Gearbox Gulch

Gearbox Gulch is the largest settlement on Tech-Mech Isle, and is populated exclusively by automatons.

Description
Gearbox Gulch was founded by a group of Gnomish inventors, and was originally called Lanterntown. They chose the location for its tranquility, envisioning the desert island as a perfect laboratory from which to conduct their experiments. For the first many years, the small community of inventors recorded record-breaking advances in machine technology, creating innovative and efficient new designs in a host of engineering fields. Their experiments soon began to focus less on machines that one could work, and more on machines that would work themselves-creating self-automating devices seems to have been the driving force behind the inventors' later efforts. They eventually succeeded in their aims, creating a new race, unlike any that had been seen in the area previously. Though golems and incarnate constructs had existed in rudimentary forms before, the gnomes had invented something new-something that really was able to walk and think for itself, learning behaviors and patterns of speech, just as a life form would. They had created the precursors to what later would be known as the Warforged, and used their mechanical servants as defensive units and factory laborers. The settlement was poised to become the world's foremost technological leader, when something happened-and though the records from that time have been thoroughly eliminated, what is known is that a great cataclysm seems to have occurred, removing the gnomes from the island completely and leaving the Automatons in charge of their own destiny.

The mechanical residents of the island now favor a simpler lifestyle, blaming technology for the majority of society's woes (the machines were not built with an irony unit.) Though the town is still small, it houses the largest all-mechanical population in the southern hemisphere. It connects as the last station for the local Weld Fargo Express, and it located just south of Cogwheel Canyon. The citizens of the town are suspicious of strangers, but will generally allow visitors the benefit of the doubt-just as long as they stay out of trouble.