The Edict of Artifice

In 4272ey the High Priests of the Ten Divines pronounced an injunction against the use of contraptions and artifice.

The High Priests determined that the Gods would punish those who sought to reduce their labor or improve their lot through the use of machinery. According to his edict, making any device which relied on more than two interlocking wheels or more two toothed gears was a matter of the gravest blasphemy, and punishable by death.

In cities and towns across the Eight Kingdoms, devices and inventions (along with those suspected of building them) were piled and burned as an offering to the gods. Not a few contraptionist guilds were disbanded and their members hunted down.

The Ingenium was one such guild specifically targeted. The largest and most successful of the contraptionists, it was made up almost entirely of gnomes who had slowly settled in an among the human Big Folk. After the Edict, they were persecuted terribly and turned into objects of hate and ridicule. Many of them were enslaved and became little more than beasts of burden. Others were taken as tutors by noble houses, but never again allowed to practice their crafts.

Despite the fact that the Edict itself was suppressed after the War of the Gods, the damage to modern society has been done. Most humans look askance at any sort of contraption and are often unduly superstitious about its function.