The Techno-Shamanists of Fumetown
The Tinkerers
Amid the endless turning gears and precise order of Mechanus lies an anomaly: Fumetown, a bizarre industrial sprawl nestled atop a series of slowly rotating cogs. Here, smoke rises in lazy spirals from chimneys that seem to sprout organically from the gears themselves, and the air hums with the clattering of brass and the hiss of steam. This is the domain of the Techno-Shamanists, a sect both eccentric and ingenious, and one entirely unlike anything else the planes have to offer. To the untrained eye, they are mad tinkerers and mystics, who speak to clockwork devices as though they were alive. But to those who spend time with them, the techno-shaman are revealed to be something far stranger: spiritual engineers, coaxing mischief, magic, and meaning from the soul of machinery itself.
The Philosophy of the Techno-Shamanists
The Techno-Shamanists are guided by a singular belief: that all things, once created, possess a spirit. A humble cogwheel, a sputtering steam engine, a clattering wagon—each object carries with it an animating essence, a form of life birthed not by biology but by the act of creation itself. They believe that these spirits, which they affectionately call gremlins, are the enigmatic forces that govern and inhabit Mechanus’ countless mechanical systems. To the Techno-Shamanists, these spirits are not merely fragments of Mechanical order, but individual entities with their own personalities, desires, and quirks. Though gremlins are often mischievous (and sometimes malicious), the Techno-Shamanists view them with a strange reverence, believing that understanding their whims is the key to unlocking the full potential of any machine.
Does not the act of creation give birth to its own spirit?
—Creed of the Techno-Shamanists
Their sacred text, the Codex of Industrial Standards of Practise, is a bizarre tome filled with esoteric diagrams, riddles, and seemingly nonsensical instructions on how to commune with mechanical spirits. It might say: “The third gear hums in melancholy; soothe it with oil kissed by starlight,” or “Offer a bent nail to the gremlin of the engine; only then will it relinquish its tantrum.” While outsiders often dismiss the Codex as delirious gibberish, the Techno-Shamanists swear by it, claiming it holds the secrets of the soul of Mechanus and beyond.
While the rest of Mechanus reveres order, the Techno-Shamanists operate within relative chaos (for Mechanus, at least). They see the imperfections of machinery not as flaws but as evidence of their vibrant, unpredictable spirits. A misaligned gear, a sputtering exhaust—these are signs of the gremlins at work, and it is the job of the Techno-Shamanists to interpret and mediate their capricious will. Through offerings of broken glass, bent metal, and other “sacred imperfections,” they curry favour with these spirits, coaxing them into cooperation. For them, a machine is not a tool but a living, magical collaboration.
Fumetown: A Hub of Spiritual Engineering
Fumetown, the seat of the Techno-Shamanists’ power, is an industrial village that sprawls haphazardly across the great gears of Mechanus. In contrast to the immaculate precision of the plane’s surroundings, Fumetown is a chaotic, jumbled mess of pipes, chimneys, and clattering contraptions. Smoke and steam pour endlessly from its ramshackle devices, and the air is filled with the constant hum of experimentation.
The inhabitants of Fumetown are a motley crew of planars, ranging from gnomish tinkerers to hin mystics, and even a few rogue modrons who have inexplicably embraced the Techno-Shamanists’ philosophy. The town’s architecture reflects the sect’s eccentricities: precarious bridges span gaps between gears, while massive contraptions dominate the skyline, solving simple tasks in the most convoluted, spectacular ways imaginable. Travellers visiting Fumetown often find themselves wandering through workshops where seemingly nonsensical devices clank and grind away, performing tasks like folding metal into spirals or crafting tiny clockwork birds that flap endlessly in circles.
Services for Planewalkers
For the adventurous planewalker, the Techno-Shamanists offer a variety of bizarre but invaluable services. Their unique relationship with the gremlins of machinery allows them to manipulate and repair mechanical devices in ways no ordinary engineer or mage could (or perhaps should). If your mechanical mount has seized up halfway across Mechanus, a Techno-Shamanist can coax its spirit back to life with the right offering. If an ancient, inexplicable contraption from a long-dead civilisation needs repair or understanding, their rituals might illuminate its secrets.
Perhaps their most famous ritual is the Rite of Rube, a marathon ritual wherein Techno-Shamanists construct a massive, labyrinthine machine to perform a single mundane task. While this might seem absurd to the uninitiated, the Rite of Rube often produces stunning results. Imagine a planar portal that only opens if struck by precisely calculated falling marbles, or a city’s water supply restored by a chain reaction triggered by the flick of a single lever. Planewalkers who think creatively often find that the Techno-Shamanists can solve problems no traditional magic or engineering can address.
Beware, though—dealing with the Techno-Shamanists often comes with unexpected catches. They accept payment in strange forms, often asking for “offerings” to appease the spirits: broken swords, cracked lenses, pieces of malfunctioning clockwork. And their solutions, while effective, are rarely elegant; planewalkers departing Fumetown often leave with patchwork contraptions that hum, clank, and seem unnervingly alive in their hands.
