Modrons
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(from D&D 5th Edition Monster Manual - 2014 - [credits])
Modrons are beings of absolute law that adhere to a hive-like hierarchy. They inhabit the plane of Mechanus and tend its eternally revolving gears, their existence a clockwork routine of perfect order.
Absolute Law and Order. Under the direction of their leader, Primus, modrons increase order in the multiverse in accordance with laws beyond the comprehension of mortal minds. Their own minds are networked in a hierarchal pyramid, in which each modron receives commands from superiors and delegates orders to underlings. A modron carries out commands with total obedience, utmost efficiency, and an absence of morality or ego.
Modrons have no sense of self beyond what is necessary to fulfill their duties. They exist as a unified collective, divided by ranks, yet they always refer to themselves collectively. To a modron, there is no “I,” but only “we” or “us.”
Absolute Hierarchy. Modrons communicate only with their own rank and the ranks immediately above and below them. Modrons more than one rank away are either too advanced or too simple to understand.
Cogs of the Great Machine. If a modron is destroyed, its remains disintegrate. A replacement from the next lowest rank then transforms in a flash of light, gaining the physical form of its new rank. The promoted modron is replaced by one of its underlings in the same manner, all the way to the lowest levels of the hierarchy. There, a new modron is created by Primus, with a steady stream of monodrones leaving the Great Modron Cathedral on Mechanus as a result.
Rogue Modrons. A modron unit sometimes becomes defective, either through natural decay or exposure to chaotic forces. Rogue modrons don’t act in accordance with Primus’s wishes and directives, breaking laws, disobeying orders, and even engaging in violence. Other modrons hunt down such rogues.
A rogue modron loses the Axiomatic Mind trait and can have any alignment other than lawful neutral. Otherwise, it has the same statistics as a regular modron of its rank.
The Great Modron March. When the gears of Mechanus complete seventeen cycles once every 289 years, Primus sends a vast army of modrons across the Outer Planes, ostensibly on a reconnaissance mission. The march is long and dangerous, and only a small number of modrons returns to Mechanus.
(from Planescape Campaign Setting Monstrous Supplement - 1994 - [credits])
What's a mortal to make of the modrons, those strange creatures of absolute order who whir and click on the plane of Mechanus? Theirs are not like other lives - even the infinitely subtle baatezu are more comprehensible than these thronging drones. To an outsider it appears the modrons have no existence other than as a whole. Indeed, there is a saying: "To look at one modron is to look at all of them."
It is only logical, as it is with all things modron, that they are native to the orderly plane of Mechanus. The two, plane and modrons, probably would not exist without each other — modron society defines the plane, just as the plane shapes them. To understand the modrons, a being must stop thinking like a person, like an individual. Only then can anyone hope to comprehend the patterns of modron life.
Modrons are strictly divided into fourteen castes. Castes are hardly unique, but the modron approach to them is. Not only does each rank have its own functions, but each also has its own body shape, so the rank of any modron can be readily identified by the creature's appearance.
Ruling over the castes is Primus, the One and the Prime. It and the plane are one in thought and deed; as Primus turns, so do the wheels of Mechanus.
Combat: Regardless of rank, all modrons possess certain abilities and immunities, but because of rank, certain modrons - the hierarchs — possess additional abilities. Whether any of these immunities and powers exist as properties of their race or from association with the plane of Mechanus, no one knows. Most scholars think these powers are natural to the race, as none are lost by modrons operating off the plane of Mechanus.
All modrons are unaffected by any illusions or magic that affects the mind, such as beguikment, charm, domination, hold, hypnosis, and sleep. Fear and other emotion spells are similarly ineffective against a modron, as are attacks drawing upon the Positive and Negative Energy Planes (including life-draining powers). All modrons save vs. cold, fire, and acid attacks with a +1 bonus, and they suffer damage from such attacks with a -1 modifier per die.
Modron hierarchs are never surprised, and their precision of order always allows them to determine their specific place in the initiative sequence of all attack rounds. Thus, they never roll for initiative, and the DM chooses when they will act. Typically, this comes at the most effective moment, just before the swordsman's blade arcs through the air or the wizard utters the final word of a spell, and so on. The elite modrons also can perform the following spell-like abilities, once per round, at will: clairaudience, clairvoyance, command, dimension door, teleport without error, and wall of force. They also are capable of traveling on the Astral and Ethereal Planes, but will never do so unless ordered by Primus.
