Coggers

So you take this bit here, right? And you pop it in there. But first we have to cut off his face.
Where are you going?

The rest of the world marveled at the arcanotech wonder that was the ragwheels, but very few thought about the details of how they were created. Coggers were masters of complex and delicate tech and, to be fair, were not much for sharing their secrets.

Operations

Provided Services

A clogger's clientele are the desperate, the dying, and the depraved.

Two people paid a cogger: those who wanted to be transformed and those who wanted to buy them. The first was considered perfectly normal in Hamat'e, but the second was questionable since it often involved the transformation of the unwilling or tampering with the will of someone already transformed.
There were several reasons one might have sought to become a ragwheel, but the most common by far was the desire to cheat death. The elderly and the diseased were a cogger's bread and butter. Some in the profession would refuse those who came with mental disorders or those suffering from depression who sought transformation as an alternate to suicide, but those scruples simply sent such individuals to less picky coggers.
Even less principled were the coggers who worked in the shadows, kidnapping the unwilling and wiping their memories or altering their strength of will to make them clockwork slaves - either bespoke or auctioned off in sordid back rooms.

Dangers & Hazards

Frustration. My latest test of the new model has failed. That's forty-three animals dead, but so long as they don't find out about the street urchins...

— scrap of a journal found in the ruins of Hamat'e

Mixing tech with magic is a moderately perilous business, though most coggers stuck to tried and true methods that carry little risk. Invention and innovation, on the other hand, always carry with them an extra helping of danger. And while most of this risk unsurprisingly lay with the individual to be transformed, the cogger herself was not completely safe.
The early days of the ragwheels are full of stories of explosions that took out entire buildings or magical energy meant to invigorate the flesh and give it the strength to withstand transformation instead killing and reanimating all caught within it. (This exact scenario verifiably happened at least twice.) In one apocryphal tale, The cogger, his assistant, and the individual undergoing the procedure were melded into a single, raving monster that fought with itself even as it murdered everyone else it came into contact with until the authorities managed to put it down.

Yes, I lost the eye to an explosion in the lab. But that hasn't dimmed my devotion to the art at all!

— from the introduction to Magic, Machine, & Meat: A Treatise on Transformation by Halima Uut'e

Legality

While perfectly legal in Hamat'e, several other states banned the creation of ragwheels within their borders, essentially banning the coggers. Though they did not technically outlaw it, @Samavra implemented a twelve-page law that laid out such specific strictures it might as well have been a ban. Argantael went so far as to promise prosecution and destruction of any of its citizens who dared undergo the procedure.
The one caveat in Hamat'e was that those who went under the knife must be willing. While a noble thought, in truth this was not closely monitored.

Related Locations

• Grand Library, Hamat'e
• Hamat'e

Used By

• The Voltaic Society