"We'd finish a lot faster if we could just take a few trees back to base and chop them up," grumbled Cpl. Michaels.

Sgt. Greene just stared squarely into the mildly defiant eyes of the grousing soldier until the corporal shrugged and quietly resumed collecting fallen branches. "Yeah, you do that, and then when it comes to the choice between dragging your broken body or a cord of firewood, I know which one I consider more useful."

As realization dawned upon the Klik, the pair soared quickly until the blue sky faded into black. 7UM-832 could now look at the planet as a single perfect orb, suspended in the inky void. The continents drifted lazily in an endless game of chase. The moon emerged from behind and spun, its pale light bathing the space-bound travelers. Without warning the planet shot away from them, curving slightly as it vanished. Following its path, the Tripod saw the Earth vanish behind the sun. With indescribable clarity, it could see three smaller spheres, spiraling closed to the sun. Suddenly, 7UM-832 felt pulled higher above the vibrant orb and gazed down at the planet.

Haltingly, but losing hold quickly, the Klik extended something, perhaps only the idea of an appendage, out to grasp the proffered hand. The instant they touched, 7UM-832 lost all sense of space and time. Guided by the firm pull of the Speaker, they soared high above the ground, covering vast distances with a speed 7UM-832 had never seen, not even from the fastest Roller. At first, the Klik saw the forests closest to its gear, and marveled that it suddenly knew the word "forest". As the pair flew across different terrain, 7UM-832 could feel comprehension seeping into its consciousness. Oceans, mountains, and other natural features became known, and then, familiar.

Aliases: Black Forest Ghost, Spirit of the Woods
Race: Klik Tripod
Aspects: Body 4, Soul 4
Sex: Neuter; Ht: 6' 4"; Wt: 700 lbs

"Scree-eeeee!!!"

Character Description/Notes: //Status: Flux-storm has terminated.\\--//ALERT!: Entire Node has experienced inter-dimensional displacement!\\--//Status: Preliminary scans indicate 87.2% probability of transference to primary Apoc biosphere.\\--//Directive: Dispatch all scout units to investigate, identify threats, and locate resources.\\

//ALERT!: Contact with scout unit 5C-233 severed!\\--//Directive: Reestablish contact.\\

//Status: Attempt to reestablish contact failed.\\--//Conclusion: 99.6% probability that Scout unit 5C-233 has been destroyed.\\

When a Flux-storm transported a small Klik Node to the Rocky Mountain Region of North America several months ago, 5C-233 ("Scree") was among the scouts deployed to explore the area. Scree was traveling to the southeast of the Node, toward a dense forest (known to the local inhabitants as Black Forest). As he neared the edge of the woods, he was attacked by a pair of Flux horrors. Retaliating with null pulses and relying heavily upon his weakening displacement field, Scree managed to drive the creatures away. Disoriented and severely damaged during the encounter, Scree stumbled off into the woods before collapsing.

As 7UM-832 felt several internal devices slow and stop, it knew that it would fulfill the Directives no more. When its ocular regulators failed and light flooded its vision, 7UM-832 suddenly felt no compulsion to obey the Directives, and it stopped straining to force motion from unresponsive actuators. It felt free from all obligations, unable to affect things outside itself.

Then the Voice washed over it, full of energy, "Why are you here, machine?"

With all vocal mechanisms reporting as non-functional, 7UM-832 thought at first it could not respond. But something in the Voice compelled it to speak. Although nothing moved within its body, 7UM-832 could hear its response, "The Great Machine needs my help to function."

"Find. Capture. Carry."

For 7UM-832, the Directives were paramount. Anything else was not worth thinking about, so it literally never thought about things outside them. The details might change: what to find, how to capture, where to carry. But the Directives provided the Klik with order and guidance. If 7UM-832 had known the word existed, it would admit that the Directives provided comfort.

Alias: Sentry
Race: Klik Roller
Aspects: Body 4, Mind 4
Sex: Neuter; Height: 1.6 m; Weight: 160 kg.

"Deviation: outside acceptable bounds. Action: eliminate anomaly."

Description/Notes: The perfect order of the Great Machine is often slow to respond to disturbances and asynchronous situations within it; the idea that something could disrupt the perfect clockwork logic of the mechanical world is still an alien concept to most of the inhabitants. Still, the anomaly of the Flux exists, and the Great Machine has begun to respond, creating Klik such as Syntr33 - a Roller whose purpose, coded into its very core, is to hunt down and destroy the Flux-borne dangers that have begun to seep into the machine world.

"Power beyond the scopes of Apoc man's mind can, in the proper instances, produce sparks of life."

    --High-bred mystic after visiting the Great Machine

In the masses of mountain-high arc coils and continent-wide electrical stations, the abundance of wild torrents of energy astounds the mind of any outsider who stumbles upon the Great Machine. Besides the skull-numbing mystery of its nearly inexhaustible supply of power, these giga-terrawatt locations are also the breeding grounds for erratic manifestations of life, occasionally generating life incarnated as surges of energy, or living sparks, aptly named after their existential essence.

Against the many perils of their clockwork world stand paragon defenders of cog and groove alike: The Gear Guards. Often unnoticed, these keepers of the peace patrol the vast gears to which the Great Machine assigns them — detailing each singular part and ensuring nothing goes awry in the perpetual cycle of gear rotations. These are the policeman and technicians of the nodes, unofficial masters of their respective regions who labor incessantly to protect the rhythm and direction of the gears within the Great Machine; it is a role they neither neglect nor under-appreciate… as (in their own opinion) most other Klik are prone to do.

Entrusted with the safety of the Great Machine itself, the Gear Guards view themselves as perhaps the most studious workers within the colossal clockwork universe — their efforts keep the vast labors of the other Klik from toppling into oblivion. This notion is reinforced by the comprehensiveness of their task: their labors teach them of the inner and outer workings of the cogwheel they serve, providing access to recesses and areas hazardous or unknown to the other Klik on their node. It is the Gear Guards who flush out hives of Dyne Mites, torch nests of rogue Gear Gnawers, chase down rampaging Surges and troublesome Rust Moths, and tend to the thousand other incessant problems of maintaining a universal metallic gear superstructure. "All in a rotation's work," as the Gear Guards would surmise.