Sunwatchers of Zenerga

    Long ago, in the Dwarven city of Tylkkam, there ruled a strange but wise King by the name of Hurfgar. King Hurfgar had spent many of his youthful years on diplomatic missions to human lands, and was fascinated by the humans' obsession with time, planning their lives around the rising and setting of the sun. In Dwarven society during this period, there was no way of telling time, nor to the Dwarves was there any need for such a method: they worked until they were exhausted, ate when they were hungry, drank when thirsty, and slept when tired. And besides, working and living entirely underground, the dwarves had no way of distinguishing day from night anyways. King Hurfgar, however, saw that this was not as efficient as it could be, for there was no coordination between any of the dwarves on their various projects, even to the point where one dwarf would take rest after building all day only for another dwarf to find his creation lying there and repurpose it, robbing the first dwarf of his labors. At various points throughout the Dwarven caverns, the King had holes drilled to the surface, with each series of holes forming an arc to follow the sun. He appointed certain Dwarves as Sunwatchers, spending days on end sitting below these holes, watching the sun and calling out to the other dwarves when the newly-scheduled times for work, sleep, dining, and recreation came to pass. This system greatly increased the Dwarven efficiency overall, but it still had its issues. For example, the goblins who roamed the wilds would often find these holes, and taunt or attack the Sunwatchers through them. These holes also caused a problem during rain and flood, so that King Hurfgar appointed his best scientists to find a better way of telling time.
    A solution was found, eventually, not by the scientists but by a Sunwatcher, a Dwarf of ill repute by the name of Dalusar. Dalusar had once been a criminal, a thief, and so he had been appointed as Sunwatcher to an isolated area, where few Dwarves were near enough to be able to help him should he be attacked by goblins, and none who would choose to do so even if they could. Spending most of his days alone, Dalusar's only source of entertainment was the constant methodical clicking of a nearby watermill, turned by underground springs to power the Dwarven furnaces. One day, as his shift began when the sun was directly overhead and ended at the same time the next day, the bored Dalusar decided that he would count how many times the watermill turned, in a desperate effort to keep himself sane in his long, quiet isolation. After a very tiring shift, however, Dalusar was astonished to find that the watermill had turned exactly a thousand times in that day. Thinking that he must have miscounted, or ended his counting at the wrong moment, Dalusar attempted to count again during his next shift. He was surprised again to find that the number of turnings was still one-thousand exactly.
    Curious about this odd discovery, he decided that he would share his findings with the other Sunwatchers. They did not believe him at first, of course, thinking him to have gone mad, but one Sunwatcher, Carikan, decided to join Dalusar in his counting, just in case. With both Dwarves again counting one-thousand, more and more Sunwatchers began to join them, revelling in this wonderfully strange watermill. Tired of being attacked by goblins or drowned in the rains, the Sunwatchers began to save up their meager pay, eventually collecting amongst themselves enough money to purchase that watermill. They tinkered with it endlessly, examining the weight and balance of the paddles and adding more and more paddles of various sizes, as well as external paddles connected to these that allowed the turning to be observed, creating what would eventually become known as the first clock.
    The first paddle became known as the tempate paddle, turning one-thousand times a day. Then there were two smaller paddles, called the hatempate and mitempate paddles, one turning ten times for each turn of the tempate paddle, the other one-hundred times. There were also two sets of two larger paddles each. Two of the larger paddles, called the netempate and thotempate paddles, turned ten times a day and once a day, respectively. Then there were the orbate and cyclate paddles, the first turning once a year and the second twelve times a year.
    The Sunwatchers rejoiced and plugged up the sunwatching holes in secret, creating instead a new system. One Sunwatcher would watch their clock at all times, and shout out the time at various intervals. Any sunwatcher who heard him, then, would pass it along, creating a network of shouting that allowed the entire city to learn the time without fear of goblin or flood. The King eventually learned of this clock, and although he was glad that it had been created, he was furious at the Sunwatchers for trying to hide their invention from him, and demanded that Dalusar be brought before him. He had Dalusar exiled as an example, and demanded that the Sunwatchers build more clocks for him, throughout the city, so that every Dwarf, and not just the Sunwatchers, could tell time. Fearing the King's wrath, the Sunwatchers quickly did his bidding. Meanwhile, the scorned Dalusar fled to human lands, sharing with them his secrets of keeping time, allowing them to create the 24-hour clock that is still used by many in Zenerga to this day. The Sunwatchers live on today as a powerful and influential organization in Dwarven society, as not only are they the only ones who know the secrets of building and maintaining the Dwarven clocks, but they also are the historians of Dwarven lands, recording every event known to Dwarven society with precise times on tablets of stone. And it is said that somewhere in the city of Tylkkam, amongst the thousands of clocks and gears that cover every wall, that first clock can still be found, still turning, and will turn forevermore.