[OOC] History, Personality, & Weaknesses
History
Elizabeθ Buckley is the only child of Charles Winston Buckley, the High Ergaleomancer to the Queen. Her mother had a difficult pregnancy with her, and was advised not to have any more children. Mr. Buckley had hoped for a son, to pass on his title to--before Elizabeθ was even born, Mr. Buckley purchased a leather top hat and other boys' things for the child his wife was carrying. Discovering that it was a girl was a bit of a blow. The boy's items were put into a closet, and Mr. and Mrs. Buckley focused on loving their little girl as best they could.
Elizabeθ, however, had other ideas. As soon as she was old enough to be aware of the differences between boys and girls, she insisted that she could be the son her father had wanted. She found the closet of things that had been bought with the expectation of a son, and quite cheerily claimed them for herself. When further questioned about her gender, she explained (albeit in quite childish terms) that while she was indeed a girl, she could be a boy as well. She cut her hair off and took to wearing the top hat she had found, and would 'borrow' trousers from the servants until her parents caved in and bought her boy's clothing. When she was seven years old, she disassembled one of her clockwork toys, and put it back together as a completely different clockwork. It worked.
Although her parents had both hoped and suspected that Elizabeθ would show an aptitude for Ergaleomancy, her stunt with her toy proved it. Instead of hiding their strange daughter, they could cheerily let her dress as a boy and parade her around as a young Ergaleomancer prodigy. However, when she was eight, tragedy struck. The first clockwork she had built had been made only of the metal available in her toy--the exposed gearworks were not covered over. Something dropped into it, and caused the mechanism to jam, triggering an explosion that nearly severed Elizabeθ's left leg. She was saved, but told that likely she would never be able to walk.
Her father refused to accept that, and built for her a clockwork support, to hold together what was left of her knee and allow her to walk. Though she needed a cane to support herself, she adapted quickly and has grown used to her limitations. The support mechanism, however, has always and will always look a bit off-putting, and she is self-conscious about making sure that her trousers are cut with a flare that will disguise the bulk around her knee.
She attended Cambridge University to further her studies of Ergaleomancy, but was dogged by the press several times. Ever since her father announced that she was a prodigy with the craft of Ergaleomancy, getting embarrassing material on her has proven to be a perennial press favourite. Given her unusual stance on her gender, it is unfortunately quite easy.
Society as a whole regards her as a flash in the pan shock factor celebrity whose fame will eventually go away. Unfortunately, that fame persists because as long as people buy tabloid articles about her, they write articles about her, so people buy articles about her in a chicken or the egg cycle. Much like a train wreck that one can't look away from, people aren't certain in themselves how to regard her, whether she should be reviled or pitied or loved or hated. Individual people of course have individual opinions, but she rarely has to deal with people, preferring instead to stay in her workshop.
Her inventions, however, cause greater stir. When they are minor but useful things of obvious practical application, she is of course given her full due as an ergaleomancer and hailed for her innovative thought. However, when she invariably tries to take something to an unnatural extreme, the papers will point out that she's crossing over into inappropriate moral territory. At that point she considers herself to be a martyr--ready with her bucket full of whitewash and justifications, she can explain until the cows come home why it was a good idea, but the papers won't listen to that--they aren't in the business of pandering to her excuses or humouring her logic, just in reporting whatever it is she's done this time.
As such, with time the popular opinion on the trainwreck that is her life has gradually come to average more often than not on the disapproving side. This is not, as Theta is fond of insisting it is, because of her manner of dress or how revolutionary her inventions are, but rather very much by her own fault this is because of her antics. Her continual and repeated disregard for morality and her flagrant disrespect of anything that comes between her and a good time has made it clear to those that have encountered her that she really is every bit as self-absorbed as the tabloids make her out to be.
