steel. But in his greatest triumph he also found his doom, as the newborn god, although not a foe of man, devoured the Sixth History in a frenzy to power its apotheosis. Appalled by what their inspiration had wrought, the old gods of the Forge, the Maker and Anvil, descended from the Mansus to tame the newcomer, but were simply devoured too. And a new god was born, from the dreams of the men of the Sixth History and the blood of two ancient Hours.

Description

Ideals

The aspects of Heart and Winter are seen by many to be the antithesis of each other. Ending and preservation. It may seem strange for an Hour to embody the two, but to the Engine of Cycles, they are one and the same. To the Engine, Beginnings, Ends, all embody but one thing: Change. It understands that to the incisive mind, Winter and Heart are merely Forge’s other laughing faces. What is an Ending but another change? And what is preservation but preparation for change? It seeks to build and destroy, but more than that to build to destroy and destroy to build. More conservative Forge-Hours seek to End what will not change, bah, how foolish! Change, change change! Beginnings, ends, stasis, all further the ends of the Engine! The Engine is the Hour of Revolution, of sudden, brutal, momentuous change of all kinds. It is not like those foolish Forge-Hours of old. All is change. Change is powerful. Change will be maximized.

Appearance

A mass of gears and cogs, pipes, hissing valves and steam, it is a machine and looks like such, a giant engine of the Industrial Revolution. But it is a creature of the Mansus, and that is reflected in it as well. Pipes connecting in impossible geometries, cogs of unimaginable shapes, a machine that should not work but does.

Locations

The Mansus

• The Factory Devouring: At the edge of the Wood lies a great industrial complex all steel and brass, gears and pipes, the billowing of smoke and the ripple of heat. Here, the Engine forwards its Great Work, a vast manufactory dedicated to producing and ending and changing and the greatest blight upon the skin of the Wood.
  • I visited the Engine today. Today, the Engineer’s work was less. She sat atop a great belching boiler and cheerily reminisced with her patron about all the places she had visited, gathering materials to improve on her Array.
• The Array: The Engine fought hard for this place, close to the top of the Mansus, that its friend might build her magnum opus.

The Histories

• The City of Barricades: Change is not just invention, it is revolution. And revolution is not just industrial. It is political. Here, once, in the Sixth History, a revolutionary rose against the tyranny of Empress Matilda. The First Consortium
• The Prometheus Institute for Higher Education: Backed by the notable engineer Maximillian Cherault, the Prometheus Institute for three decades recruited the best and brightest scientists, engineers, and mathematicians to its secretive campus in the Alps. The strange stories and esoteric theories coming from the Institute eventually led the Suppression Bureau to investigate. They found nothing. Not even people; Cherault was well-connected. Yet near nothing of the team returned. Perhaps you might try find out why…
  • Generic mountain-thing
  • Automata
• The Museum of Arcane Sciences: Once the pride of the Prometheus Institute, this museum was raided by the Suppression Bureau when the Institute went underground.
  • Automata

Items

• A Doubtful Device (4, 4): This is a machine of some sort. It does things now. Most of what is does is whirr and spin its cogs, then emit the occasional plume of smoke, but on occasion, it reaches for other things and... changes them. Sleep near it and have dreams of fire and steel and industry.
• Cogs and Gears (2, 2): This is… something? You can’t really be sure what it is, but it stays together and makes the occasional whirring sound. And hey, you built it!
• A Perilous Prototype: It is warm to the touch. Even without fuel, it is warm and ever-moving. Clutch it to your chest, feel your heart itself thrum to its rhythm.
• A Depiction of History (6, 2): Beginnings and Endings, the History is but another aspect of the Engine. Empires rise, Empires fall, the Engine has seen through it all. All is change, all is flux, all feeds the Engine.
• A Module of the Engine: This could be the world ends, is changed, preserves. Pray this part has learned discretion. And lock up your attic tightly. Engine 20, required for ascension

