{"id":71,"date":"2010-09-27T18:50:50","date_gmt":"2010-09-27T22:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andinewton.com\/journal\/?p=71"},"modified":"2010-09-27T18:50:50","modified_gmt":"2010-09-27T22:50:50","slug":"the-worshipful-order-of-horologists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andinewton.com\/?p=71","title":{"rendered":"The Worshipful Order of Horologists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook might recall me talking about a project I called &#8220;WOH&#8221; last year. And now it&#8217;s out. The Worshipful Order of Horologists is an organization in <a title=\"Faces in the Smoke Vol 2 at DriveThru RPG\" href=\"http:\/\/rpg.drivethrustuff.com\/product_info.php?products_id=84193\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Faces in the Smoke, Volume Two &#8212; Shadows and Steel<\/em><\/a> for <a title=\"Victoriana RPG at Cubicle 7\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cubicle-7.com\/victoriana.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Cubicle 7&#8217;s Victoriana roleplaying game<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Worshipful Orders &#8212; of which the Horologists will hopefully be the first of many to appear in Victoriana &#8212; were inspired by <a title=\"Wikipedia article about London's livery companies\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Livery_Company\" target=\"_blank\">London&#8217;s livery companies<\/a>, which referred to themselves as &#8220;The Worshipful Company of&#8230;&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n<p>For those unfamiliar with the term, a <a title=\"Definition of horologist at dictionary.com\" href=\"http:\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/horologist\" target=\"_blank\">horologist<\/a> is a clock- or watchmaker. I was working on a short story called &#8220;Gates&#8221; 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&#8217;s livery companies. They weren&#8217;t really appropriate for &#8220;Gates&#8221;, 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.<\/p>\n<p>Like the livery companies that inspired them, the Horologists oversee and regulate the clockmakers in Victoriana&#8217;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&#8217;ve got a license from the Horologists first, if you plan to open shop in London. They&#8217;re strict about who works within their demesne, and tough on those who operate without permission. After all, they have a reputation to maintain.<\/p>\n<p>Chad also has a couple things in <em>Faces in the Smoke Vol 2<\/em> &#8212; 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&#8217;s flavor text for it is a great flash fiction story. If you flip through <a title=\"Preview of Faces in the Smoke Vol 2 at DriveThru RPG\" href=\"http:\/\/rpg.drivethrustuff.com\/product_info.php?products_id=84193\" target=\"_blank\">the preview of <em>Faces in the Smoke Vol 2<\/em> at DriveThru RPG<\/a>, you can read a little more about both of them, as well as everything else in the book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook might recall me talking about a project I called &#8220;WOH&#8221; last year. And now it&#8217;s out. The Worshipful Order of Horologists is&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/andinewton.com\/?p=71\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[82,85,83,84,350],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-rpgs","tag-see-mouse-potating-can-be-a-good-thing","tag-victoriana","tag-worshipful-order-of-horologists","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4udeu-19","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andinewton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andinewton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andinewton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andinewton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andinewton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/andinewton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andinewton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andinewton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andinewton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}