One of the more unusual moons discovered thus far is Clockwork, the Celestial Clock. The entire moon is one gigantic clock with four "faces"; one that measures hours and minutes, one that measures days and months, another to measure years and decades, and finally one to measure centuries and millennium. The clock is based on a standard day of 24 hours, a standard month of 28 days, and a standard year of 365 days (with accounts for leap-years and an extra day every year). The four faces are set equal-distance around the equator, with no faces under either pole. The clock is 100% accurate to the time it keeps, which seems to match up closely with "standard campaign" worlds like Krynn, Oerth, and Toril.
Clockwork is a spherical moon with a diameter of 4,000 miles, giving it an equator of about 12,560 miles or so. There is no polar flattening, so the moon is a perfect sphere. The faces are flat discs of 3,000 miles in diameter, located under ten-mile thick crystal domes. The hands are each almost 1,500 miles long and 10 miles in diameter, rotated by enormous gears found deep inside the moon. Some hands move so slowly as to appear never to move at all, while the minute and hour hands can move at break-neck speeds at their tips.
The moon is a mass of metal and crystal. The outer shell is made of brass, iron, and many other, unidentifiable, metals. Other than the faces, the shell is largely a dark gray metal with a thickness of several dozen miles, perhaps about 100 miles thick in most spots. Inside is a maze of gigantic, several-mile high gears and machinery reminiscent of Mechanus. The sound of machines in operation is ever-present, along with the hiss of escaping steam. While it is easy to navigate a spelljammer through this maze of gears and cogs, it also quite easy for a ship to be caught between two gigantic gears and crushed. Some cogs are home to the survivors of these accidents, eking out an existence until they can be rescued.
The weather of clockwork is cool and dry. There are no clouds or standing water; the only water can be found inside the moon as part of the means of keeping the machine going, usually in steam form. Thus, there are no storms of any sort or even any climate zones. The whole moon shares roughly the same temperature, slightly warmer in the day and slightly cooler at night.
The clock-faces of Clockwork glow a bright white, even at night. The hands of the clock glow with their own light, with a different color for each hand. The rest of the moon is dark gray, even on the day-side of the moon, which makes the clock faces easier to read. A human with good eyesight can accurately read the clock from a distance of 500,000 miles. Use of spyglasses can extend this distance to up to 10 million miles.
The hand-colors are as follows:
Minute-Hand: Crimson-red Hour-Hand: Cherry-red Day-Hand: Orange Month-Hand: Yellow Year-Hand: Green Decade-Hand: Light blue Century-Hand: Royal blue Millennium-Hand: Indigo
There are no distinguishable continents on Clockwork, although some consider the four faces as continents of a sort. These artificial continents are named Diurni (the hours/minutes face), Peroi (the days/month face), Centuri (the years/decades face) and Epochi (the century/millennium face).
Dotting the surface are temples to various time-related deities, primarily Cronus, Lendor, and Labelas Enoreth. These temples are large, imposing structures that are ancient beyond years. Some dwarves have even commented that they do not believe the temples were ever built by mortal hands; the precision is too great, the resistance to weathering is so perfect that the buildings look almost new, the materials used are not of the material world. Some sages point to the Juna or another ancient, powerful race as the primary architect, pointing out that the structures of those races share some of the same characteristics as the temples of Clockwork. They claim that the Juna originally built the temples to whatever deities they worshipped, and that the clerics of modern time deities simply moved in much like hermit crabs.
Almost no natural creatures make Clockwork their home; there are precious few sources of food for natural creatures. There are some pockets of small animals like pigeons and rats, and maybe a few medium-sized predators such as coyotes, hunting cats, and wild dogs. These pockets are far apart, such that there is no unified ecosystem, but rather several small independent ones not unlike closed cave systems.
The lack of natural creatures is more than made up for in unnatural creatures, primarily golems, clockwork creatures, modrons, and like artificial creatures. These constructs can be of any shape and size; there is an immense variety of forms. One can encounter humanoid iron golems, clockwork hunting dogs, steam-powered elephants, and even delicate gemstone songbirds. Almost every construct imaginable can be encountered on Clockwork save one: clockwork horrors. There are no clockwork horrors anywhere on Clockwork, and any that arrive are very quickly hunted down and destroyed. The Clockmakers (see Guide to Groundlings below) are the sworn mortal enemies of clockwork horrors and ruthlessly oppose the mechanical menaces.
