Rift Plate 066 · Lantern Codex
Clockwork Regent
A brass sovereign rules by timing rather than territory, making every hesitation arrive precisely when it can do harm.
- Plate group
- Lantern Codex
- Classification
- Construct
- Field account
- Recovered
Recovered natural history
Field record
Seven ungoverned seconds
At the courthouse clock's thirteenth strike, everyone repeated their last gesture. The Regent kept descending the stairs.
Brass overlapped down his robe. A gear crown turned around an enamel face showing no familiar hour. He adjusted people as he passed. A shoulder shifted half an inch. A dropped paper returned to the air. A heartbeat was postponed. Automata marched out of stopped clocks with warrants dated tomorrow.
We rushed. The street skipped, and our charge had already failed. He was winding a spring inside Mara's shadow. At noon I jammed the tower mechanism with the Nightglass shard. One clock told a time the others couldn't reflect. The sequence stuttered. We had seven seconds outside it.
Timed correction
He watches before correcting. A minor irregularity may earn a repeated step, a delayed word, or an early-closing door. Resistance brings gear lanes and automaton bailiffs in a visible sequence. Disciplined opponents are easier to predict; editing one interval can undo their planned assault.
Conflicting clocks divide his attention. Appointments and deadlines bind his bargains exactly, ambiguities included. Defeated, he tries to appoint a successor mechanism instead of escaping.
Read the environment
Signs of its presence
Unconnected clocks lose the same minute permanently.
A dropped object pauses before it hits the ground.
Appointments appear on paper made years earlier.
Survival doctrine
Field precautions
01
Contradictory Time
Independent clocks showing irreconcilable hours break his authority into ungoverned intervals.
02
Genuine Chance
Choose actions through uncontrolled physical randomness. His scheduled counters cannot reliably predict them.
03
Set exact terms
He keeps an agreed appointment or deadline exactly, including its ambiguities. Account for those before bargaining.
Recovered Field Plate
01
Primary form
Regal clockwork figure with a gear-crown, spring ribs, long hands, and a robe made of overlapping brass plates.
02
Material detail
Weathered bronze, polished gear teeth, fine springs, clock faces, black oil, and worn enamel.
Continue through the folio
066 of 100 recovered plates