Her colleagues regard her as an odious blight on English society even more than the common people in general do, and this increased dislike has to do with increased proximity. Fortunately, perhaps, ergaleomancy is not necessarily a social career. Although the World's Fair draws them all in every now and again, it is entirely possible for an ergaleomancer to work their craft quietly in their own workshop as long as they have the funding to sustain themselves in such a manner. Theta still lives at home, working in her parents' house, and as such really only needs to venture out when she needs something or when she feels like it. For the most part she lives as a recluse, career wise, and the assembled ergaleomancers of Greater London are grateful for that.
Personality
Cheerful but arrogant, Elizabeθ is the epitome of the flaws in her society. She believes herself to be one of God's gifts to the world, specifically in the field of Ergaleomancy. She has a flare for the dramatic, and when talking about something she is passionate about she frequently raises her voice and begins to speak like she is delivering a soliloquy on a stage. The thrill of the stage is something she really likes, and despite her hatred of the paparazzi, attention and thrills are something she really enjoys getting.
Elizabeθ is a thrill seeker. She lives on the very edge of what's acceptable in society, and as the edge moves she'll be more than happy to compensate for that and find new and more inventive ways to push the limit and push the envelope. She does not like to extend herself into illegal endeavours, but she is a devoted fan of finding every available loophole and stretching it to its limits, especially where her clockworks are concerned. Then again, she only considers something 'bad' if it is illegal--put in a place without laws to begin with...there's precious little to hold her back from doing whatever strikes her fancy at any given moment.
Although Elizabeθ believes that ergaleomancers have a duty to society to serve the greater good, she also believes that Ergaleomancers are somewhat exempt from society's morals and sensibilities. Things like the Uncanny Valley and other moral distinctions about what it is acceptable to do with clockworks are things that she brushes off easily, in pursuit of the next big discovery...or the next big 'buzz', whether it comes from announcing the next big discovery, getting caught in a scandal by the paparazzi, or anything else that might give her a bit of entertainment.
In fact, with regards to excitement...she wants attention, badly enough that even negative attention is fine. In fact, negative attention is better because if she can make someone deeply uncomfortable, it lasts longer. She'd really like it if someone would actually pay consistent good attention to her, though, so maybe if she can show someone just how awesome she is, they'll stop being unnerved by the things she does to unnerve everyone else, because the things she does to unnerve everyone else unnerve them because everyone else is not smart enough to realise that it's all just a big joke.
...Except it's Theta's sense of self-worth that's the big joke. She desperately needs a few friends, and she's convinced herself that she doesn't have any because of the tabloids and obviously they're doing this because they're jealous of her and frightened by how awesome she is. Being away from home will put her through a loop with that--she no longer has the tabloids and her reputation to contend with, so she will try to put herself out there and make friends, but even if she manages to bullshit her way into being friendly with someone for a while, it doesn't take long before something goes awry--it's a one-way street. Theta's "friends" are there to pay attention to Theta, and if they don't pay attention on demand, they get abandoned.
The one area that she crosses the line into being actually confident is with her clockworks. Give her her tools and she'll quiet down for as long as it takes to build something and let her ability speak for her. It's only a momentary bit of respite, though, because if her creation fails to impress everyone ever...she's there to scream about it and try to prove to everyone why it's awesome and, failing that, to build something bigger (potentially only figuratively bigger, though), which gets a respite from her ranting, but when she's done, the cycle starts over again.
The problem here is that while she is extremely arrogant, and while she comes from a very uncertain and not-so-confident place with it...she -does- have skill to back up some of it. She's not "the best ergaleomancer in all of history and that's why she's better than all of you little people", but she is a very skilled one. She just...thinks that her skill in it makes her better than other people, and also that her self-worth as a person is completely and directly tied up in her skill as an ergaleomancer.
Elizabeθ has a tendency to become easily wrapped up in things, whether it's obsessively working on a clockwork to the exclusion of caring for herself or getting swept up in events unfolding around her and making plans based on them that are only loosely based in reality and decreasingly sane with each draft. Once she goes on the hunt for a big thrill, everything else goes out the window, even most of her tenuous and bendable morals. She would rather do what is fun and come up with an excuse and a moral whitewash for it afterward than she would miss an opportunity, and in fact the idea of stopping partway through something rarely even occurs to her any more.