Clockwork is a good place for a DM to introduce any manner of construct that he wishes to add to his game. The PCs might encounter the creatures on Clockwork itself, or were constructed on this moon before being sent out into wildspace. Most of the creatures have programmed intelligence (a.k.a. at most as smart as an animal, more likely given only a few orders).
Clockwork is ruled wholly by a mysterious group known only as the Clockmakers. This enigmatic organization is rarely seen, instead using metagolem middlemen to conduct their business dealings. When a clockmaker is seen, he is heavily cloaked with form-obscuring robes and deep cowls that hide all of their features. Their robes are trimmed with symbols of Mechanus, sprockets, cogs, gears, clocks, and hourglasses. Usually they keep to the factories, where they busily build armies of artificial monsters.
The Clockmakers are vaguely human, and have their origins in events in a distant sphere long ago. That now-forgotten sphere was the birthplace of the Clockwork Horrors; the Clockmakers are the survivors of that fallen culture. The founder, Ithacus, was the son of the inventor who crafted the adamantium horror. His father's last act was to send his young son away, just as he was disintegrated right before Ithacus's eyes. Vowing revenge, the survivors fled to Clockwork aboard the sphere's only ships to rebuild and recover. To their horror, the monsters that destroyed their civilization escaped the sphere and began to spread throughout all of the Known Spheres. Ithacus took over the mantle of leadership of the survivors and began construction of an enormous army of golems and clockwork swordsmen.
Since the time when the Horrors began to spread, the Clockmakers have crafted several armies to field against their hated foes. Their efforts have been met with mixed results; they have stopped dead the advance of the Horrors to some spheres, while elsewhere their armies have been crushed by the relentless horde of the Horrors. Despite this, the Clockmakers continue to build their armies and set them against the Horrors in hopes of destroying them, once and for all.
As a race, most of the Clockmakers have died off. The most powerful members have transferred their consciousness into clockwork devices of their own making. Such creatures have the same statistics as a clockwork swordsman with 10-20 HD and the abilities of wizards of 10th to 20th level. Many have crafted clockwork clones of themselves; a clone is identical to the original, but has 5 less hit dice and 5 less levels as a wizard.
Somewhere deep in the bowels of Clockwork are hidden chambers with vats that hold many members of the Clockmaker race in stasis. Most are women, children, and a handful of men. The Clockmakers keep them in stasis for a time when the Clockwork Horrors have been destroyed, and they can begin to rebuild their civilization.
It is unknown from where raw materials are gained, but the natives produce a steady supply of clocks, clockwork creatures, and golems. The clocks produced at this moon are more advanced than normal and very reliable in keeping time. This includes the Mystical Clock of Clockwork, a type of magic clock with four faces that keep time to Clockwork's time with a 100% rate of accuracy. A Mystical Clock sells for 10,000 gp and is the primary means for many spacefarers for keeping accurate time throughout dozens of spheres.
All manner of golems are crafted for sale at Cogs (see Ports of Call below). When a golem is sold, it has a magic token of some sort that gives the holder of the token control of the golem. Iron, gemstone, stone, and minor variant golems are most commonly available for sale, while clay and flesh golems are never for sale. The price of a golem is usually the cost of constructing the golem plus a 20-80% profit margin. Thus if a golem cost 100,000 gp to build, it will be sold at a price of 120,000 gp to 180,000 gp. In the case of clockwork creatures, the price is 1,000 gp to 2,000 gp per hit point the monster has.
In exchange, the Clockmakers purchase magic items and spelljammer ships of all sorts, especially warships. Astute observers have noted that it seems that the Clockmakers are building an enormous navy, complete with armies of golems, clockwork swordsmen, and like monsters. Recent audits of Clockmaker purchases by the Arcane have revealed a startling fact: the Clockmakers have bought more helms and ships in the past year than the Elven Fleet have for an entire decade. The Arcane have kept this fact a secret, but worry about the rise of a new power in wildspace.
