Steam Whispers: My Automaton Kindergarten

On the continent of Northrend, magical puppets are regarded as cold-blooded killing machines. Only Ding Ding, a 15-year-old mechanical gnome, believes that they can have warm hearts.

After awakening the “Gear Resonance” talent, he cobbles together discarded gears to create his first little iron puppet, one that can wipe away tears, and activates the Gear and Heart System.

When human parents tentatively send their children to his puppet kindergarten, Ding Ding designs emotional gears and teaches the puppets to cook porridge with steam and sing gear-rhythm lullabies.

But war puppets built by radical puppet makers sweep through the towns. Ding Ding leads the kindergarten's puppets in forming a steam barrier, using warm emotions to awaken the war machines' protective instincts.

“They are not weapons,” Ding Ding says as he shows the Council of Races footage of a puppet shielding a child from falling debris. “They are companions.”

As the “Gearheart” blazes into being in the council hall, the continent welcomes a dawn where machines and hearts dance together.