Higher intellectual pursuits are amongst her favourite hobbies, though the two nearest and dearest to her heart are ergaleomancy of course and the theatre. She memorises monologues and quotes, ready to shift into reciting poetry and prose at a moment's notice. As much as she enjoys stories like that, it again feeds her arrogance--she speaks loudly enough to be heard clearly because she presumes someone, somewhere, is eager to listen. In this way the tabloids are an especial hindrance, as they feed into her ideas that people actually care about what she's saying and encourage the trend of verbal purple prose at a moment's notice, even when inappropriate.
Underneath it all, Theta is a very selfish, arrogant young woman. Being the only child of a couple that wanted more children but could not have them, she was treated like a princess, and then on her insistence, treated like a prince. Despite the fact that she was breaking definite societal standards and morals, she was allowed to do as she pleased on the "we'll think of a way to excuse it later" principle. Yes, rather than teach her the meaning of 'no', her parents instead taught her how to rules-lawyer her way out of nearly anything and skate through life on technicalities and loopholes, openly telling her that she was better than having to concern herself with such things.
More often than not, simply having an explanation for why her heart in the right place was more than enough to pass muster on what her parents believed was right, and so Theta likes to think of herself as a fundamentally good person--she believes her 'fun' will be good for the greater good of society, and specifically, for England. That feeds in with her arrogance as well, as she believes her inherent 'goodness' also has a factor in why she is 'too good' for the rules and laws of the rest of society. Realistically, however, she does whatever she pleases and only traces her motivations back to that after the fact when her methods are questioned. Like an ethics committee's nightmare, she has little care for the consequences or ramifications of her actions. She's never had to.
Perhaps fortunately for Theta's sanity, where her overly-permissive parents failed, the vice grip of society stepped in. Although she was not technically breaking any laws, the people of England did recognise that what Theta was doing was inappropriate nigh on immediately to when she made her debut in society. When most children would have tested their boundaries against their parents, Theta used her fame and status in society to test her limits against society itself. More often than not her only form of reproach came from the tabloids and their unpleasant headlines about her. Without that, she would have lived in a world where there were no consequences whatsoever for her actions.
Those actions actually have very simple motivations--for entertaining herself or for getting a reaction out of others. Frequently even those two blur together. She is highly intelligent, and as such she finds herself very easily bored by things and in constant need of stimulation. Intellectual conversation about philosophy can keep her distracted for a time, though rather than have an opinion to stay with, she will change and adapt her stance based on whatever looks like the best stance to have at the moment, or whichever stance will cause the most drama and outrage.
Since most of Theta's stance on morality is something she's willing to rules lawyer out of, it's prudent to mark down the few things that she does hold sacred. These might still change, but it would be a very gradual erosion of her morality rather than something she'd wiggle out of easily. First off, Theta does not believe humankind was meant for immortality. Having met the Queen twice in her life and seen the state of her existence, Theta finds immortality disgusting and morally reprehensible. In that vein she finds all unnecessary clockwork augmentations to the body to be off-putting. Of course there are medical applications of clockworks, Theta makes use of one herself, but there is a difference between what is medically necessary and what is overkill.
Theta believes in filial piety and honouring her country. As much as she enjoys attention, one of the lines that keeps her from going completely off the deep end is her family. She originally began cross-dressing because of her family needing an heir for her father to pass his titles to, and as she would do everything she's done over again if she had opportunity to, she certainly won't sabotage things by ruining her own family. She loves her father very much and respects him a lot. She knows sometimes she causes him trouble, but since he rarely reprimands her for anything, she doesn't think much will truly upset him. She is also loyal to England and loves her country very much. Her father works for the Queen, so it's easy to see the two as related. Any issues she has with English society she sees as things that England can overcome, rather than inherent flaws.
