What Them Clockwork Folk Believe
#What Them Clockwork Folk Believe
*by Hroldar One-Eye*
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Spent a few weeks in Mournhold once. Nice city. Too many elves. One of em was a Clockwork Apostle. Nice enough fellow. Had brass bits stuck to his robe and talked like he'd swallowed a library.
I asked him what they actually believed cause nobody ever explains it proper. They just say things like "chrononymic convergence" and expect folk to nod.
Near as I can tell, it goes like this - they think [the whole world is broke](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Truth_in_Sequence:_Volume_1). Not broke like a table with a missing leg. Broke like somebody built the table wrong in the first place. See... most folk think the world is finished. Mountains is mountains, rivers is rivers, men is men.
The Clockwork folk say no... they reckon everything is still being built. They also think everything belongs to the same thing. Like if you got a sword and its got a pommel, and a grip, and a blade, and all sorts of bits. But you don't look at em separate. Its all one sword.
The Apostles think the world is like that. Men, eelves, houses, trees, dragons... all pieces of one big thing. I asked if that meant my neighbor's goat was part of the same thing as Alduin. The Apostle thought bout it and said yes.... I been thinking about that answer for years.
Anyway, they really don't like folk being separate. They think most troubles come from everybody saying "mine." My land, my kingdom, my gold, my people. The Clockwork folk hear all that and say its the [reason everything keeps going wrong](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Truth_in_Sequence:_Volume_2). They say folk spend so much time being separate they forget they're part of the same wheel.
[They love wheels by the way](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Truth_in_Sequence:_Volume_7)! Everything comes back to wheels. Mention a horse and they'll start talking about wheels. Mention a war and they'll start talking about wheels. Mention breakfast and somehow you'll end up hearing about wheels again.
The strange part is what they say about people. Most folk want to become more themselves. Like a warrior wants to be a better warrior or a blacksmith wants to make better swords... makes sense.
The Apostles think the opposite. They reckon the more you understand the world, the less important you become and eventually you stop thinking about yourself at all. I asked what happens then and the apostle got a big smile and said: "Then one becomes part of the greater whole."
Sounded suspiciously like disappearing to me.
They also got this thing called Tamriel Final. Near as I can tell its the [finished version of the world](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Truth_in_Sequence:_Volume_6), like when a smith finally hammers out all the dents and gets the blade looking right. Only instead of fixing a sword they're fixing everything. The stars, land, rivers, people - the lot. And they think Sotha Sil is the only one who knows what the finished world is supposed to look like. Seems like a lot of responsibility for one fellow.
Now I ain't saying they're wrong. World certainly got plenty wrong with it like wars, daedra and taxes. It could probably use some fixing... but every time the apostle explained Tamriel Final, it sounded less like repairing a house and more like [melting the whole thing down and starting over](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Truth_in_Sequence:_Volume_4)... maybe that's the same thing to them?
So if you want the short version:
- The Clockwork folk think everything is one thing.
- They think being separate is the cause of most problems.
- They think the world ain't finished yet.
- They think Sotha Sil knows how its supposed to end up.
- And they think one day everybody and everything gets fitted together proper.
Personally I think that's too much thinking for one religion, but at least its more interesting than the Bretons. They got smart folk too, only theirs spend twenty pages arguing about whether a chair is really a chair. At least the Clockwork folk got giant brass spiders and exploding machines.