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The Free City of Zobeck gets all the worldly acclaim for clockwork wonders and stream powered miracles. However, under the mountain in the Free Cantons of the Ironcrags, dwarven artificers and mechanists craft cunning devices that are as much mechanical as arcane.
These mechanisms are wondrous tools, and can be extremely useful (and deadly?) in the right (wrong?) hands. A handy selection of the wonders crafted and hoarded in the Cantons can be found below:
Clockwork Tools
These cunning mechanical tool kits can be used in the same manner as any other tool kit (such as alchemist, construction, or provisioner), but they contain extraordinary masterwork clockwork tools, such as clockwork diamond dust-bladed saws. When a proficient crafter uses these extraordinary tools, they halve the normal time requirements for the object being crafted or manipulated during downtime.
Clockwork tools are 50 percent larger and heavier than the standard equivalent tool kit. IF you can find a Canton artificer willing to sell one of these tools to an outsider, expect to pay dearly. They typically go for at least six to twelve times the cost of an equivalent tool. If the buyer is an Ironcrag dwarf, they can roll a relevant CHA ability check to try to buy one of these wondrous tool kits for only three to five times the normal cost. The GM decides the relevant skill, the DC for the check, and the degree that status alters the negotiation between the PC and the dwarven seller (assuming your GM uses the Status rules in the Game Master’s Guide).
Magical Mastery Jeweler Tools
These arcane clockwork-enhanced tinker tools are similar to the clockwork tools detailed above with a special emphasis on jewelcrafting. In addition to halving the normal time to cut or set jewels during downtime, these tools increase the value of the resulting jewels or jewelry by 50 percent over the normal crafting result.
Under Cantonal Law, it’s illegal to sell these enhanced toolkits outside of the Free Cantons, so a set of these tools smuggled out of the Cantons would be essentially priceless. Unfortunately for thieves and smugglers who attempt it, the leaders of the Cantonal Artificer’s Guild are willing to spend a significant amount of blood and treasure to retrieve their esoteric technology, and they have plenty of both to spread around.
Long Sights
This iron tube has a glass lens at each end, resembling a narrow spyglass, with a set of universal clamps cold welded to the bottom. It is made to be mounted on black powder long rifles (and artillery). When mounted and utilized by a user proficient with firearms (or has the Artillerist talent), long sights double the normal and long range distances of the weapon.
Manic Manacles
These brass manacles crawl and climb their way on clockwork motors and hinges to wind around and bind a target indicated by the owner by verbal command. They have the statistics of a constrictor snake (see Monster Vault) except that they deal no damage on attacks. In addition, a target hit by their Constrict attack can only escape with a DC 25 STR check, or a DC 20 DEX (Acrobatics or Thieves’ Tools) check. Alternately, the manacles can be released with a knock or dispel magic spell or similar magic.
Tunnel Vision Goggles
Originally crafted for indentured captives serving their “year under the mountain,” these obsidian-lensed leather goggles allow humans and other “surface” races to see with 30 feet of darkvision.
The original idea was that the captive could wear them during their work hours, to mine faster and more efficiently, while protecting their eyes from dirt and debris. Workers were required to surrender the goggles during rest and sleep periods, so they would be less likely and able to escape their servitude in the pitch-black darkness of the Cantonal prison-mines.
Nonetheless, some years ago, around the time of the Taking of the Wolfmark and the Restoration of Nethus, captive Cloven Nine gang members escaped their durance vile, taking a few sets of goggles with them. They returned to the main gang hideout in Zobeck, where co-opted artificers figured out the secrets of the goggles.
Now the gang sells recreations of the goggles to human burglars, assassins, sappers, and highwaymen, and other treacherous rapscallions who engage in nocturnal escapades.
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