Phobias
Electricty was discovered in Theta's world, but after the displays put on by Nikola Tesla, the use of electricity was banned in Europe. Although it is legal in America, it is not commonly used. As part of her education at Cambridge University, Theta did study electricity for a little bit, though only through reading about it in books. The coursework was very biased, painting it as a horrific death ray with no practical advantages. It left her spooked on the topic, especially as she knows that she has a tendency to push boundaries, but this is one boundary she is loathe to cross.
Theta's first clockwork was a clockwork puppy that she built for companionship. It jammed and exploded, nearly severing her left leg as a child. She has been afraid of dogs since.
Weaknesses
Ergaleomancy is first and foremost a crafting skill. Unlike a fictional mage that can just summon a golem and have it rise from the earth, there is a technical aspect to it. Clockworks have to be well crafted, and that can take ages to do. She requires a clockworking workshop, which includes many costly tools, and supplies, not the least of which include gemstones. Furthermore, making a clockwork takes time and effort both in designing it and in crafting it. Some weeks can be spent in the design phase of a clockwork that follows normal conventions; it can take months or years to design an innovative clockwork that hasn't been done before. Actually building it can take months to years, depending on the project.
Theta cannot kneel down or squat. She has trouble going up and down stairs--it is possible, but it takes time and is painful. Her range of motion with her knee is reduced to points between straight and a 90 degree bend. She cannot turn her leg out to the side without intense pain making it nigh on impossible because of human nature to not do things that are too painful to one's own body, the same impulse that keeps one from biting through one's lips. She cannot put her full weight on her left leg at risk of breaking the mechanism. It needs regular service (Theta prefers to give it a once-over every month). She'd probably have an easier life if she had the remains of her lower leg amputated so she could have a full on prosthetic from the stump down, but she is a bit queasy about the idea of actually completely losing her leg. The mechanics of it are fairly simple--the pistons are extraneous and for the most part decorative. It's a glorified hinge since she doesn't have the original joint there any more.
Elizabeθ Buckley is the only child of Charles Winston Buckley, the High Ergaleomancer to the Queen. Her mother had a difficult pregnancy with her, and was advised not to have any more children. Mr. Buckley had hoped for a son, to pass on his title to--before Elizabeθ was even born, Mr. Buckley purchased a leather top hat and other boys' things for the child his wife was carrying. Discovering that it was a girl was a bit of a blow. The boy's items were put into a closet, and Mr. and Mrs. Buckley focused on loving their little girl as best they could.
Elizabeθ, however, had other ideas. As soon as she was old enough to be aware of the differences between boys and girls, she insisted that she could be the son her father had wanted. She found the closet of things that had been bought with the expectation of a son, and quite cheerily claimed them for herself. When further questioned about her gender, she explained (albeit in quite childish terms) that while she was indeed a girl, she could be a boy as well. She cut her hair off and took to wearing the top hat she had found, and would 'borrow' trousers from the servants until her parents caved in and bought her boy's clothing. When she was seven years old, she disassembled one of her clockwork toys, and put it back together as a completely different clockwork. It worked.
Although her parents had both hoped and suspected that Elizabeθ would show an aptitude for Ergaleomancy, her stunt with her toy proved it. Instead of hiding their strange daughter, they could cheerily let her dress as a boy and parade her around as a young Ergaleomancer prodigy. However, when she was eight, tragedy struck. The first clockwork she had built had been made only of the metal available in her toy--the exposed gearworks were not covered over. Something dropped into it, and caused the mechanism to jam, triggering an explosion that nearly severed Elizabeθ's left leg. She was saved, but told that likely she would never be able to walk.
Her father refused to accept that, and built for her a clockwork support, to hold together what was left of her knee and allow her to walk. Though she needed a cane to support herself, she adapted quickly and has grown used to her limitations. The support mechanism, however, has always and will always look a bit off-putting, and she is self-conscious about making sure that her trousers are cut with a flare that will disguise the bulk around her knee.