All hierarchs can communicate telepathically, and the range of this power is as follows:
Rank:
Decaton = 44 miles
Nonaton = 63 miles
Octon = 80 miles
Septon = 190 miles
Hexton = 216 miles
Quinton = 238 miles
Quarton = 384 miles
Tertian = 405 miles
Secundi = 420 miles
Primus = All Mechanus
Habitat/Society: To understand modron society, one must abandon all understanding of the self. In such forgetting comes knowledge, so with the surrender victory is gained. Should the scholar retain the slightest glimmer of who he is, his words are tainted and his observations lies. It is said that those able to strip their souls so bare become modrons, themselves, and their spirits become different from their shells.
It is a fundamental property of the modrons that each rank can only comprehend the existence of the rank directly above and below it. For example, the monodrones obey the will of the duodrones, but they cannot even conceive of the existence of the tridrones. When a monodrone sees a tridrone, it does not see a modron, and it could not even say what it sees. Some aphasia apparently breaks the link between the sight of the higher modron and what it actually is. This blindness leads to an interesting conclusion, as each rank believes that those immediately above it are the highest form of life and the fountainhead of supreme logic. Thus, Primus's lordship is secret from all modrons but the four secundi, who pass his edicts on to the nine tertians, who in turn pass these to the quartons (who have no knowledge or understanding of either the secundi or Primus), and so on.
There is an awareness of all ranks below a modron's station, yet communication is exclusively limited to adjacent ranks. It would seem that the monodrone is almost as alien to the tridrone as the tridrone is to the monodrone. This is not the result of elitism. Rather, the strict order observed by the race completely negates the slightest necessity for communication beyond immediate inferiors and superiors.
A modron's perception of its immediate superiors should not be mistaken for deification, either. What others might call a god, the modrons cannot imagine, for they are unable to conceive of such an individual existence. Instead, all life and direction spring from a pool of logical action - all that is right happens because it must inescapably be, and all that is wrong is that which must not be. These metal limitations make dealings with modrons a challenge. Within each rank there is no individuality, either in form or thought. All modrons call themselves "we," and a character has no way of knowing if the pentadrone he spoke to today is the same as the one who held the same post yesterday. This would be minor if the modrons weren't so bureaucratically driven, requiring strangers to appear and reappear before clerks, courts, and boards. Some travelers solve the problem with a brush and paint, marking modrons with runes simply to tell them apart. Unless instructed to remove these marks, a modron may wear a splash of color or a strange sigil for the rest of its life, for they don't seem to notice the markings themselves.
Even the size of modron society is rigidly fixed. In each rank there are only a set number of modrons. Should a modron of any rank die, an available candidate from the next lowest rank is promoted, and then the gap in the lower rank is filled by promoting from the still lower rank. This continues until the rank of monodrone is reached. With no lower ranks, the creatures at this level reproduce by fission, as one of their members mysteriously divides into two. (Given this, the claim that all modrons are one might be truer than it first seems.)
Promotion occurs seemingly by accident. As soon as a vacancy occurs, the nearest modron of the next lowest rank is recruited to ascend. Since they have no individuality, there's no point in trying to promote the "best and the brightest"; all modrons of a given rank are deemed equal. Promotion is traumatic — not only does the chosen modron undergo a wrenching change of shape to the new rank's form, but it suddenly gains an understanding of a world previously veiled to it: the existence of a yet superior rank. Imagine the shock of a duodrone, who knew only of monodrones, duodrones, and tridrones, when it suddenly discovers those inexplicable creatures around it are quadrones and members of its own race! On the other hand, the newly promoted modron seems to adapt to its new form instantly, and it is the humanoid observer who is often most shaken by the experience.
From greatest to least, the castes of the modrons are listed below. Numbers are not given for the modrons, since no scholar has yet produced the definitive organization chart of these creatures. After each name is a brief description of that rank's duties in their realm of Mechanus.
Primus: Absolute ruler of all modrons
Hierarch Modrons
Secundi: Viceroys of the four quarters
Tertians: Judges
Quartons: Rulers of the four regions of the four quarters
Quintons: Bureau chiefs and records keepers
Hextons: Generals of the armies of modrons
Septons: Inspectors
Octons: Governors of the four sectors of the four regions of the four quarters
Nonatons: Police supervision
Decatons: Physical welfare of base modrons
Base Modrons
Pentadrones: Lesser police, law enforcement
Quadrones: Multiple complex tasks, supervision
Tridrones: Multiple tasks, minor supervision
Duodrones: Complex tasks
Monodrones: General laborers
The realm of the modrons occupies 64 of Mechanus's coglike wheels, called sectors, and each is governed by an octon. The sectors in turn are grouped into foursector regions, overseen by the 16 quartons, and each group of four regions, called quarters, is supervised by one of the four secundi. And, of course, all of it is ruled by Primus.
