The Clockwork Apocalypse - Story

Transcribed from handwritten notes on 8-23-09

What if TikTok came to life?

Powder of Life - if you create this during a game, you have to gather all of the ingredients and perform the necessary tasks to mix them properly.

If TikTok is brought to life, this will animate all of his parts and it removes the need to be wound up. This could create an issue where his internal mechanisms are removed to build something else.

The Queen of Dreams tears TikTok apart and builds a clockwork engine to supplement the functionality of the Emerald Engine. The Emerald Engine has always been an inanimate object. It takes in fuel and generates energy, just like any other engine.

With the addition of the clockwork device, the Emerald Engine begins to come to life. Rather than merely fueling itself with dreams, it begins to digest the dreams and apply the content of these select dreams to its magical output. In short, the Emerald Engine begins to dream for itself. These dreams change and re-shape the entire world of Oz and the surrounding lands.

When Ozma battles the Queen of Dreams and shuts down the Emerald Engine, she is trying to save Oz. The Engine gets shut down, but not the living clockwork mechanism. That part keeps dreaming. The same amount of fuel keeps coming in, but none is diverted by the Engine to power the world. This makes things even worse in Oz, as the energy is targeted to change things in Oz.

The ultimate battle for the soul of Oz is between those who dream and those who are creatures of magic that depend on the Emerald Engine for their complete existence.

TikTok and Widget must choose at the end where they stand. If the Emerald Engine remains off, they may be changed by the dreaming clockwork. If it is turned back on, then the magic of Oz will come back. But there have been many changes that have disrupted the flow of magic through the land of Oz. The brick roads that carry the energy throughout the land have been broken up.

The witches have gained wild powers that they never had before, but they are now rivaled by the techsmiths and their clockwork armies.

The magical artifacts (magic belt, sliver slippers, ruby slippers, magic mirror, Glinda's Book, magic picture) still have great power, but they are no longer the most powerful things in Oz.

The Nomes are building a great subterranean metropolis.

Glinda in the South is a battle sorceress guiding her Quadlings in regular drills the protect the southern quadrant of Oz. They are guarded by Hammerheads in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on the northern border. The Bell Tower is in the South.

The Lighthouse is on the East.

The Emerald Engine is in the North.

The great Cloudworks (steam factory) is in the West. There are also great mines in the west that are worked by the Winkies.

With Ozma imprisoned, and all humans missing from Oz, everything has descended into chaos. Each faction in Oz wants control of the central Emerald City.

The Queen of Dreams comes from the Land of Gargoyles in the south, across the Deadly Desert. The Nomes are in the North, in the Land of Ev. in the [backwards] West lies Rinkitink's kingdom, near the Nonestic Ocean.

There are great dragons and wooden bats and gargoyles beneath the earth. Vegetable people guard the opposite end of one of the portals from the mortal earth to Oz.

The Nomes have created a metal kingdom.

In the sky above, there are also floating islands populated by Cloudlings and the flying monkeys. There are bird-men there also.