She attended Cambridge University to further her studies of Ergaleomancy, but was dogged by the press several times. Ever since her father announced that she was a prodigy with the craft of Ergaleomancy, getting embarrassing material on her has proven to be a perennial press favourite. Given her unusual stance on her gender, it is unfortunately quite easy.
Society as a whole regards her as a flash in the pan shock factor celebrity whose fame will eventually go away. Unfortunately, that fame persists because as long as people buy tabloid articles about her, they write articles about her, so people buy articles about her in a chicken or the egg cycle. Much like a train wreck that one can't look away from, people aren't certain in themselves how to regard her, whether she should be reviled or pitied or loved or hated. Individual people of course have individual opinions, but she rarely has to deal with people, preferring instead to stay in her workshop.
Her inventions, however, cause greater stir. When they are minor but useful things of obvious practical application, she is of course given her full due as an ergaleomancer and hailed for her innovative thought. However, when she invariably tries to take something to an unnatural extreme, the papers will point out that she's crossing over into inappropriate moral territory. At that point she considers herself to be a martyr--ready with her bucket full of whitewash and justifications, she can explain until the cows come home why it was a good idea, but the papers won't listen to that--they aren't in the business of pandering to her excuses or humouring her logic, just in reporting whatever it is she's done this time.
As such, with time the popular opinion on the trainwreck that is her life has gradually come to average more often than not on the disapproving side. This is not, as Theta is fond of insisting it is, because of her manner of dress or how revolutionary her inventions are, but rather very much by her own fault this is because of her antics. Her continual and repeated disregard for morality and her flagrant disrespect of anything that comes between her and a good time has made it clear to those that have encountered her that she really is every bit as self-absorbed as the tabloids make her out to be.
Her colleagues regard her as an odious blight on English society even more than the common people in general do, and this increased dislike has to do with increased proximity. Fortunately, perhaps, ergaleomancy is not necessarily a social career. Although the World's Fair draws them all in every now and again, it is entirely possible for an ergaleomancer to work their craft quietly in their own workshop as long as they have the funding to sustain themselves in such a manner. Theta still lives at home, working in her parents' house, and as such really only needs to venture out when she needs something or when she feels like it. For the most part she lives as a recluse, career wise, and the assembled ergaleomancers of Greater London are grateful for that.
Personality
Cheerful but arrogant, Elizabeθ is the epitome of the flaws in her society. She believes herself to be one of God's gifts to the world, specifically in the field of Ergaleomancy. She has a flare for the dramatic, and when talking about something she is passionate about she frequently raises her voice and begins to speak like she is delivering a soliloquy on a stage. The thrill of the stage is something she really likes, and despite her hatred of the paparazzi, attention and thrills are something she really enjoys getting.
Elizabeθ is a thrill seeker. She lives on the very edge of what's acceptable in society, and as the edge moves she'll be more than happy to compensate for that and find new and more inventive ways to push the limit and push the envelope. She does not like to extend herself into illegal endeavours, but she is a devoted fan of finding every available loophole and stretching it to its limits, especially where her clockworks are concerned. Then again, she only considers something 'bad' if it is illegal--put in a place without laws to begin with...there's precious little to hold her back from doing whatever strikes her fancy at any given moment.
Although Elizabeθ believes that ergaleomancers have a duty to society to serve the greater good, she also believes that Ergaleomancers are somewhat exempt from society's morals and sensibilities. Things like the Uncanny Valley and other moral distinctions about what it is acceptable to do with clockworks are things that she brushes off easily, in pursuit of the next big discovery...or the next big 'buzz', whether it comes from announcing the next big discovery, getting caught in a scandal by the paparazzi, or anything else that might give her a bit of entertainment.
