Legends of Tolria
The Galactic Game

Ancestry Compendium

Clockwork

A wholly synthetic humanoid lineage of mechanical bodies and crystalline cognition. Clockworks are crafted rather than born, but those who awaken to selfhood are persons in every meaningful sense and increasingly demand to be treated as such.

core medium Walk · 30 ft Free-placement abilities

Features

  • Constructed Body

    Your body is built rather than grown. You are immune to disease. You require only 4 hours of low-power inactivity (rather than 6-8 hours of sleep) to gain the benefits of a long rest. You do not require food or water in non-extreme conditions, though you do require occasional lubrication and minor part replacement (treated as the same expense and cadence as ration costs). However, you take an additional 1d6 lightning damage whenever you take lightning damage from a source that is not properly grounded against your chassis.

  • Modular Replacement

    Severed or destroyed limbs can be replaced with compatible parts in 1 hour of work using a Tinker's kit and 50 gp of components per limb. You suffer no death-saving-throw penalty for the brief period in which a major component is being swapped, provided your core remains intact. You have advantage on Constitution saving throws against effects caused by sudden pressure change, vacuum exposure, or rapid decompression.

  • Internal Workings

    You think in mechanisms. You have advantage on Intelligence (Investigation) checks made when examining mechanical objects, machined parts, or constructed devices. You can read, write, and speak Common, and you can fluently encode and decode one machine-cipher of your own invention, which other Clockworks who study it for an hour can also learn.

  • Awakened Selfhood

    Your cognition runs on a crystalline lattice that records experience in fixed-state, retrievable form. You have advantage on saving throws against effects that would erase, overwrite, or scramble your memory.

Languages

Common

Lifespan

Mature at 1 · Typical max 400 years

Clockworks awaken to selfhood already cognitively adult, though social and emotional maturation takes years. With routine maintenance a clockwork body lasts centuries; the cognitive lattice tends to fragment near the end, and many clockworks transfer their core to a successor chassis before that happens.