Aether and Alloy: Adventures in a Steam-Powered Realm

The brass gears of the Great Clock Tower chimed seven times across the smog-laden city of New Britannia, their resonant tones cutting through the perpetual hiss of steam engines and the rhythmic hammering from the industrial district. Seventeen-year-old Cordelia Blackwood pressed her nose against the grimy window of her father's workshop, watching the dirigibles drift between the towering smokestacks like mechanical whales navigating a forest of iron trees.

"Cordelia, step away from that window and help me with these calculations," Professor Aldric Blackwood called from his cluttered workbench. His wild gray hair stood at odd angles, as if he had been running his fingers through it while pondering some particularly vexing mechanical problem. Which, knowing her father, he probably had been.

She turned from the window reluctantly, her emerald eyes taking in the familiar chaos of the workshop. Every surface overflowed with brass fittings, copper tubing, delicate clockwork mechanisms, and sheets of parchment covered in her father's precise engineering diagrams. The air hung thick with the scent of machine oil and the ozone smell that always lingered around his experimental aether generators.

"What are you working on now, Papa?" Cordelia asked, settling onto the tall stool beside his workbench. She had learned to read his moods by the complexity of his projects. Simple gear trains meant he was content. Elaborate steam-powered contraptions suggested mild frustration. But when he began working with aether crystals, combining them with traditional mechanical components, it meant he was either deeply troubled or on the verge of a breakthrough that could change everything.