In fact, with regards to excitement...she wants attention, badly enough that even negative attention is fine. In fact, negative attention is better because if she can make someone deeply uncomfortable, it lasts longer. She'd really like it if someone would actually pay consistent good attention to her, though, so maybe if she can show someone just how awesome she is, they'll stop being unnerved by the things she does to unnerve everyone else, because the things she does to unnerve everyone else unnerve them because everyone else is not smart enough to realise that it's all just a big joke.
...Except it's Theta's sense of self-worth that's the big joke. She desperately needs a few friends, and she's convinced herself that she doesn't have any because of the tabloids and obviously they're doing this because they're jealous of her and frightened by how awesome she is. Being away from home will put her through a loop with that--she no longer has the tabloids and her reputation to contend with, so she will try to put herself out there and make friends, but even if she manages to bullshit her way into being friendly with someone for a while, it doesn't take long before something goes awry--it's a one-way street. Theta's "friends" are there to pay attention to Theta, and if they don't pay attention on demand, they get abandoned.
The one area that she crosses the line into being actually confident is with her clockworks. Give her her tools and she'll quiet down for as long as it takes to build something and let her ability speak for her. It's only a momentary bit of respite, though, because if her creation fails to impress everyone ever...she's there to scream about it and try to prove to everyone why it's awesome and, failing that, to build something bigger (potentially only figuratively bigger, though), which gets a respite from her ranting, but when she's done, the cycle starts over again.
The problem here is that while she is extremely arrogant, and while she comes from a very uncertain and not-so-confident place with it...she -does- have skill to back up some of it. She's not "the best ergaleomancer in all of history and that's why she's better than all of you little people", but she is a very skilled one. She just...thinks that her skill in it makes her better than other people, and also that her self-worth as a person is completely and directly tied up in her skill as an ergaleomancer.
Elizabeθ has a tendency to become easily wrapped up in things, whether it's obsessively working on a clockwork to the exclusion of caring for herself or getting swept up in events unfolding around her and making plans based on them that are only loosely based in reality and decreasingly sane with each draft. Once she goes on the hunt for a big thrill, everything else goes out the window, even most of her tenuous and bendable morals. She would rather do what is fun and come up with an excuse and a moral whitewash for it afterward than she would miss an opportunity, and in fact the idea of stopping partway through something rarely even occurs to her any more.
Higher intellectual pursuits are amongst her favourite hobbies, though the two nearest and dearest to her heart are ergaleomancy of course and the theatre. She memorises monologues and quotes, ready to shift into reciting poetry and prose at a moment's notice. As much as she enjoys stories like that, it again feeds her arrogance--she speaks loudly enough to be heard clearly because she presumes someone, somewhere, is eager to listen. In this way the tabloids are an especial hindrance, as they feed into her ideas that people actually care about what she's saying and encourage the trend of verbal purple prose at a moment's notice, even when inappropriate.
Underneath it all, Theta is a very selfish, arrogant young woman. Being the only child of a couple that wanted more children but could not have them, she was treated like a princess, and then on her insistence, treated like a prince. Despite the fact that she was breaking definite societal standards and morals, she was allowed to do as she pleased on the "we'll think of a way to excuse it later" principle. Yes, rather than teach her the meaning of 'no', her parents instead taught her how to rules-lawyer her way out of nearly anything and skate through life on technicalities and loopholes, openly telling her that she was better than having to concern herself with such things.
More often than not, simply having an explanation for why her heart in the right place was more than enough to pass muster on what her parents believed was right, and so Theta likes to think of herself as a fundamentally good person--she believes her 'fun' will be good for the greater good of society, and specifically, for England. That feeds in with her arrogance as well, as she believes her inherent 'goodness' also has a factor in why she is 'too good' for the rules and laws of the rest of society. Realistically, however, she does whatever she pleases and only traces her motivations back to that after the fact when her methods are questioned. Like an ethics committee's nightmare, she has little care for the consequences or ramifications of her actions. She's never had to.
