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  MECHANOMANCY REDUX 
  Requires Unknown Armies (Third Edition) from Atlas Games. 
  Distributed through the Statosphere Unknown Armies Creative Community at DriveThruRPG. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
  MECHANOMANCY 
  AKA CLOCKWORKERS, GEARHEADS 
  The leftovers of modernist magick, the clockworkers are a 
  dying breed. They once had a glorious history stretching 
  back to the first century with Hero of Alexandria and his 
  steam-powered aeolipile, but it’s all lost now, every bit as 
  forgotten as their own memories. 
  Because that’s the rub, isn’t it? Clockworkers create by 
  using the detritus of old civilizations — old technology, old 
  artifacts — culminating in them sacrificing their own 
  memories to fuel their clockworks. And as the twenty-first 
  century rolls forward, there are fewer and fewer of them. 
  The gearheads from the old country are dying out, killed by 
  the fallout of the Cold War and subsequent “ethnic 
  cleansing,” not to mention the typical dangers to people in 
  the occult underground. Of course, old age and senility are 
  probably far more lethal to their ranks, and as the old 
  masters die, few replace them. There are a handful of 
  second- or third-generation mechanomancers in the world, 
  but few new would-be magi come to the art on their own. 
  In addition to the world being increasingly digital, it’s also 
  hyper-specialized — nobody just works on generalized 
  “machine repair” anymore, and people who get obsessed 
  tend to get obsessed in their own field. Obsessed auto 
  mechanics become viaturges, obsessed gunsmiths become 
  fulminaturges, and people into steampunk become 
  sociomancers. It’s probable that mechanomancy will 
  probably be totally dead within a generation or two, unless 
  weirdos come out of the steampunk or DIY communities 
  and start trying to make eldritch gizmos. 
  As noted above, the inherent paradox of mechanomancy 
  is trying to build a future from the past, and sacrificing their 
  own humanity (i.e., their memories) to grant humanity and 
  volition to inanimate objects. 
   
   
  STATS 
  Generate a minor charge: To generate a minor charge, the 
  clockworker just spends a day working on the current 
  project. Each day spent working on a clockwork allows you 
  to add capabilities as per the minor effects below. 
   
  Generate a significant charge:  Here’s where it starts to get 
  tricky. 
  To 
  generate 
  a 
  significant 
  charge, 
  the 
  mechanomancer gives up a minor memory. The memory 
  should probably relate to whatever you’re building, so a 
  memory of a lovely picnic with a good friend will probably 
  help you build that fun little music box, while that time you 
  were assaulted and robbed might be more appropriate for 
  that murder-bot you’ve been building. Work out with your 
  GM how this memory impacts your character, but in game 
  terms, you can risk Identities, Relationships, or your own 
  sanity. Risking Identities or Relationships is straightforward: 
  you roll the Identity or Relationship, and if you fail, lose 1-5 
  points off it. (Mental or social Identities are probably most 
  appropriate, although you could probably make a case for 
  how forgetting your big boxing match somehow makes you 
  a worse boxer.) Risking sanity means you take a rank-10 
  shock against whatever gauge your GM thinks is appropriate 
  to the memory in question. Helplessness and Isolation are 
  strong contenders for this trauma, although any gauge 
  might be appropriate, depending on the memory. 
  A far simpler method involves getting a non-mechanical 
  object with historical or occult significance, like Buddy 
  Rich’s drumsticks, or a ritual athame owned by Aleister 
  Crowley. The clockwork should be thematically appropriate, 
  though, so you can incorporate Buddy Rich’s drumsticks 
  into your music automaton, or Aleister Crowley’s dagger 
  into your fancy clockwork godemiché, but neither would be 
  appropriate for making a firearm. 
   