Born through parthenogenesis, modrons have no family, tribe, or clan. Instead they live in rigid numerical units called, for lack of a better word, battalions. This makes them sound more warlike than they really are, although modrons have standing armies that are not to be trifled with.
Although some less-informed scholars state that no modron acts except by the orders of a superior, this is not perfectly accurate. In general, a modron can act and react to a situation on its own, provided the situation falls within the range of its purpose. Thus, monodrones, who can only fulfill a single task at any given time, are rightly seen as incapable of reacting. As one moves higher through the ranks, the range of choices and reactions available to any given modron increases. Even so, modrons are notorious for their predictable and rigid reactions to events.
It should be no surprise that the goal and purpose of every modron is to organize Mechanus in the most orderly fashion possible, but their goal is not limited to only their 64 wheels or even Mechanus itself. Given the opportunity, they would spread their rigid pattern of organization over the entire multiverse. Fortunately for the rest of the planes, order is constantly challenged by chaos, even in the clockwork vastness of Mechanus. Since even the slightest imperfection to order is enough to disturb the harmony modrons seek, they seldom find the time or resources to carry their crusade to other realms or planes.
Modrons speak their own precise, mathematical language, but those of duodrone or greater can manage at least some of the trade tongue found throughout the planes.
Modrons fulfill many roles within Mechanus. They maintain parts of the sphere and are maintained by it. They make war with their enemies and trade with their neighbors. Together, they are one living social entity. Those few that venture outside their plane (on orders from their superiors) will always attempt to bring order out of chaos, sense out of nonsense.
Modrons are not completely without their uses to the rest of the multiverse. Their single-minded pursuit of order has a certain usefulness in some fields. On rare occasions, nonmodrons can hire members of this race for particular tasks. The process is never simple, since the potential employee can never make the decision itself - all requests must be approved by its superiors. Usually the request has to pass through several ranks before an answer is given.
If permission is granted, some wizards find modrons to be amazingly useful as librarians, and merchants may retain them as bookkeepers, although such modrons must always be watched for overzealousness. Sometimes their understanding of order, far deeper than that of most other beings, defies human understanding. In one library, all the books might be arranged by subject, in another by the first letter of the first word, and in yet a third by the page where the last diagram appears. All three might be vital keys in the overall order of the modron universe. Order, after all, does not necessarily need to be understandable.
The bodies of modrons slain anywhere immediately disintegrate. It is suspected that whatever energies were trapped within the creature's mortal form find their way back to Mechanus and merge with the energy field of the plane. This field is what sustains the modron race. Although modrons eat physical food, it is not the substance that sustains them, but the energy essence contained therein. So long as the modrons are able to draw upon this essence, they can continue to split and perpetuate their kind. In fact, it is speculated that the only means to truly crush this race is to cut it off from this energy pool. Given the impossibility of this feat, it is fortunate that modrons are not a particularly aggressive race. Who, after all, could withstand a single-minded army that constantly regenerated itself?
PRIMUS (THE ONE AND THE PRIME): Primus is the ruler of all the modron realm. It and it alone understands the whole structure of the modron race, since it sits at its pinnacle. From there it decrees what is order, writes the laws, and establishes the rules and regulations. All other modrons exist to carry out the plans and obey the rules of Primus. Failure to meet this powerful creature's standards will result in a modron being declared rogue and sentenced accordingly.
Primus is a huge being who rises from an energy pool in the central part of its great tower at the center of the plane (although Primus also may appear as a normal androgynous human). In giant form Primus's hands are unseen, for the right one is swathed in bright rainbow hues and the left is covered with inky dark clouds.
Within Mechanus, Primus has the status of a greater power, except it is possible for Primus to die, albeit only under near-impossible conditions. Its sole concern is for the modrons. It does not send avatars to other planes or even take part in the normal bickering and wars of the planar powers. All modrons with priestly powers gain their spells directly from it.