The Gremlin King
The most respected of the Techno-Shamanists is the enigmatic and eccentric Rube Codsworth (planar techno-gnome shaman [he/him] / Techno-Shamanists / LN), a half-barmy tinkerer and self-proclaimed Gremlin King. Stories say he was once a tinker gnome, but decades of communing with gremlins and replacing body parts damaged in accidents with mechanical prosthetics have made him something more curious. Rube’s body is now a patchwork of clattering gears and whirring pistons, with a chest cavity encasing a glowing orb he claims is the spirit of his own heart. His voice, a mix of rasps and rhythmic clicks, resonates with an almost hypnotic cadence, as if he speaks not just to mortals but to the machines themselves.
Rube is both a genius and a madman, endlessly building labyrinthine devices to commune with gremlins or “debug” malfunctioning machinery. His most famous creation is the Codsworth Contraption, a massive, ever-changing shrine to the spirits of Mechanus, powered by offerings brought by his followers. The contraption murmurs with the combined voices of hundreds of gremlins, and it is here that Rube teaches, plans, and occasionally negotiates with planewalkers seeking the Techno-Shamanists’ aid.
Rube’s leadership unites the disparate sect into something resembling a coherent philosophy, though even his own followers admit they have no idea how much of his ramblings are genuine wisdom and how much is whimsical nonsense. Regardless, his presence has made the Techno-Shamanists a force to be reckoned with in Mechanus. While the modrons generally ignore Fumetown, they sometimes send patrols to investigate particularly disruptive activities. Rube, for his part, treats these patrols as friends and guests—right up until they overstep their bounds, at which point the spirits of the town’s machines rally to drive them off.
The Techno-Shamanists occupy a strange and precarious position in Mechanical politics. While they do not outright disrupt the plane’s grand systems, their relatively chaotic approach to machinery and their reverence for the unpredictable irritate many of Mechanus’ more rigid factions. The modrons, with their love for predictability, view them as something to be managed rather than a true threat. The Fraternity of Order finds them deeply frustrating yet fascinating, as their seemingly nonsensical rituals sometimes yield results that defy conventional understanding.
With all their eccentricities, the Techno-Shamanists offer a whimsical counterbalance to the plane’s sometimes overbearing sense of order. In a world of endlessly tuned gears, Rube Codsworth and his rag-tag followers remind us that even the most precise machinery seemingly has a soul—and creativity has its place within the multiverse’s grand design.
Example Rituals
Bind Gremlin: This ritual forces a single gremlin to serve the shaman for 24 hours, or until a single quest is performed. The complexity of the quest is limited only by the shaman’s level. The DM is free to determine how easily it can be done.
Debug: This ritual is a spell of banishment, which forces hostile gremlins (aka bugs) from the mechanical device that they are dealing with. There is a second form of this known as “Shotgun Debugging” but that is much more dangerous since it works only 1 in 20 tries and often completely destroys the device.
Rite of Rube: Named after the most famous of the Tinkerer sect. This elaborate ritual which requires from 3 to 18 hours to complete, allows the shaman to create a hideously complex device to solve nearly any ordinary task.
Sources: Randir and Jon Winter-Holt
Excerpts from Krobar’s Journal
by KrobartheinfamousgearmanglerofMountNevermindwhodilligentlyworkstoimproverepairandotherwiseGnomify mechanicalapparatusses
Day 1
I have worked hard, with many interferences, interruptions, and swindlings, to archive my primary goal of establishing our current location in relation to Mount Nevermind. My first actual, attempt of conversation, although not my first encounter (which consisted of losing 537.3 gold) with the natives began, maintained, and ended with the word “prime”. Being a gnome, I inquired of him what he meant by the word “prime”, for, as I explained to him a plentiful, and surplus amount of times, I was not first in rank, dignity, value, importance, order, or time, CERTAINLY not primitive, and nor an integer only divisible by itself and one.
Finally, I was given a small gear, not very accurately shaped and made of brass, pushed through a large, illuminated portal, and I found myself sitting, or more correctly standing, in a world, at least I assume it is one because I cannot see it’s end anywhere near to me, made of large gears. My specialty! I revoked my natural, rarely-lost gnomish dignity, an unnatural occurrence of great phenomenon, event, or catastrophe, and preceded to prance, sing, and commit other kenderish deeds. Then, being exhausted, stressed, and otherwise fatigued I laid down to surrender my consciousness and further the Mt. Nevermind Study of Rapid Eye Movement, Subconscious Visions, and Collected Eye Dust.
Day 17
The Modrons escorted me, politely until the end—which I was briefly made airborne and bruised on my rear—out of the plane of Mechanus. I have a good notion to let lose a hundred, rabid tinker gnomes upon them which have been technologically isolated for week! How was I to know my steam-powered Gnomish Gear-Go-Faster would burst into a large explosion due to the complicated gravitational physics of being set near a vertical adjacent gear? They told me to “Go and make another plane chaotic”. Maybe that octopus-headed cutter that has been flaunting his superior intellect can help me correct my design…
Source: Ian Hill