The Fashion of the Age

Clockwork Chic is the dominant Refried-era fashion: gears, goggles, straps, valves, mechanical shoes, and ornaments applied to clothing whether or not they serve any practical purpose. The style appears modern, inventive, and faintly hazardous.

Magic Generates the Steam

Many devices use magically generated steam rather than ordinary fuel and water. This keeps lenses clear, mechanisms compact, and fashion accessories inconveniently powerful. Auto-dance shoes can propel wearers through a ballroom until someone tackles them and removes the machinery.

Everyday Devices

• Clockwork spectacles: Rotating lenses provide magnification, night vision, and specialized reading functions.
• Mechanical carriages: Magical and engineered systems make travel faster, though rarely less complicated.
• Library machinery: Moving pods and mechanisms navigate the royal library’s spiraling collections.
• Mechanical footwear: Shoes may dance, accelerate, restrain, or otherwise make walking much less reliable.
• Decorative gearrings: Spinning gear earrings demonstrate that not every innovation requires a problem.

Jacques and the Memory of Gears

Sir Jacques refuses to embrace the fashion. The gears remind him of the Twenty-One Gears and the disasters of an earlier age. To younger citizens, gears signify progress. To an immortal witness, they signify that history has been repackaged as an accessory.

Chronicler’s note: Give a noble one decorative gear and he immediately assumes he is half genius and half locomotive.