The death of Primus does not break the link in modron society, for like all gaps, the vacancy is filled by promotion of the one of the secundi. However, the process usually creates turmoil since, without a Primus, chaos is allowed to enter into the perfection of modron society. Some scholars have mistakenly interpreted this chaos as civil war within this orderly race. The first act of the new Primus is to return order to its race, a process which can take some time.
Rogue Units:
Even in the perfect modron world there is disorder, and sometimes this disorder strikes at the very fabric of the modron society. When this happens, a modron may go rogue. This is most common in the base modrons, although there are cases of a few hierarchs being affected this way (but certainly never any hierarch of quarton status or higher!). Rogue modrons do not act in accordance with Primus's wishes and directives, but break laws, disobey orders, and sometime become violent. These rogues are hunted down, usually by the pentadrones under the command of the nonatons.
Once captured, the rogue is tried and sentenced according to the laws of Primus. For a lowly base modron, this is a bewildering series of events, as strange beings (hierarch modrons) describe the crimes committed and the punishment that is due. It can only seem like the judgment of angels upon a hapless mortal, and many sages would dearly love to know just what modron theology makes of the whole thing.
The Armies of the Modrons:
There are 36 great armies in the realm of the modrons, each a powerful fighting force. Each of the 16 regions of the plane has its own army, and the secundi have two armies each, in addition to their regional forces. The tertians have three to aid in law enforcement and punishment. The final nine armies are stationed outside of Primus's tower and serve as a reserve force, should they be needed.
Each army is commanded by a hexton and is comprised of four corps. Each corps is led by 40 pentadrones in a telepathic hook-up with the hexton general. Each corps has two divisions commanded by 20 pentadrones, and each division has four brigades led by 10 pentadrones. Each brigade has four regiments, each one being the standard tactical unit, led by five pentadrones. There are 70 officers, 192 NCOs, 252 messengers, and 2,628 line troops in a brigade, for a total of 3,142.
A regiment consists of two "battles" plus a squad of winged monodrone messengers and a special squad of 12 pentadrones. Each battle is led by four quadrones and consists of six companies of monodrones, two companies of duodrones, a special company of tridrones, a squad of quadrones, and another squad of messengers. The eight regular companies are each divided into two wings plus a headquarters unit. Each company consists of 12 squads and three officers. A squad numbers 12 troops and will contain an NCO of the same type as the troops. Special units of messengers, "shock troops," and the like may be attached to the headquarters' units of brigades, divisions, and corps.
(from 4th Edition Dragon Magazine #414 - 2012 - [credits])
ECOLOGY OF THE MODRON by R. James:
As any learned blood knows, the Great Axioms of the Multiverse are eternal and immutable; they simply exist and cannot be manipulated. Or so I once believed! I’m telling you now, berk, that the universe we perceive around us is mere illusion, an elaborate construct devised by enigmatic beings beyond our ken.
You’ve heard of the Far Realm, the plane of nightmares and madness, yes? Well, it has a twin, a realm of law and orderly thought distilled to its purest form. It is from this plane that reason and judgment were born, gifts to us from the Prime Architect. I have communed with the Architect’s minions, glorious beings of ordered thought and perfect reason. They appeared before me in the guise of geometric clockwork entities, bizarre hybrids of metal and flesh. They spoke of a vile malignancy spreading throughout their order, a plague of emotion and dissonance that has erupted into a great civil war. Even now, the conflict threatens to spill into our own cosmos.
Listen and heed my words! Everything we believe to be real is a lie. Awaken to the truth before it’s too late! The unraveling of our reality is nigh. Pray not to the gods for salvation, for even they are powerless to stop the Great March of the Modrons.
-Ravings of ex-factol Habaro, the Fraternity of Order
The March of Time:
Living constructs of geometric design, modrons are paragons of absolute order and largely alien to mortal comprehension. Since time immemorial, these enig¬ matic beings have retreated from the cosmos for centuries at a time only to reemerge periodically on an epic scale—tens of thousands of them gating in from their bizarre clockwork dimension to march a grand circuit across known existence. As planar scholars and doomsayers are quick to point out, the end of the next cycle is nearly upon us. If history is any indicator, a modron incursion is imminent, and woe to any who stand in its path.
Prime Architect:
Many cultures of the mortal world have myths recounting the origins of the universe. Though the details of these legends are colored by cultural bias, most share key events, such as the war between gods and primordials. Yet few can recount the story of an even earlier time in the history of the multiverse, the epoch that witnessed the molding of the Elemental Chaos itself.
