Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook might recall me talking about a project I called “WOH” last year. And now it’s out. The Worshipful Order of Horologists is an organization in Faces in the Smoke, Volume Two — Shadows and Steel for Cubicle 7’s Victoriana roleplaying game.
The Worshipful Orders — of which the Horologists will hopefully be the first of many to appear in Victoriana — were inspired by London’s livery companies, which referred to themselves as “The Worshipful Company of…” There were a lot of them. Seriously. Name a service or item, and London probably had a livery company for it. Carpenters. Plasterers. The fruit industry.
For those unfamiliar with the term, a horologist is a clock- or watchmaker. I was working on a short story called “Gates” last year, scouring the web for details about old pocketwatches and how they were maintained and repaired, when I stumbled onto an article about London’s livery companies. They weren’t really appropriate for “Gates”, but I thought they might work for a dieselpunk novel I was toying with. And then Chad told me Cubicle 7 was looking for submissions for Victoriana. The livery companies seemed a perfect fit, especially one that focused on clockworks. And so the Worshipful Order of Horologists was born.
Like the livery companies that inspired them, the Horologists oversee and regulate the clockmakers in Victoriana’s London. They create amazing clockworks for the military or the wealthier members of society, and they oversee the clockmakers within London. Wanna fix a clock for a friend or make a few pounds making clockwork birds and dolls? Better make sure you’ve got a license from the Horologists first, if you plan to open shop in London. They’re strict about who works within their demesne, and tough on those who operate without permission. After all, they have a reputation to maintain.
Chad also has a couple things in Faces in the Smoke Vol 2 — Agents of the Queen, a criminal organization with a moral code; and the Pan-Asiatic Spice Delivery Service, which is one of my favorites because I love dirigibles. And because Chad’s flavor text for it is a great flash fiction story. If you flip through the preview of Faces in the Smoke Vol 2 at DriveThru RPG, you can read a little more about both of them, as well as everything else in the book.