  Generate a major charge:  A mechanomancer can generate 
  a major charge by sacrificing a string of memories, typically 
  relating to a loved one (a sibling or spouse, for example), or 
  some event (serving during the war, that diner job you held 
  for five years). This gets very dangerous, as our memories 
  define us, and divesting oneself of them means erasing 
  oneself. In game terms, you can again risk an Identity, 
  Relationship, or sanity. If you risk an Identity or Relationship, 
  roll against it. If you succeed, you lose a number of points 
  equal to the sum of the roll. If you fail, flip-flop the roll and 
  lose that many points, like a gunshot straight to your 
  memories. 
  __ 
  2 
  MECHANOMANCY: A HISTORY  
  Mechanomancy first appeared in the Unknown 
  Armies core rulebook for first edition, on pages 96-97. 
  Rules for Automata as unnatural entities and 
  characters appear in Postmodern Magick, pages 124-
  128. (Although an Automatic, as they’re called by 
  American adepts, appears as a playable character in 
  One Shots well before Postmodern Magick.) 
  Additional history for mechanomancy (and d20 
  system stats) appear in Rick Neal’s The Ascension of 
  the Magdalene. Mechanomancy makes a return in the 
  second edition core rulebook on pages 137-140. (The 
  Lonesome Lunchbox and the SUVirus first appear 
  there, too.) Finally, the school gets a mention in Book 
  Three: Reveal on page 62 (or 61 if you’re using the pdf). 
   
  Nikki’s character Desdemona keeps tinkering with 
  designs to make a clockwork harem. (Don’t ask.) She 
  wants to make a very skilled coin-operated boy with lots 
  of features, so she decides to go for major mojo. She uses 
  the memories of her ex-boyfriend, Ashley, to power this 
  device. Once upon a time, he was her Favorite, but now 
  she’s glad to be rid of him. (And given the fact that she’s 
  an adept building creepy sex dolls in her basement, the 
  feeling’s probably mutual.)  She has Favorite: Ashley 30%.  
  She takes the big plunge, goes Sunshine of the Spotless 
  Mind on Ashley, and rolls. If she rolls a 26, that’s a success, 
  and she only loses eight points off that relationship, 
  bringing it down to Favorite: Ashley 22%.  If she rolls a 38, 
  that’s a failure; she flip-flops it and subtracts a whopping 
  83 points, dropping Favorite: Ashley to 0%. She takes a 
  rank-4 Isolation check for losing a relationship, but in 
  either event, now has a major charge. 
  See 
  “Relationships, 
  Lost 
  and 
  Gained” on page 
  39 of Book One: 
  Play. 
  Mechanomancy 
  is mentioned on 
  page 61 of Book 
  Three: Reveal. 
  See Book One: 
  Play. “Viaturgy” 
  is on page 167, 
  “Fulminaturgy” 
  is on page 151, 
  and 
  “Sociomancy” is 
  on page 159. 
  
  The less sanity-searing way to get a major charge is to 
  incorporate a complete, functional, and historically-relevant 
  piece of machinery into the clockwork, something like James 
  Watt’s first steam engine (or you can go with the de Ayanz 
  y Beaumont, Savery, or Newcomen models if you’re a 
  hipster), or John Hinckley’s .22 Röhm RG-14 revolver. As with 
  significant clockworks, the incorporated device must be 
  thematically relevant to the clockwork. 
   
  Taboo: Clockworkers can’t use functioning technology in 
  common use after 1900 or so. If you incorporate a 
  functioning telephone, laser, or microprocessor in your 
  clockwork, it fails to function. Mechanomancers can use 
  modern materials in their clockworks, and can potentially 
  incorporate modern technology so long as it is disassembled 
  or misused. Using a modern device for aesthetic reasons is 
  perfectly fine. 
   
  Random Magick Domain: Clockworkers only build effects 
  into their own hand-built machines using the tables below. 
  No 
  cyborgs, 
  unless 
  your 
  epideromancer 
  and 
  mechanomancer figure out how to play well together. 
   
