Warhammer-Empire.com

Tweet

Clockwork

A folk tale of Nuln

Nuln is often called the jewel of the Reik. Indeed, Nuln is a city of staggering beauty; yet it is also the cultural and spiritual centre of our glorious Empire, the home of Magnus, the great uniter and very Word of Sigmar made flesh.

Nuln's curiously miscellaneous buildings, quiet alleys and soaring bridges are home to many tales. There is a story behind every street carving and every statue. This tale relates to Nuln's singular astronomical clock, one of the city's most famous treasures. -JWG


If you know Nuln at all, you'll have seen the clock in the university plaza. It's often said that the clock is the greatest one ever made. That may or not be true, but it's hard to imagine anything finer. The main face is about eight feet wide, with hands that are shaped like great scythes - that's symbolism, I'm told, for old man time cutting away the hours of our lives. But the main face also has a dozen little dials set into it, all different, that tell the progression of the stars, or the phases of the moon, or the weather, or any number of other things. If you know how to read them, that is. There's even a huge dial that runs around the rim of the main face, and that one has all the days of the year on it. Hexenstag to Mondstille, each day with its own little picture.

Now all that is wonder enough, I'm sure. But every hour the clock puts on a real show. Bells toll, ringing out a different tune for each hour of the day, and little figures emerge from windows around the face. These figures are tiny clockwork automata, and you won't find anything like them anywhere else. Sometimes, when you watch, Sigmar himself comes out with his hammer in hand, and you see him driving back the goblins at the Blackfire. Other times, you might see wily Ranald tricking Lady Shallya into giving him the keys to heaven. Father Ulric throws his axe at him! There's a dwarf digging gold, and an elf walking past beggars with his nose in the air. Once I saw a dragon that shot sparks from its mouth[1].

This was all the work of a master clockmaker called Hanus[2]. The city council commissioned him to build it, and they were so pleased that they paid him twice what had been agreed. But the work was barely finished before a delegation arrived from Altdorf in search of the clockmaster. When they saw the clock, they made Hanus an offer so generous that grim Morr himself would have been tempted. A vast fortune would be his if he would only build Altdorf an even better clock. Now the councillors of Nuln couldn't stand the thought of their rivals outdoing them, and they did a dreadful thing. They had the clockmaster kidnapped in the middle of the night, just before he was to leave for Altdorf. And do you know what they did to him? I've heard it's called abacination, which means putting out your eyes with a red-hot iron[3]. That was a terrible thing to do to anyone, of course, but to do it to an artist like that was a crime against the whole world.

That might have been the end of the story, but Hanus still had a trick up his sleeve. You see, he'd once made something on commission for the Elector of Ostland - a weapon - that the Elector had never paid for[4] and thus never received. It was a brass man, large as life, full of cogs and gears and other contraptions, and it could move and think almost like a man. Hanus wound it up and set it after the councillors. Off it went, ticking and clanking as it walked.

There were twelve councillors, one for each number on a clock-face. The brass man did for them one by one, impaling them on long spikes that pumped in and out of its arms to the rhythm of its own ticking. The guards couldn't stop it.

But even when the councillors were dead, and many of their guards too, and the brass man was red from head to foot; still it didn't stop. Maybe something was stuck inside its head, or maybe it just enjoyed driving its bright spears into human flesh. It walked up and down the plaza, in front of the clock, killing anyone and everyone it could.

Now, you might expect that something driven by clockwork would wind down eventually. You'd be right enough, but the brass man didn't show any signs of slowing near enough a day after Hanus had set it on its way. So how do you think it was stopped in the end? If you'd've looked carefully at the clock you'd know. You see, the city paid for a new tableaux to be added to the clock once the whole business was over. It's not as fine as the rest, since Hanus couldn't do it. Anyway, at four in the afternoon every Bezahltag, out comes a little figure that represents the brass man, and there he is killing the innocent people in the streets. But up comes a figure of a little boy with a wooden sword, and he sticks it into the brass man's gears, under one arm where the brass plating doesn't cover. And that's it for him: he comes to stop right away[5].

As for Hanus, some people say he built a clockwork bird that could see for him, and he went off over the sea to where the western elves live. If there's any truth in that, perhaps he built wonders for them that outrank anything he did for Nuln. I can't rightly say. And anyway, that's another story.



[1] I can confirm that this description of the clock, though colourful, is broadly accurate.

[2] The official receipts for the construction of the clock were destroyed in a freak fire in 2214. Neither the true date of the clock’s construction nor the names of its makers are known for certain, and the name of Hanus comes to us purely through local tradition. Most experts estimate that the basic structure of the clock was begun in around 1850, and it has been continually modified and updated ever since.

[3] A vile practice that has been largely abandoned in these more enlightened times.

[4] One does not wish to speak ill of the aristocracy, but any student of history will find many instances of the various ruling houses of Ostland reneging on their promises.

[5] I can find no mention of the fate of the brass man after this. I am sure the reader will agree that the concept of a mechanical war machine of this sort is simply not a practical proposition.