Underclock
The Underclock is a city below the surface of the earth, populated by warforged and lead by the Grand Artificer Zook. One thousand years in the making, the Underclock serves as a testament and example of modern technology perpetrated by Zook himself. Since its emergence to the surface after the Defection of the Underclock, the warforged and their city have been exposed to the surface world and their politics.
The Grand Artificer Zook was revered on the surface for his technological genius. He would spend days and days in his lab then come out with a contraption that spelled doom for his foes.
But after the Dark Lord Verelith had been vanquished, Zook disappered from the face of the planet, due to an apparent suicide. In truth, he descended deep beneath the earth to bring his fight against the Underdark to their turf. He founded the Underclock, a city underground that would serve his every need. With that city, he amassed an army of golems to aid him in his campaign.
Some say that Pisous blessed him. Some say it was an accidental miracle. Whatever happened that fateful day, a divine spark had awakened in the golems, becoming sentient and ever loyal to their Grand Artificer. The Underclock. The Warforged. Zook’s greatest and most beloved creation.
History
The "Death" of the Old Hero
Shortly after the defeat of Verelith, the Old Heroes stayed together and ventured through the world, securing the Dark Lord and his followers' demise. Zook, a gnomish artificer, however, parted with them to return to work on his creation, a large device that probe the very fabric of the Material Plane to test its reality. After a few years, Zook's lab was discovered to have been destroyed, supposedly by a self-destruct mechanism by his own machines. His work and his collection of laboratories went into ruin and unuse, allowing the world to freely explore the depths of his work. This would lead to a large technological revolution and Zookish technology permeated every facet of society and work, leading to a more streamlined workplace, the invention of the common firearm, and the highly advanced system of air travel.
As the world assumed that the artificer had suicided, what Zook had actually done was abandon the surface world, going deep within the surface to battle the Underdark on its own turf. Zook, whose imprisonment by mind flayers lead to mental unstability, was known for his ruthlessness against dark creatures from below. When he found a suitable area, he began construction on an enlarged version of his reality testing device. Eventually, Shibboleth (Synthetic Handcrafted Individual, Built for Basic Observation, Logical Exploration, and Testing Harmlessly) was born.
Zook and Shibboleth
When she was completed, Zook made lived and worked within her walls, constantly driving himself further and further into dispersing his vision of reality. Shibboleth, being quite the sentient and emotional creature, assisted him in any way possible, almost becoming a mother to the slowly-dying gnome. It was she that created the artificial life systems for the old artificer (with his help, of course), prolonging his life to an almost infinite span. As his organs died, she would be there to replace them and tend to him back to health.
After a few centuries, the fortress came back with a confirmation of the material plane and its reality. Zook, a little shocked by the results honestly, took them with full faith, optimistic as ever. Shibboleth, however, had seen something more and took her results with a grain of salt. Convinced that this reality was a farce, her and her creator's view clashed with constant arguments and debates. At the end of their confrontation, she turned violent, turning the fortress against him. Zook, having already planned for this, made his escape, damaging her internal systems. He left her to die and deactivate slowly, seeking to rebuild and retry another project.
The Birth of the Underclock
After Shibboleth's attack on the artificer, he ventured into the Underdark to find a more suitable site for a city of his. The idea of an ever loyal society of golems gave him inspiration to create an army of them, some built for battle, some built for labor, some built for most everything.
What happened next is highly debated and will never be unraveled as a mystery. Some guess that Pisous finally rewarded Zook after his participation in the fight against Verelith. Others say that Zook's innate arcane genious resulted in the accidential awakening of the golems. Regardless of what caused it, a divine spark found itself and woke up within each of the golems, bringing them to life and giving them sentience and a sense of human nature. Whatever happened that day, Zook had gained an army of living constructs, a race completely and utterly devoted to their benevolent father and creator. Zook had been given a race of sons: the Warforged.
With this newfound acquistion, Zook jump-started his campaign against the Underdark, pumping all of his resources and all of the Warforged into his war economy, producing ever-living and eternal soldiers dedicated to eradicating the world of these disgusting creatures. Their construct nature (no need for sleep or nourishment) made them the perfect workforce and military, perfect for Zook's ambition.
Even as the Warforged conducted and executed detailed attacks against the drow and the mindflayers, a hint of society evolved within the Underclock. Although the Warforged need no sleep, they must have a few hours of nonstenuous activity. With these hours, the Warforged developed ideas and organizations. The Church of the Underclock, first consisting of a few Warforged who talked with Zook about their creation, grew to a legitimate organization, claiming quite a few Warforged as laymembers. Using a Bible Zook had been given on the surface, the Church of the Underclock developed theories of their existence and Pisous' benevolence towards them. A sect of the Church, calling themselves the Gifts of Pisous, consist of high level paladins and clerics who, amazingly, found their divine power without the help of others.
An Old Friend Returning
As the Underclock jumped into high gear in their campaign, Shibboleth reconstructed herself, planning and devising ways to destroy the Grand Artificer and his new creations. After she completed and reactivated her own system, she went into constructing a procedure that turned the Warforged from Zook's side to her own side. After ambushing a small patrol outside the Underclock, the Fortress captured and tested ruthlessly on a Warforged. Eventually she succeeded in absorbing its sentience and implanting in it her own programming, thereby defecting it to her side.
