{{InfoboxHour

| title = 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. By SRN

Main Article (eventually): [[The Ignition|http://www.thefansus.com/wiki/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.

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.

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.

* A Doubtful Device: 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. Forge 4, Lantern 4