At the northern pole is the iron-towered city of Cogs. It is a metropolis surrounded by factories where the constructs are built. The city is run by roughly 2,000 metagolems, who run the daily maintenance, the government, and the Clockmarket. Other permanent residents include communities of modrons (who number 10,000 or so), tinker gnomes (who number about 15,000), clockwork swordsmen (a community of about 3,000), inevitables (about 1,000), miscellaneous intelligent clockwork devices (about 7,500), and various humans and demi-humans (about 20,000 in all). Thus, the city of Cogs has an overall population of 58,500. Temporary visitors swell this population to well over 65,000.
Cogs is laid out like a set of flat gears, with cog-shaped buildings and streets zigzagging between the buildings. Raised platforms are built to allow water-landing ships to land safely land and conduct trade. Those seeking to purchase clocks or golems are directed to the Clockmarket, a huge 10-story building with an open-air center where merchants haggle over the price of their wares. Patrols of metagolems, backed up by iron golems, keep the streets safe from thieves and violence. The metagolems take a zero-tolerance policy towards crime, and harshly punish even minor offenses. Sentences range from months of hard labor to death. Justice is very swift in Cogs.
Clockwork has been used as the primary timepiece for much of the Known Spheres for untold centuries. Legends state that this gigantic clock was, in fact, created by the gods themselves when they first created worlds like Krynn, Oerth, and Toril to sync up the measurements of time between these and other worlds with similar measurements of time. Other sages dismiss these claims as utter bunk; after all, they claim, most worlds do not have the same day or year as such "minor" worlds as Krynn or Toril. As the gods are silent on the origins and nature of Clockwork, the question remains unanswered.
The Clockmakers are recent arrivals, showing up only perhaps a few centuries ago. They immediately set up shop, establishing factories and building the city of Cogs. Once the scourge of Clockwork Horrors began to threaten the Known Spheres, they moved their most important operations underground and started war production. Thus far many fleets have departed from this moon to do battle with Horrors, and construction always continues on future fleets to sustain their eternal war.
None; Clockwork is a moon without moons of its own.
The Clockmakers are primarily interested in their war against the Clockwork Horrors, to the point of blinding obsession. This obsession has driven them to see everything in the light of destroying the Horrors; everything else is secondary. If a world is infested with the creatures, they would simply destroy the world if they can. Of course, all life that would perish in the meantime would be chalked up to "collateral damage". The Clockmakers have become increasingly ruthless in their war, resorting to means that would shock and appall other races. The Clockmakers do not care; if such tactics appall other races, it is because those races lack the stomach to fight a war against the Clockwork Horrors.
The Clockmakers can enter a campaign in many ways. It may be as simple as the PCs wish to purchase (or are hired to purchase) a golem at Clockwork. Or they might find a metagolem that is secretly an agent of the Clockmakers, who quietly observes the PCs for whatever sinister purposes its masters have. Alternately, the DM may wish to center his campaign around the war between the Clockmakers and the Clockwork Horrors. In such a situation, the Clockmakers might find the PCs useful as skilled agents sent to disrupt the Horrors' invasion of a world by destroying the higher up Horrors. Or the Clockmakers might take things too far, blowing up a heavily populated world using a newly crafted device. The PCs would be sent by survivors of that world (or even the gods themselves!) to reign in the Clockmakers before their tactics leave all of the Known Spheres as a wasteland. In such a campaign, the PCs can expect to encounter endless mechanical monsters, harassment from the Clockwork Horrors, and battle with the very powerful Clockmakers themselves. And what of the Clockmakers in stasis? What would be their fate? After all, they are innocent of the crimes of their fellow Clockmakers. And forget not the Clockwork Horrors as well; defeating the Clockmakers would leave them unchecked in wildspace. The creatures might begin a campaign of terror the likes of which have never been seen. Indeed, the PCs might defeat the Clockmakers only to discover they must deal with an even greater threat before peace can return to the stars.
