Confederacy of the Cog

Artificers from across the cosmos are drawn to Mechanus. It’s an entire plane of constructed material, on a scale unfathomable anywhere else, with living creatures of metal and stone existing naturally in such an unnatural environment. As they came to study, the artificers shared their knowledge, and from that original community came the Confederacy of the Cog. The original founding members built the Transcendent Academy to share their discoveries and inventions, and to train new members.

The members of the Confederacy have done much to advance the artificer art in the cosmos. Individuals and groups within the group have documented many of Mechanus’ internal processes, though the sheer scale of that project is going to likely require generations of artificers working and expanding their documentation. Cog Confederates (as they are also known) have expanded the Transcendent Academy into a massive sprawling site, with dozens of large laboratories and hundreds of personal chambers to house their experiments and findings.

The Confederacy of the Cog are led by a thirteen-member Cog Council, who are made up of members voted upon by their peers once every five years. There is no leader, so each individual on the Cog Council has equal voice in all matters brought before their chambers, though strong members tend to dominate such meetings. Committees in the Cog Council meet regularly to approve new members, settle disputes, and hear reports on the advancement of artificer work within the academy and the cosmos at large.

The vast majority of the Cog Confederates are clockwork engineer artificers, but they welcome all who wish to learn the artificer art into their halls. Elven Livewood sculptors from Arborea, battlesmiths from the world of Eberron, goblin alchemists from Ravnica, and the strange wonderkin from the Plane of Dreams can all be found in the Transcendent Academy. It is a place of invention and creation, but under strict guidelines – chaotic artificers chafe under the mounting list of rules and regulations that guide everyday life in the academy and Mechanus as a whole. Few last long.