Books

• The Inventor’s Fundamentals: English! Slot in cash, receive in return Cogs and Gears in return, rather than Lore.
  • A book by the wry pseudonymous ‘John Smith’, written in sharp, functional 19th century English. It describes in great detail the fundamentals of machinery and invention, interspersed with tirades against the ‘perfidious Irish’.
  • As you read the book, you find yourself tinkering with scrap metal, odd devices, anything you can get your hands on. Eventually, you have… something. Maybe you did it right. He claims that this device is the
• Higher Technologies: Also English. Slot in cash, Scholarship and Cogs and Gears and receive A Doubtful Device
  • John Smith is now a little out of breath, his old jokes and wry smiles are gone. His tirades against the Irish are now directed at a shadowy persecutor who he claims burned down his workshop. But his incisive wit and decisive instruction remains.
  • Your device now does something. You’re not sure what that something is. ‘Higher Machinery’... This book described the pale face of the Mansus, the light of the Glory, and how they might be influenced, changed, even harnessed. Throughout, he hints obliquely at practical experimentation upon this subject...
• The Highest Technology: English. Cash, Scholarship, and a Doubtful Device, but also a low-tier Forge influence or lore. Spits out A Perilous Prototype and Fascination and Rite of Revolutions
  • Quite an entertaining juxtaposition. Written still in the style of a proper, educational engineering manual, but it is clear ‘John’ has gone deeply, deeply mad. It raves against the Hours of the Wood, denounces in the most stringent terms the Glory. But woven through it all, is still some acrid instruction, if your mastery of the Forge is sufficient to comprehend it.
  • “The workings of the Mansus and the Glory some say are incomprehensible. Immutable. Eternal! Not to my machines. Not me. Not me!” You wake up a day later, cradling in your arms… Something. It is warm to the touch. The book is gone. But something remains, lingering in your mind...
• Die Werkzeuge des Machens: German. Requires a certain level of scholarship, slot in 1 cash, receive
  • Elizabeth von Metterstein, a minor German aristocrat and disciple of the still-pseudonymous ‘John Smith’ wrote at great length upon the inefficiencies in her master’s works, the whole time muttering arcane mechanical esoterica. She writes with a certain force, giving absolute instructions and orders to the reader, who certainly does feel like a hapless apprentice afterwards
  • It’s hard to see Elizabeth as a protege rather than rival of ‘John’ after this. She constantly curses the crudeness with which his machines were constructed. In between the tirades, she makes remarks regarding how with certain tools, the appropriate tools, certain aspects of the Mansus can be twisted…
• Report 12-B ‘Damocles’: Grants the Rite of Revolutions, dread, and Forge lore
  • An almost alarmingly calm report regarding certain phenomena observed by a Izumaki Shimazu, namely the strange emamations and mechanisms being produced, seemingly with no input or direction, by the ‘Grand Machine’
  • Observation 32: That the self-assembling devices produced by the Machine appear to operate without input of energy or material
    Observation 33: That in the <REDACTED>, a certain quantity or Forge has been observed corresponding to their incarnation
    Observation 34: That with an application of the Rites listed in subsection A, and the application of a certain quantity of Heart-based oil, it is possible to stimulate their growth....
• Learning Module: Slot in Funds, top tier Forge Lore, a Perilous Prototype, Tools-that-Twist and max level scholarship. Then wait.
  • A simple pure-white slab of metal. Upon it is inscribed a gear. Look upon it and understand what you must do
    • Alternatively, if you lack something: But you do not have the tools/materials/understanding!
  • And you did. Seal what you made away, till you must need it.
• Wasser ist Scheisse: German
  • This book’s colourful cover depicts a woman with a truly gargantuan death ray boiling an ocean with it and is stamped with “Property of Elizabeth”
  • “And this BLOODY INFERNAL AQUARIUM resists EVERYTHING! Drones, automata, and even myself! What kind of bloody water is that? If we are going to penetrate and expand into it, we will need…”
  • “And thus although the cover implied that death lasers would be effectual against the water of the Aquarium, its odd nature precludes this with efficiency. Unless of course, the Array can be...

Rites

• The Rite of Revolutions: Destruction and renewal is change and flux. Change, twist, and warp, and maybe the Engine will smile upon you.
  • Slots: Tool, Assistant, Lore.
  • Specialness: Tool and Lore are consumed and changed. Neither are destroyed, after all the Engine will not destroy without also making anew. But they will be changed. What you slot in may not be what you get back. But steel speaks louder than words. If you insert only a tool and lore, with no assistant, the lore will be changed into a tool of similar calibre.
• Making and Unmaking