On a steam continent without sun or moon, lit only by the cold glow of machinery, the gearfolk are enslaved by a “false god.” In 1750 AC, the false god feeds on the plunder of extraterrestrial beings and continents. It designates the Gear Continent as its energy hub, forcibly conscripting the gearfolk to maintain its mechanical body and even altering their very biology until they become mere “moving parts.”
When their oppression reaches its peak, the gearfolk awaken and fight back. They dismantle the energy-conveying copper pipes, colossal gears, and calibrators that sustain the false god. Drawing on mechanical skills passed down by their ancestors and their determination to protect their home, they cut off the false god's energy supply. At last, with its core deprived of power, the false god plummets from the heavens, its body crashing into a pit on the Gear Continent and becoming scrap metal.
Sixteen hours after the battle, as the gearfolk busy themselves repairing their home and tending to their wounded companions, a portal quietly appears in the sky. Silver-white sparks whirl into an oval doorway, and the Gear God descends from within. The deity reveals the plundering nature of the false god and explains that the gearfolk won through their “awakened will.” Using the false god's light and dark cores, the deity forges two gears, “Radiance” and “Gloaming,” and hangs them in the sky, creating the cycle of “sun and moon.” Then the deity restores life to the continent, turning its copper-plated earth into fertile soil and its coolant into clean water. The gearfolk are also freed from their mechanical bodies and given real flesh, capable of feeling warmth and cold, hunger and satiety.
From then on, the Gear Continent leaves behind the darkness of enslavement. The gearfolk cultivate a new life with their own hands and, beneath the radiance of the twin celestial gears, write an epic about a home for free beings.