  Note: Clockworkers don’t “cast spells” so much as build 
  gizmos. 
  So 
  rather 
  than 
  the 
  standard 
  spell 
  list, 
  mechanomancers get a list of capabilities they can build into 
  their creations. A clockwork device can’t do anything 
  supernatural (so no aura-seeing robots or demon-trapping 
  cages or invisibility devices; major charges, as always, are the 
  exception). However, they can replicate the functions of 
  basically any animal or modern machine, which you’ll note 
  gives them a pretty broad range of abilities. Something that 
  can learn like a person and travel into space like a rocket is 
  nothing to underestimate. 
  Clockworks can look like anything, and typically reflect 
  the creator’s aesthetic tastes. A chassis of vacuformed 
  plastic wrapped so carefully in vinyl it’s indistinguishable 
  from a human being? Totally possible. A creepy, hunched 
  armature of bone and wire that runs on human blood? Sure! 
  A rusted monstrosity that looks like the Terminator’s 
  endoskeleton had a drunken one-night stand with a drill 
  press? Absolutely. Remember that you can’t use modern 
  devices in clockwork construction, but modern materials are 
  acceptable, and the magick is what allows the clockworker 
  to bridge the gap between a glorified pocketwatch and 
  something that can fight, fly, think, and learn. 
  One last thing: clockworks are sturdy as hell, and only 
  take hand-to-hand damage (that is, the sum of the dice) 
  from firearms attacks. Melee attacks against clockworks do 
  the sum of the dice as normal. 
   
  MECHANOMANCY MINOR EFFECTS 
  1 Charge: Build a small clockwork. For our purposes, “small” 
  is about a foot or so long and weighing about ten pounds. 
  (For our metric friends, that’s about 0.3 meters and 4.5 
  kilograms. For visualization purposes, think of your average 
  housecat.) These clockworks aren’t too smart, but can fulfill 
  commands of a number of words equal to the sum of your 
  Magick (Mechanomancy) roll. (So, if you roll a 49 when 
  making your clockwork, it can understand commands 13 
  words long.) 
  This clockwork gets 60 points to put into Identities, 
  although its Identities work a little differently than normal 
  Identities: they only get one feature each. So, if you want a 
  clockwork spider that picks locks, you probably want to give 
  it a feature such as Unique: Picks Locks 30% as an Identity. 
  Unlike a normal person, you can give clockworks unique 
  features that represent things animals or machines can do 
  (like climbing walls or making fast calculations) in addition 
  to things regular humans can do. Supernatural Identity 
  features are right out, though, so no gutter magician 
  clockworks. Most clockwork functions at this level are 
  improbable but mundane, like a souped-up “As Seen on TV” 
  device. Maybe it’s a Rube Goldberg-style device that peels 
  potatoes, or maybe it folds laundry, or maybe it just plays 
  the same song perfectly each time. 
  Clockworks also don’t automatically get volition or 
  wound threshold, so you probably want to set aside a couple 
  of points for provides initiative or provides wound 
  threshold, otherwise you’ll have a very slow clockwork that 
  breaks if anyone looks at it the wrong way. Similarly, clock 
  works don’t get shock gauges, so they don’t get any abilities 
  for free, but on the plus side, they don’t have to worry about 
  stress checks. 
  Minor clockworks can never exceed a unique feature and 
  initiative of 50% each, nor can they have a wound threshold 
  higher than 80. Likewise, minor clockworks can’t be 
  programmed with a feature their creator lacks, so if you 
  can’t play the fiddle, you can’t program a clockwork to do it, 
  either. A clockwork programmed with a Struggle ability can 
  make attacks just like any other melee attack, although 
  matched successes and crits don’t mean anything special. 
  (The GM may cause breakdowns and catastrophes on 
  matched failures and fumbles, though.) Clockworks with 
  firearms attacks typically can’t do anything else and need to 
  be stationary; they can’t even move or reload, although a 
  smart mechanomancer can make multiple devices to do 
  these things in tandem. 
  Finally, some minor clockworks are “always on,” while 
  others need to be activated when they’re going to be used. 
  They also can’t differentiate between people, so if you set 
  one to guard a room, it’s going to shoot any person crossing 
  the threshold. 
   
  1 Charge: Each additional minor charge spent adds about 
  three pounds (about 1.4 kg), with a proportionate size 
  increase, and another 10 points to divide among Identity 
  features. 
   
