Khazad

Khazad tripped on a loose stone and cursed in a whisper. Merchants had told him that most humans believed that Dwarves were able to see in the dark. They had laughed, but Khazad was an archaeologist and he understood that seeing in darkness would not only be useful, but something to be expected, since they had lived in profound systems of caves for millennia. Of course, a lot of cave animals were actually blind, so maybe there was a reason. It would still be useful, no doubt about that.
He kept walking but now paying more attention to the irregular floor, unevenly lighted by his lantern. Khazad was a bit known back in the districts because despite the interest in dwarven stories, not that many dwarves were interested in what actually happened, preferring to hear and believe the soul-rising stories told by priests.
Khazad knew that tradition was important for dwarves, and that stories are adorned so that they are actually soul-inspiring. They're useful to make people do what they should. But that did not mean they were true. Judging from what he had investigated, some were actually true, some were tru-ish, but most were big exaggerations when not downright inventions, and just to believe was not good enough for him. His tendencies to explain what really happened and to point inconsistencies and evidences of the more outrageous lies had never been met with pleasure.
Khazad was known, not loved.
Probably those sentiments were half the reason he was cleared to go how deep he wanted. Dwarves had had a really long history in the caves below Forge or the almost forgotten ones in The Frost Range, but a lot of them were now abandoned. Sometimes not empty. Khazad had had a few close calls encountering beasts, troglodytes and even once a tribe of barbaric, more than half-crazed Dwarves. Publicly, every Dwarf had to encourage "the relentless search for truth" that moved Khazad, but privately they, specially the ones using stories to get others to do what they had to, probably expected him to get lost or even dead in one of his expeditions. Khazad knew that, but despite all the 'teaching' he did and despite he not liking the simple mindedness of people believing "because it has always been told like that", he wanted to know more because he wanted to know that because he wanted others to know.
It hadn't been always told like that, anyway.

Khazad realized he was whispering under his breath and stopped. Too much time by himself, probably. Maybe people needed to talk, but now that he had quietened himself a faint humming was almost audible. Intrigued but alert, Khazad kept walking, trying to understand the way echoes worked that humming to his position. For the next few days he went down and down, trying to locate the source of the humming by how loud it sounded. He got lost once, got his way again, and became more and more worried the more he descended, since the humming was accompanied by a vibration and had became really loud and strong.

And then, squeezing his body through a crack in the stone, he found... the source.

Khazad had seen many wonders in his expeditions, but of the kind that marvels other scholars. This was different, so much different. He walked forward, raising his lantern to try to illuminate what he was seeing now, but it was so huge the light could not. Before him, thousands of cogwheels of every size imaginable, from a few inches wide to several yards, were rotating, transmitting the movement one to the next, though it was just impossible to know which was "one" and which "the next". The synchronized movement was hypnotic, and this near the humming revealed itself as thousands of hummings, singing together, in a way.

Khazad consciousness drifted through that enormous device, feeling that it was somehow part of the world's workings but in a way that seemed to be stored in a part just beyond his mind, as a word you know that you know, but that you just can't remember at the time. The cogs seemed to... no, they were spinning through time, the past modifying the present, the present modifying the future. Minute symbols were edged in the very cogs, eroded by time but still almost, almost there, hidden as rugged surfaces when looked from afar but clearly obvious now. Time, and space, were being weaved together, watched, or... or controlled by the device.

And then he woke up startled with the temblors of the cave. A cave-in! He looked around, his panicked mind trying to adjust to reality, when the whole device seemed to sink in short bursts of movement. Khazad ran to it, where it was leaving a hole, swallowing the device in an unfathomable depth.
He sat in the border, shocked by what he had seen and by the disappearance of the device that had shown him the inner workings of the world itself. When the light of the lantern went out he realized the time he had been there, and that there were tears in his face. Then his lips tightened and his expression was set. He changed the oil of the lantern and after staring the hole, he started the way to the surface. He didn't know how, but he would find the device again. He felt like an idea, an intuition gotten from the time through the cogwheels. It would require time to grasp it, but Khazad would.

He needed to understand.

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Khazad ai Menu
Dwarf Occultist 1
STR 10 CON 12 DEX 10 INT 18 WIS 18 CHA 8
HP 21 AC 13 PD 11 MD 16 Recoveries 8x(1d6+1)
Backgrounds: Archaeologist of Dwarven Forgotten Past 4, History Profesor 3, Wandering Mystic 1
Relationships: Dwarf King (conflicted) 2, Elf Queen (conflicted) 1; the relationships are conflicted because every ruler wants part of their history publicly known and part of it downplayed, in the best case.
Unique: Discoverer of the "Reality Clockwork"
Talents: Brain-Melting Secrets, Stance of Necessity, Unwinding the Soul (A), Warp Flesh
Prepared Spells: Bitter Lessons, Brilliant Comeback, Moment of Karma, Timely Mistake

Gear: light armor, light pick and hammer (1d4), hand crossbow (1d4)