Accounts chronicled by the Fraternity of Order in Sigil speak of a time in which the Elemental Chaos was still in its infancy, an Age of Creation when primordials shaped and destroyed worlds at whim, unchallenged by the gods. It was an era of wondrous invention on a cosmic scale, but without a frame¬ work to give them permanency, these creations were fleeting.
One primordial stood apart from the others. This being’s true name is lost to the ages, but Fraternity archives name it the Prime Architect. It is written that this primordial was the first to peer beyond the veil of the Elemental Chaos to behold something Outside—a region of perfect order and harmony the Prime Architect named the Accordant Expanse.
Enraptured by this vision of perfection, the Prime Architect began to shape the Elemental Chaos on a massive scale. The first phase of the grand design required distilling the chaotic maelstrom into four base elements: air, earth, fire, and water. To achieve this end, the Architect enlisted four mighty elemen¬ tal lords as overseers. As the framework took shape, the elemental lords in turn tasked their subordinates, the archomentals, with crafting the latticework of the final structure, incorporating mixtures of the base elements.
At last the Prime Architect beheld its momentous creation, raw elemental power molded by symmetry and order. By drawing on this cosmic arrangement of elements, the grand creations of the primordials could persist, allowing mortal life to flourish at last.
Rise of the Modrons:
Even as the Prime Architect proudly surveyed its handiwork, subtle blemishes began to mar the nascent realms. At first barely perceptible, the minute imperfections began to multiply rapidly, forming fleshlike strands of corruption writhing in bluish slime. The Prime Architect watched in mute horror as a nearby world was dragged into the mass of ten¬ drils and devoured by a colossal wormlike entity lurking within. Finally shaken from its immobility, the primordial moved quickly to intercept the aber¬ rant behemoth before it could chew its way farther out of its dreadful Far Realm.
Fraternity documents are sketchy on the details of this colossal battle with the entity now called the Nine-Tongued Worm, but in the end the Prime Archi¬ tect proved victorious. Just barely. It was mortally wounded, no longer able to stabilize the Elemen¬ tal Chaos. It called one last time on the Accordant Expanse, bathing in the cosmic energy of absolute Order. The Prime Architect surrendered its flesh and was re-created as innumerable mechanical life forms, each a distinct entity but inseparable from the whole.
Thus the modron race was born.
The horde of newly created modrons mobilized into a hierarchy, then quickly spread across the cosmos to seal the remaining breaches to the Far Realm. Once this task was complete, they shifted themselves to the Accordant Expanse en masse. There they set immediately to work engineering a home for their kind, a bizarre realm of gears and cogs they named Mechanus.
Year by year, decade by decade, and century by century the modrons toiled, constructing their capital city at the heart of Mechanus. Sixty-four interlinking cogs rest atop each other like a colossal, mechanical ziggurat to form the clockwork metropolis of Regulus. At the heart of their clockwork home the modrons erected a grand cathedral in honor of the Prime Architect. Then, the four highest-ranking among them submerged themselves in a scintillating pool of pure Order and conjoined, triggering an unex¬ pected apotheosis. From the pool arose the vestige of the Prime Architect, given new flesh and purpose: Primus, the One and the Prime.
The Great Modron March:
It took the modrons 289 years, calculated to the millisecond, to complete construction of their city. Termed a Grand Cycle, this precise measurement of time equals seventeen standard cycles, each being the seventeen-year period needed for the largest of Regu¬ lus’ sixty-four gears to make one rotation. At the end of each Grand Cycle, the modrons march forth from Mechanus, thousands upon thousands of them, on a trek through the cosmos.
The purpose of the Great Modron March remains an enigma. No one other than Primus knows it, although the excursions appear to be primarily infor¬ mation-gathering exercises. The modrons have also been observed sealing off or collapsing planar portals and gates along their route, for reasons they have yet to reveal.
The route is determined before the march leaves Mechanus, and the modrons do not deviate from it. Their tortuous path is inscrutable to onlookers, and more than one town has been trampled under the relentless procession. Though unfeeling, modrons are not senseless—they won’t fling themselves mindlessly over a cliff, for example.
Each march is unique in duration and route. Some last as little as a few months and cover only a handful of planar sites, while others have gone on for decades and traversed every known region in the cosmos.
A march never stops once it has begun. The lower orders of modrons do not need to sleep, and the others that do push themselves far beyond normal limitations. When one absolutely must sleep, it is car¬ ried on a litter.
