It was too late to say “oops.” Maybe you can pick up the slack.

Once upon a time there was a mechanomancer with a want to live forever. He dreamed of perpetual-motion-machines, of gears that would never stop grinding. The penultimate Big Ben. He very nearly found it, in fact, though it took him a great many beloved memories and more than a few relics harvested from museums.

His main inspiration was, ironically, a co-conspirateur and friend of his, a Hatian Narqui, who, whilst mulling over a joint, mused, “Mon, I see you witcher little Tinkertoys an’ Big Bens, an’ I think, why you bother with that? You don’ need that, you kin make your own Resseruction Body–there you go, done.” The Narqui said so dismissively, but the mechanomancer took it to heart.

He was indeed worried about his heart–like so many other timepieces, it was beginning to wind out, and the windspring was beginning to thin and wear. Alone, he spent his final years crafting his own Resseruction Body. When complete, the fantastic device waited to be finished. His plan was to sacrifice two final artifacts:

One of George Washington’s ivory teeth sets, sharpened to points, to be used in its maw;

And his own brain, to live on forever in the clockwork genius of the device, which he named Aleph.

The teeth worked fine. The mechanomancer prepared to have his mind infused with Aleph.

Unfortunately, Aleph simply ate its master’s brains. Given no final instruction, Aleph simply stood in the depths of the mechanomancer’s workshop, awaiting orders that would never come as its maker’s brains rotted in its gut.

Perhaps some cabal will find Aleph, lonely Aleph, and a long-gone old man’s corpse, down in that workshop. The magick spent in making that brilliant, albeit unfortunately literal, creature’s body did give it a special ability–one to name a new master–but failed to give the entity a sense of initiative.

If discovered, it could be a mighty ally or, as in the case of its maker, a grotesque and possibly fatal irony.

Aleph
The Amelia Bedelia of clockworks
Body 120 (Perpetual Motion Machine)
Speed 50 (No Need to Get Clockworked Up)
Mind 10 (I.O.U. 1 brain)
Soul 30 (Little Bitty Spark of Autonomy)

Body Skills: Healthy Smack 45%, Sweep and Smash 50%, A Thing of Beauty 30%, A Thing of Terror

Speed Skills: Initiative 25%, Saunter With Surprising Silence 35%, Run Like The Devil Was On Its Heels 50%

Mind Skill: Properly Process Order 10%

Soul Skill: Eerily Beautiful Voice 30%

Healthy Smack: Aleph’s main attack, a simple stab with its arm, which deals damage as a gunshot with no maximum damage.

Sweep and Smash: With this mighty charge attack, Aleph leans over, arms out and talons forward, ready to slam into its foes. It can easily scoop up up to five men in his grasp, dealing hand-to-hand damage with a +9 modifier (his talons are big, impaling, and heavy enough to be a two-handed weapon on most creatures). At the end of his attack, it slam its arms shut, dealing the attack roll in gunshot damage.
The attack is telegraphed enough to have a +20 bonus to Dodge attempts from anyone not running away or otherwise occupied. The attack’s effects are gruesome and call for a Rank-4 violence stress check.

Properly Process Order: If an order given to it is too vague–“Stop him!”, for instance–Aleph must make this skill in order to do something without resorting to the easiest and/or most violent way possible. To use the previous example, “stop him!” is directed at a fleeing gang banger. Aleph fails its Properly Process Order and procedes to Sweep and Smash the sucker, rolling abnormally well and smashing the unlucky sucker to paste.

Aleph is a truly beautiful machine, a 10-foot-tall work of carefully-enscribed wood and steel–it resembles something like a mechanical angel, with grand scrap-metal wings, barrel chest, spindly multi-jointed legs, and massive arms bearing railroad-spike-finger hands (the latter more intimidating than beautiful). Its face is perhaps the most haunting–a simple, subtly detailed mask with a hinged mouth filled with tiny old-ivory-colored fangs. An ubituous stink comes from the creature’s stomach, unless its current owner cleans it out.

Aleph thus far has a low-level personality and thus has abominable mental statistics. It has difficulty with abstract thought, so detailed instructions must be given to it, which he then carries out literally, with no thought as to weather or not the consequences are dangerous or even productive. The exception to the rule reguards combat–it can grasp the concept of “Kill them!” quite easily while discerning between friend and foe.

Should an owner of Aleph grow tired of it, it will unhesitantly accept dismissal, but will gladly make a new master out of who next orders it around.

When spoken to, Aleph responds in a truly ghostlike music-box-tine voice, in simple few-syllable English. It has little real quirks of its own. Those who command Aleph project a personality onto it (or soon “him”); should someone amplify his Soul attribute, it slowly generates a confident, commanding personality. Jacking Aleph’s mind to higher than 70 strengthens his identity and discards the need for its Properly Process Order skill. It may very well “go rampant” and become a sentient, viable being–or alternately never get past the “needless cruelty” stage and become a horror. It all depends on how well its creator clocked it together.

While Aleph is a fantastic ass-kicker clockwork, it has little use elsewise. It’s simply too volatile to do anything subtle. Perhaps one day a mechanomancer will fix it up with a less literal mind, but until that day comes, Aleph will remain woefully incomplete.

GM notes: Aleph is intended to be a seeming blessing that then procedes to make a mess of things. Like a computer, it requires very specific information to proper correctly; unlike a computer, most of the hard work yet remains to be completed. Aleph can be the focus of an entire adventure or campaign if need be–as a new project for a mechanomancer to perfect, as the destructive tool of whichever cabal needs a strongarm, as a fixer-upper MacGuffin, or whatever. If it could overshadow the PCs in combat or anywhere else, just play up its necessity as a “smart bomb” or “nuke” for only the most desperate of times; the PCs should, as usual, do most of the hard work and thus get most of the glory.