1) The World as They Knew it (Tick)

Where to begin. When was it the world change?

Many learned sages and historians frequently use the crashing of the Primal Crystal on Zahn during the time of antiquity as the fundamental change nexus, and in some ways they would be right, but it’s not that simple. That was more about the nature of the land, not the nature of the inhabitants.

Some in the know put it when the first of the Outsiders were ripped away from their homes to wonder forever on the face of this magic filled planet.

Some say that it began with the rise of power of Arkan the First when he led his armies from the Southern Continent cross the Midland Sea to conquer most of the Northern |Continent.

In truth, one of the most fundamental changes in the trajectory of the inhabitants of Zahn began with a revolutionary idea that reshaped the world as they knew it in an unremarkable City-State, among all the other City-States on the North Continent over a hundred and fifty years ago. It was here and then the major breakthrough in clockworks happened and catapulted Grandeur City to its position as the Center of The Civilization, powerhouse of politics, culture and industry.

While Clockworks weren’t new, the earlier examples were one-off works of art by rare and brilliant mages who found a way around the problem that nowhere in the world could machines be made to work without magical intervention, and no one knew why.

Some of these earliest and most famous examples of Clockwork were the Clockwork sentinels that still guarded the Empress of The Civilization. They were Imperial family heirlooms that were handed down from generational ruler to generational ruler for more than a thousand years. Yet, no one knew who created these magnificent and quite intimidating machines.

Clockworks were exotic and hyper-rare elements, rarely seen in person. Around a hundred-fifty years ago, a chance discovery in Grandeur City changed all of this. It was all a case of the right person at the right time and place.

Viceroy Camden III, a mage with a talent for clockworks, was out walking and came across a small girl playing with a makeshift steam engine that, at its heart, was a simple pinwheel being spun by steam coming out of her mother's kettle. When he asked her how she made the pinwheel and the pulley system, she showed him where the little hint of hedge-level magery empowered the whole device.

This was a way of using magic, not to complete a task or action, but as a mere component in a larger device, he would have never thought of, even with his decades of training and experience. Right then, he knew the little girl was able to do it because she wasn’t limited by being told it could never work. It was these two realizations that formed the springboard for the development of The Civilization and Grandeur City’s rise to the pinnacle it has achieved, and the focus on harnessing the power of the young minds.

From that point forward, he developed the mage-powered master cog concept, developing many of the core systems used in modern Clockworks. To fuel future developments and revelations, he laid into place the current testing scheme of the youth of the realm, seeking out children that were clockwork inclined in their talents, first from families known to have mage talent in their bloodlines, then later, among the whole populus.

Now nobility and gentry have their children tested, as a matter of form, on or before their fifth birthday to see if they possessed talent or aptitude for such things. Even the yeoman class of people could spend ten silver Talons to have their children tested. Once a child was determined to be talented, they would normally be authorized to attend many years of Higher Learning School. From there they would then apply and compete to attend The Clockwork Academy. Even if a graduate of the HLS was not accepted to the Academy, they had the opportunity to apprentice with a master craftsman or they could take their place somewhere in one of the many great factories that built machines that had brought together and expanded The Civilization.

It was in this environment, with some of these children, our story truly begins.