This cycle of processions has repeated every 289 years, like clockwork—until 189 years ago, when Primus inexplicably initiated the great march early. Unlike all those before, this procession took a senseless, chaotic course through the planes. Many thousands of modrons became stranded in remote corners of the multiverse.
Now the Grand Cycle is once again counting down its final years, and one facet is of particular concern to planar scholars. The recent invasion by plague demons from the malign parallel universe of Voidharrow left countless dimensional cysts eating away at the fabric of the cosmos. Since that outbreak, modrons have been appearing at these sites in num¬ bers as never before. This vanguard appears to be losing the fight against the malignant cysts, and scholars fear that Primus will direct the next Great Modron March through the heart of the planes to eradicate the demonic infestation once and for all.
Physiology:
Modrons are a physical manifestation of order. They have a decidedly clockwork appearance, their pecu¬ liar geometric bodies fashioned of gears, plates, and rivets forged from rare metallic alloys. Modrons are not wholly artificial, however. Living tissue is inex¬ tricably fused with their metallic exoskeletons. Their most disturbing feature is their eyes; great bloodshot orbs that stare uncaringly.
Living Constructs. As living constructs, modrons incorporate both mechanical and biological components; the two are inseparable. Much of their fleshly being is vestigial and nonfunctional, but they retain many features of mortal creatures. The lowest orders of modrons are the closest to purely mechanical beings and do not require sleep; those above them in the hierarchy still need to rest from time to time, though they can go without sleep for long periods when necessary.
Some modrons continually strive to improve the efficiency of their race. These inventive beings are able to finely manipulate the latent power of Mechanus’s energy pools to craft spells and devices unique to their physiology. Examples of such modron devices include mechanical limb extenders, magnetic clamps, and winglike appendages
Sense Organs. Like other living creatures, modrons can sense their environment. The instruments of perception might be fleshly or mechanical, or combinations of the two.
Vision: All modrons have eyes. Hierarchs (see “Hierarchy” below) typically have two, facing for¬ ward, while base modrons can have anywhere from one to ten eyes, depending on type. Certain modrons enhance their vision with mechanical lenses, some
magical in nature and others powered by psionic energy, allowing vision even in complete darkness.
Hearing: Modrons do not possess auditory organs. Instead, they detect sound through artificial sensors fused to the skull plate or exoskeleton. These sensors are linked, providing acute directional information that surpasses that provided by the hearing of most living creatures.
Scent: Very few modrons have olfactory organs, and these are vestigial at best. Most modrons neither possess nor require a sense of smell.
Taste: Despite having mouths, modrons experience no sense of taste, nor do they require sus¬ tenance. They do possess tongues, which they employ for verbal communication. In their home plane of Mechanus, communication is primarily telepathic. Since telepathy is not an innate ability among all modrons, their ability to communicate telepathic ally on Mechanus appears to be a feature of the plane, but one that affects modrons only. Primus is responsible for this “gift,” since it greatly expedites tasks.
Touch: Modron flesh is infused with both nerves and artificial sensors to perceive physical contact. Modrons can feel pain, to be aware of physical harm, but can voluntarily suppress this sensation when necessary. In battle this ability allows them to forget about the damage they’re taking and focus on victory.
Circulatory and Digestive Systems:
In a mortal creature, a circulatory system (heart, lungs, and blood vessels) is necessary to disperse oxygen and essential nutrients throughout the body. In addition, most living beings have a digestive tract for breaking down and extracting nourishment. In modrons these systems are largely vestigial, since they have no need to eat, drink, or even breathe.
Modron bodies are fueled by a psychomorphic substance found only in the Accordant Expanse—concentrated, raw cognitive energy given tangible form. This fuel has the appearance and consistency of royal jelly, and it glows with inner luminescence. Little is known about the fantastic properties attributed to this substance, but aberrant entities such as aboleths have been striving for millennia to unlock its secrets.
In Mechanus, the fuel is harvested by modron laborers and collected into vast pools. A small dollop of the potent substance is enough to sustain a laborer for weeks; higher-ranking modrons require a corre¬ spondingly larger amount. The ruler of the modrons, Primus, bathes eternally in a vast pool of this gel, in which new modrons are birthed.
CULTURE:
As alien as the forces of chaos can be, the forces of order can be equally strange-if not more so. When dealing with modrons, “order” does not necessarily equate to “logic”-at least, as mortals understand the concept.
