Machinery of the World

A religious phrase appears in the Church of Holy Law's oldest sermons and esoteric texts, a term both sacred and unsettling. To the faithful, it refers to the hidden workings of Law—the great and perfect design said to govern all things. Everything has its place: the heavens turn, the harvest comes, kings rise and fall, and souls are judged in their time. All of this, the Church of Holy Law teaches, is the Machinery at work.

But to philosophers, heretics, and madmen, the term hints at something deeper—that the world is not only ordered, but constructed. That the sun moves not by divine will, but by design. That beneath the soil and stone lie gears that grind, and deep within the earth, pulses something that hums like breath held too long.

Some hold that those who die outside of the concordance with the will of Law are sent to the deepest pits of the earth, to have their impurities ground away by these mechanisms.

Dwarves are the stewards of the machinery, operating in silence and with total focus to maintain this operation, save those who lose their determination and purpose in an affliction known as the Awakening.

Whatever the truth, many agree on one thing: when the Machinery falters, the world begins to break.