  MECHANOMANCY SIGNIFICANT EFFECTS 
  1 Charge: Build a clockwork roughly the size of a human 
  being. Significant clockworks have 60 points to spend on 
  Identities. Unlike minor clockworks, significant devices start 
  with 50 wound points and gain Identities with three features 
  like normal characters, although one of those features does 
  not have to substitute for an ability. They’re very limited in 
  intelligence, equivalent to a smart dog with limited 
  initiative, creativity, or curiosity. Clockworks at this level are 
  capable of speech, but typically only to fulfill a specific 
  function or repeated recorded data. Likewise, significant 
  clockworks possess all senses necessary to complete their 
  assigned tasks. 
  The 
  Identity 
  features 
  “provides 
  wound 
  threshold,” 
  “provides 
  initiative,” 
  and 
  “unique” 
  all 
  appear on page 
  44 of  Book One: 
  Play. 
  __ 
  3 
  
  Significant clockworks can possess Identities and features 
  their creator does not, although it does have to make sense 
  for the design of the clockwork; your murder-bot probably 
  isn’t going to play the clarinet unless you have some brilliant 
  rationale. However, a significant clockwork still cannot 
  possess supernatural Identities or features. A clockwork 
  with a Struggle ability resolves melee damage like a firearms 
  attack with no damage maximum. They can resemble 
  animals or people at no extra cost, although you get 10 extra 
  Identity points if you build significant clockworks as 
  efficiently as possible — that is, as weird mechanical 
  monsters that are maybe worth a rank-1 or 2 Unnatural 
  check. 
   
  1 Charge: Reduce the clockwork’s size by 75%. This has no 
  effect on its toughness or operation, and this feature can be 
  purchased up to 10 times. (You know. In case you want a 
  clockwork that weighs one ten-thousandth of a pound.) 
   
  1 Charge: Add 10 points of Identities to your clockwork, or 
  15 points to an obvious one. 
   
  1 Charge: Look at it, it’s got anxiety. Your clockwork now 
  has a full set of shock gauges that you can notch as you like, 
  and it can improve its Identities in the usual manner. 
   
  MECHANOMANCY MAJOR EFFECTS 
  As is typical for major mojo, all bets are off. Major charge 
  creations are practically indistinguishable from life — if you 
  want it badly enough, you could probably make a facsimile 
  of your dead lover in such minute detail that no one would 
  ever notice the difference. You can make these creatures 
  like regular characters, but with 220 points to spend on 
  Identities. 
  Major 
  clockworks 
  can 
  also 
  incorporate 
  immaterial essences and may have limited paranormal 
  abilities. 
   
  SAMPLE CLOCKWORKS 
  THE COPPER THIEF 
  Back in the late 1990s, a down-on-his luck checker named 
  Jimmy Acosta commissioned this clockwork in exchange for 
  a string of memories regarding his ex-wife. (A Merchant 
  dealing in memories paired with a mechanomancer is a 
  dangerous thing.) He specifically wanted a clockwork that 
  would efficiently strip the copper out of old buildings, 
  because scrap copper is always a booming business, and he 
  wanted an edge to make him competitive. (Plus, it’s more 
  efficient to do it in teams, so being a one-man copper-
  stealing operation means he gets all the profits.) What he 
  got is this twenty-pound metal spider that fits in a briefcase. 
  When unfolded, it’s roughly the size of a small dog made out 
  of rusted scrap metal. It scuttles along walls, searching for 
  acoustic differences that suggest copper wiring, and then it 
  gets to work, punching holes in walls with its mandibles and 
  rolling the wire onto a spool on its abdomen. It can strip a 
  small house in an evening. Jimmy started in Detroit but 
  worked his way through Michigan and started into Indiana, 
  at least until getting caught. Nobody knows what happened 
  to the Copper Thief. Some think it ended up in a police 
  evidence room in Gary, IN, deactivated and awaiting its next 
  instruction. Others think it’s still roaming the wilds of 
  northern Indiana, looking for copper. Assuming it wasn’t 
  destroyed, it could appear anywhere. 
   