Society:
To understand modron society, one must abandon the idea of the self. Although each modron is an individual, it is one part of a vast collective and does not grasp the idea of separation. Thus, only scholars who do not observe through the distorting lens of individuality can see the truth. It is said that those able to strip their souls so bare can become modrons themselves.
Hierarchy. Classification is a fundamental tenet of modron soci¬ ety. Modrons assign everything to category, especially themselves. Their society is divided into two primary castes: the base modrons, who are primarily laborers of low intelligence, and the hierarchs, who direct and plan. The base caste contains five ranks, from monodrone up to pentadrone, while the hierarch caste contains ten, including the singular Primus.
A modron is permitted to communicate only with others of its own rank or of adjacent rank. This segregation is not the result of elitism, but a simple byproduct of efficiency. Most modrons are not even capable of comprehending the existence of higher ranks beyond their immediate superiors; likewise, those lower in the hierarchy than their immediate reports simply do not exist to them. For example, a pentadrone considers a decaton to be the ultimate form of its kind and cannot imagine anything greater, but when it looks upon a tridrone, it does not see a modron at all—nor can it even classify what it’s observing.
Thus, the very existence of Primus is secret to all modrons other than the secundi who directly serve it. Commands from the One and the Prime are passed down through the ranks, progressively translated into a form that the lower (and less intelligent) forms can comprehend. Whenever a modron receives instructions from a superior, it never suspects that those commands originated even higher up.
From least to greatest, the ranks of the modron hierarchy are enumerated in the table below. No scholar has yet attempted to produce exact figures for the total population of modrons in the multiverse, but they likely number in the millions.
Death and Promotion. Even the size of modron society is rigidly fixed. Each rank contains only a set number of modrons. Should a member of any rank die, available candidates from the next lowest rank are “promoted.” In turn, modrons from the rank below fill in the void created by those so promoted, and so on. Monodrones, having no castes below them, reproduce by fission to replace lost members, drawing on the energy of Regulus’s central pool.
Base Modrons:
Monodrone = General Laborer
Duodrone = Skilled laborer
Tridrone = Supervisor
Quadrone = Manager
Pentadrone = Law enforcer
Hierarchs:
Decaton = Administrator
Nonaton = Arbiter
Octon = Mayor
Septon = Inspector
Hexton = General
Quinton = Councilor
Quarton = Governor
Tertian = Judge
Secundus = Viceroy
Primus = Absolute ruler
The transition for a promoted modron is traumatic — not only does it undergo a wrenching transformation into a new form, but the resultant being must also reconcile the knowledge and memories of its prior selves with its current form.
When a modron dies, no corpse is left behind. It simply vanishes, its corporeal essence returning to the central pool, where it forms into a new monodrone. Only in rare regions of “dead space,” where the Accordant Expanse does not intersect with the rest of the cosmos, does this rebirth fail. Here, one might find the remains of a dead modron, but such a discovery is exceedingly rare.
Outlook and Psychology:
With a given rank, all modrons have a similar appearance, and they think as a collective, but they are not exact copies of each other. Each has unique life experiences that, though subtle, give it a distinct personality and quirks. Such differences are more apparent among hierarchs than base modrons.
As incarnations of reason, modrons always attempt to bring order out of chaos. Many hierarchs are con¬ vinced that with proper study and analysis, they can unlock the hidden logic within apparently senseless phenomena. To most other beings, modrons come across as passionless and frustratingly bureaucratic. Their overriding goal is to organize, clarify, and regi¬ ment. They view free will as a blight that must be purged from an ordered universe like an infection.
Modrons are especially concerned with the prolif¬ eration of portals across the planes. They see these as weak points in the fabric of the cosmos, riddling exis¬ tence like worms burrowing through a rotten apple. They insist that anytime a being passes through a planar portal, the very structure of the cosmic fir¬ mament is weakened. Thus, modrons have begun to appear at portal mouths to contest the passage of other creatures until they can “repair the wound.” Some contingents have started collapsing such pas¬ sages wherever they find them, no matter the purpose of the portals.
Modrons in Combat. As the vanguard in the fight against entropy, modrons battle chaos and its minions wherever they find them. Slaad lords have a particular hatred for modrons, and their conflicts over the millennia are legend¬ ary. Modrons fight without remorse or compassion, using logic and proven battle stratagems to win the day. Individually they are capable warriors, but they are most fearsome when they gather into regiments. Fighting together, modrons form a heartless, unstop¬ pable killing machine. In larger-scale conflicts, modron hierarchs never hesitate to employ wave tac¬ tics, sacrificing thousands of base modrons to achieve their objective.
