{
  "character": {
    "id": "38085b47-2882-433c-a938-f30947fb4487",
    "slug": "melilot-millie-oldclock",
    "name": "Melilot \"Millie\" Oldclock",
    "race": "Halfling",
    "character_class": "Artificer",
    "jan_favorite": false,
    "is_ff_portrait": false,
    "profile_url": "https://framedfantasy.com/pages/hero?h=melilot-millie-oldclock",
    "character_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/characters/melilot-millie-oldclock",
    "character_json_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/characters/melilot-millie-oldclock.json",
    "character_markdown_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/characters/melilot-millie-oldclock.md",
    "original_image_url": "https://obadckrukccwkjgpbsxa.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/portraits/1785631523312_i5l5rd.webp",
    "image_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/images/melilot-millie-oldclock",
    "thumbnail_url": "https://obadckrukccwkjgpbsxa.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/portraits/1785631523312_i5l5rd_thumb.webp",
    "crop": {
      "x": 50,
      "y": 50,
      "zoom": 100
    },
    "story_excerpt": "Millie and the Oldclock clan hail from the Clockwork City - a grand name for an old ruin. Hundreds of years ago it was a wonder of the world: an entire city of magical artifice - woven, built, poured, and evoked by the greatest crafters of the age. Clockwork machinery, crystalline cathedrals, origam",
    "story": "Millie and the Oldclock clan hail from the Clockwork City - a grand name for an old ruin. Hundreds of years ago it was a wonder of the world: an entire city of magical artifice - woven, built, poured, and evoked by the greatest crafters of the age. Clockwork machinery, crystalline cathedrals, origami constructs; it was a glory of the continent for three hundred years, a hub of trade and knowledge on the great river Tzad.\n\nAnd then, one day, the city was gone, utterly disappeared as if it had never been, out to the leagues of surrounding farmlands and outlying villages. Trade caravans arrived at an empty, pristine riverbank in unsettled land. The mystery lasted for three days, and its ripples were still spreading when a new mystery appeared. \n\nThe City was back. Sort of. \n\nWhat returned was a ruin. It hadn't been plundered or sacked, but the Clockwork City returned as if it had been deserted and exposed to the decay and predation of the natural world for at least a decade, maybe more. It also returned devoid of any life at all - not even plants or insects. No one knew what fate befell the city, and it was some time before anyone or anything dared venture in to seek answers. \n\nNone were easily forthcoming. \n\nThe city is now sparsely inhabited. The surrounding lands, once agriculturally rich, remain vibrant, but oddly resistant to domesticated farming and thus large scale resettling has not occurred. Many believe that the city is haunted, or that the magical remnants within are unstable and dangerous. They are right on both counts. \n\nStill there are those who choose to live there - braving, even living in the ruins in search of many things; knowledge, riches, old machines, secrets. The Oldclocks are no exception. This clan of halflings took residence on what is now locally known as The Works - a massive palace-sized labyrinth of gears, sprockets, springs, and other workings. No one knows what it once was, if it *was* any specific thing or things. Parts of it are blasted, collapsed, rusted, mangled. Other parts appear pristine, oiled and glistening, albeit with completely unknown function. Still other parts... are moving. Ticking away with strange precision and mysterious purpose - or perhaps no purpose at all. Some are purely mechanical, and many clearly are magical workings. \n\nThe Oldclocks explore the Works. They mine it. Discovering, harvesting, tinkering, and eventually trading with what they find. Few people can or try to claim ownership or territory in the City ruins, but to anyone concerned, the Oldclocks are essentially considered the proprietors of the Works.\n\nMillie grew up in the homey warren built out of and into the foyer of the Works. Her quick eye and hands, and her knack for the enchanted, made her one of the clan's best explorers. It was on one of her many forays deep into the Works that she found the Map. She calls it that anyway, because that's what she believes it is. Even more, she believe's is a Map of, or to, somewhere that doesn't, or shouldn't exist: the place, or place and time? to where/when the Clockwork City had disappeared. And therefore, perhaps it was a map to the answer of what happened. \n\nOf all the myriad things Millie had found, this was the one thing she kept to herself, and it was the thing that eventually drove her to strike out on her own - to find that answer. \n\nNot entirely on her own, however. In the final year before leaving, Millie built her construct - a coming of age project nearly every Oldclock undertook at one point or another. Millie built Tock out of the very best pieces and workings she found over her twentyfirst year, and the morning after her twentysecond birthday, the two of them set out together. \n\nAfter some time by themselves Millie and Tock came together with the Bard Fenwick Larkspur (for whom Millie is slowly developing a crush that she will admit to no one - especially herself), and the fearsome dwarf Balgrin Durstansson Blackkettle, the Anvilbreaker, and eventually the strange Beryl Truevein, and even stranger Coal. \n\nThough they have shared adventures already, Millie has not yet shared the Map with anyone yet, not yet ready to trust her quest to anyone but herself. But that day is coming.\n\nMillie is a Mechanist - essentially an Artificer Battle Smith in 5e terms. Tock, her construct is a Steel Defender - but also more. A blued-steel and brass construct about the size of a big hound, he ticks softly at rest, faster when he's uneasy, and \"speaks\" in ticks, chimes, and a single low bell-note that only Millie reads, but the others are slowly learning. He is male in her reckoning. And he has opinions."
  }
}