  Wound Threshold: 35 
  Provides Initiative 5% 
  Provides Wound Threshold 35%  
  Unique: Sense and Strip Copper Wiring 50% 
  Costs:  
   
  60 starting Identity points = 1 minor charge 
   
  +30 Identity points = 3 minor charges 
  Total Cost: 4 minor charges 
   
  LITTLE KATICA 
  Notorious Chicago-area charger Predrag Knezevic made 
  this lock-picking clockwork in preparation for a big heist he 
  planned back in the late 2000s. To make it less conspicuous, 
  it appears as a beautiful young girl, about nine years old. 
  (Specifically, it appears as his niece of the same name who 
  died during the Homeland War. Predrag escaped 
  Yugoslavia; Katica did not.) It can talk and sing Croatian 
  lullabies — most people are going to figure out it’s not a real 
  girl after a short conversation, although Predrag largely 
  added those features so that he can pretend his niece is still 
  alive — but most importantly, it can exude lockpicks and 
  various other implements to crack mechanical locks, as well 
  as exuding thin, spidery filaments to crack electronic locks. 
  Nobody really knows what happened to Predrag after 
  about 2010 or so. Word on the street is that he was receiving 
  dialysis treatment and on the wait list for a kidney before he 
  disappeared, so maybe he just died. On the other hand, a 
  couple of people claim to have seen him in Chicago since 
  2010, and at least one checker says he’s actually up in 
  Kingston, Ontario now. As for Katica, Predrag was 
  notoriously absent-minded, and had a strange tendency to 
  squirrel away various clockworks in boltholes and storage 
  units around Chicago, so she might appear in a shipping 
  container somewhere. 
   
  Wound Threshold: 60 
  Automated Locksmith 60%:  provides wound threshold, 
  unique: picks locks, unique: cracks electronic locks 
  Beautiful Singing Voice 30%:  substitutes for Connect, 
  substitutes for Status, unique: sings beautiful Croatian 
  lullabies 
  Costs:  
   
  60 starting Identity points = 1 significant charge 
   
  1× size reduction = 1 significant charge 
   
  +30 Identity points = 3 significant charges 
  Total Cost: 5 significant charges 
   
  THE LONESOME LUNCHBOX 
  Everybody thought these annoying artifacts were gone for 
  good until the Sleepers had to put down a horde of the 
  damn things in a junkyard in Billerica, MA in November of 
  2015. (The fire made the news, but the Sleeping Tiger stayed 
  asleep.) These things look like a cross between an old-style 
  lunch pail and a lobster, and they crawl their way towards 
  metal. If the clockwork finds a metal source, it reproduces. 
  The bad part is that this reproduction is geometric — when 
  one Lunchbox makes another, now both of them are 
  capable of reproducing. And like that old Fabergé Organics 
  All the relevant 
  information 
  about 
  “Improving 
  Identities” is on 
  page 45 of Book 
  One: Play. 
  __ 
  4 
  
  shampoo commercial goes, two become four, four become 
  eight, eight become sixteen, and so on until they run out of 
  metal. The infernal devices don’t do anything other than 
  reproduce, but they’re either reproducing or seeking out 
  metal reserves as long as there’s any metal within a half-
  mile. 
   
  Wound Threshold: 5 
  Provides Initiative 5% 
  Provides Wound Threshold 5%  
  Unique: Find Metal and Reproduce 50% 
  Total Cost: 1 minor charge 
   