Rogue Modrons:
Like cancer in a living body, disorder can strike indi¬ vidual modrons. Such uncontrolled modrons might go rogue. A few rogues develop identities and seek objectives apart from Primus’s desires, but others malfunction or keep following old orders.
Such an event is most common among base modrons. Since hierarchs are each composed of multiple modrons, all of a hierarch’s constituent modrons would need to malfunction before it went rogue.
Other modrons hunt down and capture rogues, which are then either destroyed or subjected to an arduous regimen of rehabilitation. This process strips away all memories of being an individual, and most rogues do not survive the experience.
Rogue Modron Companions. Rogue modrons make interesting companions for the characters. A rogue modron might join a party of adventurers for any number of reasons. It might wish to study the characters and see what makes them tick; it might need protection against superiors who seek to rehabilitate it; or it might be confused and searching for purpose beyond what modron society has to offer. Some rogue modrons, given the chance to explore their individuality, desire to belong to something greater than themselves, and the adventuring party becomes a temporary substitute for the order and structure that Mechanus provides.
Rogue modrons have trouble understanding emotions or concepts such as friendship, loyalty, and deception. They are, however, able to think for themselves and arrive at certain conclusions based on first-hand observations and experiences. A rogue modron might ally with a group of adventurers out of a desire to learn more about other creatures in the multiverse, but once it believes it has nothing more to learn, it moves on. Thus, modron companions are often “flighty” and can leave the party without so much as a goodbye.
HABITAT:
Modrons are not creatures of the natural world, nor are they even native to what most think of as the cosmos. The clockwork realm they call Mechanus is just one of many bizarre realities that coexist within an even greater plane sc ape that scholars name the Accordant Expanse.
Kin to other anomalous planes such as the Far Realm or the Plane of Mirrors, the Accordant Expanse exists outside the comfortable structure of the cosmos. Its inhabitants claim their reality to be the true universe and all other existence to be a mere construct of their invention, a malignant wasteland of chaos and emotion. The rare individuals who claim to have gazed through a breach to the Accordant Expanse describe the divide as something akin to a shattered mirror—beyond the broken reality shards lies a vision terrifying for the mortal mind to process.
Mechanus:
A plane of rotating gears and clicking cogs, inextricably linked together with massive pulleys and stretching in all directions as far as the eye can see.
Mechanus is a great void filled with unimaginably huge wheels, each interlocking with the next, like the internal cogs of an ornate clock. The plane is filled with thousands of these clockwork disks, the larg¬ est having a diameter of more than 1,000 miles. The slow revolution of this titanic wheel is picked up by adjacent cogs and transferred to others throughout Mechanus, setting the entire plane in motion.
Both surfaces of each circular realm have their own gravity, so disks can meet at right angles without disturbing the inhabitants of either one, and crea¬ tures on opposite surfaces of the same disk are drawn to the surface by their own gravity. The void between wheels contains breathable air.
Mechanus is a plane of ultimate law, the very antithesis of the Elemental Chaos and every bit as alien to mortal minds as the Far Realm. Light and dark exist here in equal measure, as do heat and cold. All matter here has its place, where it remains irrevo¬ cably. Mechanus harbors no passion, illusion, or pain. Individual consciousness is temporary, serving only while needed and then subsumed into the whole.
MECHANUS TRAITS:
Type: Extraplanar realm (the Accordant Expanse)
Size and Shape: A cube-shaped void roughly 10,000 miles on each side, filled with many interlocking gears. The upper and lower reaches of the void are bounded by a thick metallic casing.
Gravity: Each massive clockwork gear has gravity relative to its horizontal plane. The bounded walls of the realm also have normal gravity.
Mutability: Divinely mutable (Primus). Primus is able to shape Mechanus at its whim.
REGULUS:
Sixty-four interlinking cogs at the heart of Mecha¬ nus form the metropolis of Regulus. The cogs of the modron capital rest atop each other, like a colossal, mechanical ziggurat. An enormous rod runs through the center of each sector gear and is apparently the agent of rotation.
Each sector is ruled by an octon and periodically inspected by a septon, which in turn reports to a hexton, and so on, until the report reaches a quarton regional governor. Deep in the heart of the modron metropolis is the government sector, Regulus Prime. There stands the Cathedral of Order and the Tower of Primus, demesne of the supreme one.