Perhaps fortunately for Theta's sanity, where her overly-permissive parents failed, the vice grip of society stepped in. Although she was not technically breaking any laws, the people of England did recognise that what Theta was doing was inappropriate nigh on immediately to when she made her debut in society. When most children would have tested their boundaries against their parents, Theta used her fame and status in society to test her limits against society itself. More often than not her only form of reproach came from the tabloids and their unpleasant headlines about her. Without that, she would have lived in a world where there were no consequences whatsoever for her actions.
Those actions actually have very simple motivations--for entertaining herself or for getting a reaction out of others. Frequently even those two blur together. She is highly intelligent, and as such she finds herself very easily bored by things and in constant need of stimulation. Intellectual conversation about philosophy can keep her distracted for a time, though rather than have an opinion to stay with, she will change and adapt her stance based on whatever looks like the best stance to have at the moment, or whichever stance will cause the most drama and outrage.
Since most of Theta's stance on morality is something she's willing to rules lawyer out of, it's prudent to mark down the few things that she does hold sacred. These might still change, but it would be a very gradual erosion of her morality rather than something she'd wiggle out of easily. First off, Theta does not believe humankind was meant for immortality. Having met the Queen twice in her life and seen the state of her existence, Theta finds immortality disgusting and morally reprehensible. In that vein she finds all unnecessary clockwork augmentations to the body to be off-putting. Of course there are medical applications of clockworks, Theta makes use of one herself, but there is a difference between what is medically necessary and what is overkill.
Theta believes in filial piety and honouring her country. As much as she enjoys attention, one of the lines that keeps her from going completely off the deep end is her family. She originally began cross-dressing because of her family needing an heir for her father to pass his titles to, and as she would do everything she's done over again if she had opportunity to, she certainly won't sabotage things by ruining her own family. She loves her father very much and respects him a lot. She knows sometimes she causes him trouble, but since he rarely reprimands her for anything, she doesn't think much will truly upset him. She is also loyal to England and loves her country very much. Her father works for the Queen, so it's easy to see the two as related. Any issues she has with English society she sees as things that England can overcome, rather than inherent flaws.
Phobias
Electricty was discovered in Theta's world, but after the displays put on by Nikola Tesla, the use of electricity was banned in Europe. Although it is legal in America, it is not commonly used. As part of her education at Cambridge University, Theta did study electricity for a little bit, though only through reading about it in books. The coursework was very biased, painting it as a horrific death ray with no practical advantages. It left her spooked on the topic, especially as she knows that she has a tendency to push boundaries, but this is one boundary she is loathe to cross.
Theta's first clockwork was a clockwork puppy that she built for companionship. It jammed and exploded, nearly severing her left leg as a child. She has been afraid of dogs since.
Weaknesses
Ergaleomancy is first and foremost a crafting skill. Unlike a fictional mage that can just summon a golem and have it rise from the earth, there is a technical aspect to it. Clockworks have to be well crafted, and that can take ages to do. She requires a clockworking workshop, which includes many costly tools, and supplies, not the least of which include gemstones. Furthermore, making a clockwork takes time and effort both in designing it and in crafting it. Some weeks can be spent in the design phase of a clockwork that follows normal conventions; it can take months or years to design an innovative clockwork that hasn't been done before. Actually building it can take months to years, depending on the project.
Theta cannot kneel down or squat. She has trouble going up and down stairs--it is possible, but it takes time and is painful. Her range of motion with her knee is reduced to points between straight and a 90 degree bend. She cannot turn her leg out to the side without intense pain making it nigh on impossible because of human nature to not do things that are too painful to one's own body, the same impulse that keeps one from biting through one's lips. She cannot put her full weight on her left leg at risk of breaking the mechanism. It needs regular service (Theta prefers to give it a once-over every month). She'd probably have an easier life if she had the remains of her lower leg amputated so she could have a full on prosthetic from the stump down, but she is a bit queasy about the idea of actually completely losing her leg. The mechanics of it are fairly simple--the pistons are extraneous and for the most part decorative. It's a glorified hinge since she doesn't have the original joint there any more.