Once upon a time, in some place or another, a tiny village sat.  Partly because of the steep and dangerous mountains that surrounded it, and partly because of the fierce dragon that guards it, this village escaped both the detrimental and beneficial effects of time that changed the world around it.

Inside this village, life is simple, vowels are frequent, fairies are benign, and the greatest mind the world has never known works diligently away in a dark and musty study.

Ancient tomes, bubbling concoctions, and whirling contraptions littered the already cramped study, reducing it from cramped to claustrophobic nightmare dimensions with just enough room for one man to navigate the gargantuan piles of books and oddities from cluttered desk to cluttered desk.

The wiry man behind the madness appears to work very hard translating an ancient document of some sort, surrounded by the appropriate paraphernalia related to such a pursuit, but instead he is about half way through a crossword puzzle that sits on his lap.  He taps a pencil idly on his chair, and in a moment, reaches behind him to place a phonograph needle back on track before leaning back and taking a sip from a glass sitting on the desk beside him.

This is the lair of one of the great heroes belonging to this village, the Mechanic.  The other two are the Captain and the Governor.  The Captain spends his days drilling and marching out of doors with his handful of deputies, and the Governor hosts parties every night.  Everyone else has a normal job, farming, shepherding, blacksmithing, keeping an eye on the dragon, or mining the mountains for sugar and precious metals.

Everyone in the village knows the Captain and the Governor very well, their hero status is unassailable, but the Mechanic is rarely seen.  A few people believe he is a normal villager, perhaps somewhat invalid, or a nut perpetuating a few myths, but he is, indeed, a hero.

All of the Captain's war machines (both of them) were designed by the Mechanic, the Governor's parties are powered by rumbling machines designed by the Mechanic, and oddly enough, the pretty pictures on the wall, and the dazzling coloured light displays are also designed by the Mechanic.