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Your Whispering Homunculus: Fifty Strange Timepieces

Your Whispering Homunculus: Fifty Strange Timepieces

Your Whispering HomunculusMaster Pett’s Your Whispering Homunculus presents only the finest in British gaming. Indeed, you are not likely to find a more comprehensive assortment of miscellany anywhere.

(So much more than just another bloke in a dress.)

[previously]

“Grotsward, what time is it?”

“Six Threbs beyond Tulward, your corpulence.”

“Normal time, Grotsward.”

“But master, what exactly is ‘normal’ time?”

I can see the time has come for the teaching stick to be applied to your hide as a reminder of impertinence. Stick number eighteen today, I think. The one with points—fetch it.

Number eighteen, master, as you wish.

Sadly, we all need to know the time, and even for those who dwell below ground, knowing the correct time of day can be crucial to certain arcane matters and astronomical observations. More than just humanoid creatures need to have an idea of the passing hours, days, and seasons, although the more civilized races have made an art form of conforming to time.

Here is a selection of timepieces—some crude, some cunning, some weird—to slip into your adventures.

1. A waterclock made of pumice carved into the likenesses of dodos

2. A huge hourglass made with the ashes of basilisks and held in the arms of four petrified warriors with distended jaws holding sundials

3. An incense clock, consisting of a dozen peacock figures standing side by side—as each hour passes the next peacock incense holder begins to burn

4. A tally stick of ogre bones carved with scrimshaw figures of days and passing seasons

5. A vast candle fully thirty feet high graded for the passing of a month and made of black wax

6. A blackened tree carved like a totem with pictures of screaming devils rises in a circle of twelve stones

7. A series of descending pools and waterwheels that power a huge clock face made from dragon scales

8. A miniature brass clock moved by a tiny homunculus that resembles a spider

9. A gold and platinum pocket sundial in a leather case

10. An elaborate chamber with a gushing waterfall that slowly turns a crude yet very old mossy timber face upon which are carved the number of days in a year; a single metal bar points to the number of the day

11. A graded candle made of dragon fat that burns for a year and a day

12. A clock in a large wooden case depicting faceless figures marching around the sun and moon

13. A sundial made from fey bones and elf teeth

14. Twelve homunculus ravens caw the hour endlessly from their perch upon a goblin skeleton

15. A chamber containing elephants that power a temple clock high on the roof that strikes the hour with gongs and is preceeded by a procession of mechanical camels

16. A tower thirty-three feet high containing a water clock powered by water elementals that keeps the time and displays the zodiac and astronomical bodies

17. A silver and bronze oil lamp clock with a silver crow’s head figure and graduated times set in gold strips

18. A bored imp that looks like a pig with wings swallows jade timepeas from jars marked with hours

19. An hourglass set in the gripping mummified hand of a gargoyle

20. An oil clock filled with floating fingers

21. An elaborate water clock that drops a metal skull into a bowl below a rusty guillotine on the hour

22. A zombie cockerel that crows at dusk and dawn

23. The Shepherd’s Devil—an infamous timepiece said to be haunted by its own grim reaper and housed in a bell tower surrounded by traps to prevent it escaping

24. A clock within an armillary sphere powered by attendant imps that track the passing heavens

25. A sundial made of dragon skin

26. A fine case clock depicting dancing sun and moons in long cloaks being eaten by rampant stirges and powered by a trio of permanent unseen servants

27. A clock made entirely of mice skeletons

28. A water clock of bronze and ivory powered by an enslaved water elemental that beats a gong every hour

29. A fine gold and bone clock that keeps track of the passing seasons on magnificent landscape paintings

30. A geared water clock connected to a stuffed dancing bear that dances a circle every hour

31. A clock made entirely of animate zombie rats

32. A goblin warlock’s tally stick depicting beheaded horses and dogs

33. A stirge’s head hourglass

34. A huge giant’s tally stick made of whale bones and mammoth tusks

35. An oil clock held in a trio of glass flumph

36. A dwarf miner’s lamp clock carved from figures of mutilated goblins

37. An imp holding a huge circular tally stick made of imp teeth that counts the seconds, minutes, and hours of the day

38. A water clock depicting sultry mermaids eating lobsters

39. An immense oil clock some twenty feet high that marks the passing days shown by silver moons and gold suns

40. A carved choker shadow clock

41. An incense clock fills a chamber; it has intricate statues of dancing songbirds and wind chimes

42. A sumptuous dwarven water clock with cogs of finely carved gemstones

43. A perpetually turning prayer wheel powered by an unseen servant; the wheel clicks off the hours

44. The Mummer’s Fright—a haunted timepiece made of driftwood and iron said to have a resident wraith that eats children at midnight if any walk by

45. A petrified gnome clasps a hourglass that is decorated with cockatrice feathers

46. An homunculus resembling a fat two-headed toad endlessly licks off the minutes on an abacus

47. A clock made of iron and the animated hands of skeletons

48. A chained trio of trolls lacerate each other on an hourly signal given by a flesh golem bearing a scythe

49. An elven oil lamp that burns for a hundred and one years

50. An animated object with three metal heads screams the hours

 

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