  THE SUVIRUS 
  The SUVirus is a clockwork parasite that thrives in Lexus 
  sport utility vehicles and only Lexus sport utility vehicles. 
  (There’s a long-standing rumor the inventor was a 
  disgruntled employee, or someone who wanted to “prove” 
  the vehicles are unsafe.) 
  The SUVirus appears as a flat, metallic butterfly, roughly 
  the size of two human hands. (It is rarely seen in this form, 
  as it can only remain animate for about an hour outside a 
  vehicle. In this form, it crawls around looking for a host.) It 
  usually lairs behind the front bumper of a Lexus SUV, 
  extruding thin filaments throughout the powertrain of the 
  vehicle and awaiting the right moment to take control. 
  “The right moment,” in this case, is whenever it gets close 
  to another Lexus SUV. When it does, the SUVirus takes 
  control of the vehicle, and the driver is shut out — no 
  control over steering, brakes, ignition; even shifting gears 
  will not deter the SUVirus. The vehicle controlled by the 
  SUVirus then rams into the other Lexus SUV. 
  If the SUVirus takes enough damage to be destroyed, 
  that’s it — it’s a bad accident, and the drivers and passengers 
  might be injured, but nothing else happens. If the SUVirus 
  survives, however, it divides into two proto-virii, and each 
  proto-virus crawls into a host vehicle. When the host 
  vehicles are repaired, the proto-virii steal components to 
  repair themselves, and then finish installation behind the 
  front bumper. The process can then begin again. 
  The SUVirus is a very subtle passenger. An auto mechanic 
  with the appropriate Identity needs to make an Identity roll 
  with a -30% shift to detect that something is wrong. (An 
  Identity roll without a shift will suffice if the mechanic 
  specifically looks behind the front bumper.) 
   
  Wound Threshold: 55 
  Lexus 
  Camouflage 
  30%:  
  substitutes 
  for 
  Secrecy, 
  substitutes for Notice, unique: hides in Lexus SUVs 
  The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection 55%:  substitutes for 
  Pursuit, provides wound threshold, unique: viral replication 
  in Lexus 
  Costs:  
   
  70 starting Identity points (obvious clockwork) = 1 
  significant charge 
   
  3× size reduction = 3 significant charges 
   
  +15 Identity points = 1 significant charge 
  Total Cost: 4 significant chares
   
   
  __ 
  5 
  
  AUTOMATA AS PLAYER CHARACTERS 
  It only takes eight significant charges to make a starting-
  level player character with mechanomancy. No doubt, some 
  enterprising player will notice this and want to play an 
  Automaton. This isn’t appropriate for every campaign, but if 
  your gaming group is on board, here are some guidelines. As 
  always, feel free to ignore them if your idea is cooler and 
  more fun. 
  Go through character creation as normal. Automata can’t 
  take supernatural Identities — nothing with the casts rituals 
  or use gutter magick features, no avatars, no adepts. 
  Anything else is fair game. Most automata pick up a 
  mechanical repair Identity, just because it “feels right” and 
  because it helps them keep themselves operating. 
  Automata often lack an obsession (and therefore an 
  obsession skill), although automata made with major 
  charges can have them. Consider whether or not your 
  automaton has an obsession. Incidentally, this is a sneaky 
  backdoor for automata in the campaign — if the group has 
  a player character without an obsession, the GM might 
  nominate that character as an automaton without realizing 
  it. (Gauge your group, though; not every player is going to 
  like this revelation.) Finding out you’re an automaton is a 
  rank-10 Self check, probably followed by several other stress 
  checks on the Unnatural and Self gauges. Finding out 
  someone is an automaton (say, by watching them bleed 
  gears and oil when stabbed) is probably worth a rank-3 to 5 
  Unnatural check. (Although that can rise if you’re close to 
  the person.) 
  Automata are made of metal rather than flesh, and so 
  cannot heal naturally, nor can they be healed with the 
  Medical feature. However, people with repair Identities (or 
  the mechanomancy Identity) can roll to heal an automaton, 
  allowing the clockwork to recover a number of wounds 
  equal to the sum of the dice roll. (Matched failures and 
  fumbles usually cause 1-5 points of damage. Crits heal 20 
  Wound Points.) On the plus side, automata can’t be affected 
  by magick that only affects humans or flesh or living beings. 
  Along these same lines, automata only take melee damage 
  (the sum of the dice) from firearms attacks, and deal 
  firearms damage (with no damage cap) with their fists. 
  (Incidentally, if you don’t know you’re an automaton, 
  punching through someone is a great and terrifying way to 
  find out.) They don’t need to eat or sleep, can’t be poisoned, 
  all that good stuff. 
  Automata can take Magick (Mechanomancy) as an 
  Identity, and it doesn’t have to be an obsession skill.  They 
  just “get” it. 
  The last bit is something easy to overlook, but very 
  important: keep quiet. You probably want to avoid doctors, 
  X-rays, and metal detectors, or else the Sleepers will come 
  looking for you. Along with anyone else who thinks a 
  clockwork would be useful for their plans. 
  ALL ABOARD THE POWER TRAIN 
  Automata must put between 3 and 40 Identity points in an 
  Identity called “Power Train.” This Identity is never rolled, 
  and only has one feature: it powers the clockwork. Each day, 
  the automaton spends one point of Power Train to keep 
  operating. The automaton can also spend a point of Power 
  Train to get a +10 shift to any physical action. If Power Train 
  ever hits 0%, the clockwork dies. (Maybe it can be revived, 
  maybe it can’t.) 
  (Incidentally, this power consumption need means that 
  unwitting automata are usually in deep, deep denial about 
  why they don’t need to eat or use the bathroom. Or maybe 
  they just haven’t figured out that their morning Bowflex 
  routine is literally keeping them alive.) 
  As with Wound Points, the GM should keep track of the 
  character’s current Power Train rating, and should only let 
  them know how run-down they feel. The Identity can never 
  rise above 40. 
  An automaton can recover a point of Power Train by 
  engaging in its recharging routine, whatever that is. Maybe 
  there’s a key in your back that needs to be wound, maybe 
  there’s a lever in your elbow that needs to be pumped thirty 
  times, or maybe you’re like Ivan Stahl, former sex clockwork 
  for Catherine the Great, who is powered by sex acts. As you 
  can tell, you typically need someone else to keep you 
  powered (an automaton winding itself is a zero-sum game), 
  although modern clockworks can often rig some device to a 
  generator or similar contrivance that will keep them wound.  
   
  NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH 
  Occult power allows for another way to power automata, 
  but it’s very unstable. A clockworker can install a free-energy 
  engine — the fabled perpetual motion machine — into a 
  clockwork for an additional significant charge. Free-energy 
  clockworks are usually frenetic, and always trying to figure 
  out how to bleed off excess energy, because if they absorb 
  too much, they explode. 
  Instead of losing a point of Power Train each day, free-
  energy automata gain one point of Power Train each day, 
  and gain another point each time they roll a matched 
  success or crit.  Unlike standard automata, free-energy 
  Power Train can rise above 40, but once it hits 80, the 
  clockwork explodes. Roll ten dice and add them together — 
  everybody in ten feet takes that many wounds. Everybody in 
  twenty feet takes half that. 
  If a free-energy clockwork dies for any other reason — 
  Power Train drops to 0%, crushed in a drill press, torn apart 
  by an angry mob — it explodes as detailed above.  
   
    
   
   
  See 
  “Creating 
  Characters: The 
  Lonely 
  Singles 
  Club Version” on 
  page 53 of Book 
  One: 
  Play. 
  Alternately, 
  Chapter 
  3 
  of 
  Book Two: Run 
  covers 
  collaborative 
  character 
  and 
  setting 
  generation, 
  starting on page 
  24. 
  __ 
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  Unknown Armies created by Greg Stolze and John Tynes  
  Writing and design: J. Stuart Pate 
  Editing and development: J. Stuart Pate and Nicole Pate  
  Unknown Armies graphic design: Thomas Deeny 
  Art: Wikimedia Commons 
   
  This product was created under license. Unknown Armies is a trademark of Greg Stolze and John Tynes, used under 
  license by Trident, Inc., d/b/a Atlas Games.  
   
  This work contains material that is copyright © 2017 Atlas Games and/or other authors. Such material is 
  used with permission under the Community Content Agreement for the Statosphere UACC. 
   
  All other original material in this work is copyright © 2017 by J. Stuart Pate and published under the 
  Community Content Agreement for the Statosphere UACC. 
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Unknown Armies [multi]/Unknown Armies [3rd ed]/Statosphere - Mechanomancy Redux.pdf