The attacks against the Warforged continued and continued, soon enough amassing a large enough army. In addition, she captured and modified other denizens of the Underclock, such as the gasping horror.
In response, Zook made the Defected Warforged official enemies of the Underclock, placing them in the same tier as other Underdark inhabitants. It was during this time that the Technician's Guld formed. A group consisting of highly trained hunters and fighters, the technician made leaps and bounds in the field of warforged extermination. Their name in a tongue-in-cheek reference to their job (they "fix" the Defected).
Waging a subtle war against the Underclock, Shibboleth binded herself and waited to execute the final blow...
The Discovery of the Underclock
As a result of a close proximity patrol to the surface of Warforged units, a local Dwarven mine put out the request to the Guild of Fallonian Heroes to explore and solve the problem of mysterious occurences. A group of heroes, including Jack Barrack and The "Boulder", were sent to fix what was going on. As they traveled into the mines, they became lost, inadverently delving deeper and deeper, eventually finding a mineral processing and deposition outpost, near the perimeter of the Underclock. Alerting the workers inside, they were apprehended and taken back to the Underclock to meet Zook.
The Grand Artificer was wary of sending surface dwellers back up with the knowledge of him and his city intact... without a bit of a deal. If they refused to do a favor for the Artificer, he would've had them put to death for the greater good of the city. Their mission was simple: infiltrate and destroy the Machine Queen Shibboleth. Zook was even going with them to assist them from behind the scenes.
The group hesitantly agreed to help him and they set off, towards the cavern which Shibboleth existed in. After a brief encounter with Defected forces, the party entered the cavern, with the Fortress sitting in the middle. The Grand Artificer departed and the group entered Shibboleth, subject to her testing facility.
After succeeding the tests and battling the motherboard of the Fortress, they escaped the crumbling fortress, narrowly. Zook, being on the inside as well, was wounded in battle, impaled on a Defection pin. The Grand Artificer requested the party to return to the Underclock to start the Extraction Process.
As the party met with Epsilon, one of the Elite Guards of the Underclock, a large force of Defected invaded the Underclock, subjecting the warforged to a mass Defection. Along with their forces, Zook attacked the warforged, defected beyond recognition. The still Zookish warforged escaped the Underclock, retreating to the surface.
The Rise of the Underclock
The warforged rose onto an island off the coast of Fallow, establishing a city almost instantly. Forging an alliance with their nearby neighbor, they began preparing to delve back into the Underclock. What Epsilon, the new leader of the warforged, knew was that the rebuilding of warforged forces would be long and tedious as 87% of the Zookish units were defected and currently serving the Machine Queen.
Soon enough, with Fallow going on the offensive against Demercius, Epsilon lead the warforged away from their extraction point and lead them to the continent of Anatolia and struck up a deal with the Celventian government, pledging their military aid against Fallow if they were to attack. Celvent granted them the northern end of the penninsula. Epsilon's Landing became a large settlement of the Underclock, with the warforged working night and day to rebuild themselves and make nice with the rest of the world.
The Rise of the Machine Queen
With newfound allies, Shibboleth started a campaign to destroy the material plane (a total farce in her mind) and return back to the true reality. She started with launching a terrorist attack against Fallow, detonating several placed explosives within the city and warning them not to help the Zookish refugees.
Soon after, the Machine Queen formed an alliance with Fallow itself, pledging to help them in their imperialistic campaign with the favor of allowing the Defected Underclock to raise towers in certain points in Demercius, Fallow, Harquin, and Celvent. Also developed in this time was the defection process of creatures other than warforged.
The first offensive attack against the surface by the Defected Underclock was against LakeTown, rising a tower. Celvent forces attempted to fight back the Defected, but with the help of Epsilon and his warforged units, they succeeded and won the battle, forcing the Defected back underground.
After the battle, a ragged and wounded Zook approached the warforged, revealing that his Defection was a facade, as he was attempting to infect Shibboleth with a virus from the inside. His plan failed, so he returned to help the Zookish refugees once again.
Regardless, with Fallow successfully conquering Demercius and other nations along the east side of Atherapos, Shibboleth raised several towers.
The Destruction of the Machine Queen
The Fallonian outlaws, guided by Zook, were directed to infiltrate the towers raised and methodically destroy them from the inside. Succeeding with that, the last tower rose in the sea between Anatolia and Atherapos and the adventurers travelled to it, fighting Quaros Malconic, a lich from a time before the Age of Verelith, who had been assisting Shibboleth in constructing his own reality. After destroying him, they encountered Shibboleth who had been transplanted into a undead construct of a body. After separating her body from her machine, they killed her, snuffing out the Defection.
With the assistance of the Church of the Underclock, they retrieved the souls of the Defected, reinstating them back into warforged bodies.
In the Current Times
With Zook back at the helm of the Underclock, the warforged retreated back into their city, washing it clean of Shibboleth's corruption.
The warforged still inhabit Epsilon's Landing, north of Celvent, maintaining connections to the surface nations. While they rarely induct themselves into formal politics of other nations, they enjoy healthy relations to all, participating in technological innovations.