Editing The Dawn After Steam: Setting (section)

===The Rise & Fall of Steam===
Long ago, the Principality of Tides and the Free City of Flames joined together, forming the Kingdom of Fire and Water.  After a period of internal unification, it became a very prosperous polity thanks in large part to a strong artisan community that specialized in engines.  Several generations later, its king changed its name to the Kingdom of Steam and erected the Throne of Pistons in the Turning Citadel.  The Kingdom of Steam then went on a spectacularly successful campaign of expansion.

The other kingdoms and nations slowly organized to oppose the Kingdom of Steam, holding it at bay and creating a stalemate.  This stalemate then became the status quo, and peace returned to many areas.  This was a time of superficial peace, and battles commonly broke out between the Kingdom of Steam and its opponents (not to mention between the various opposing kingdoms themselves).

Then, roughly a century ago, the Bruderschaft Handwek Geheimnisvoll gained more influence over the Kingdom of Steam's policies, resulting in massive industrialization and preparing for war.  Before the other nations could fully react, new nightmarish engines and clockwork monstrosities were unleashed, apparently as willing to annihilate as to conquer.  The opposing nations fought the best they could, but it was unclear whether or not another stalemate could be reached.  Many feared it could not be.

But the war ended in a way that few expected: a frighteningly sudden lurch and collapse.  The Rozhodní naRhadí, the clockwork golems who had populated so much of the Steam army and state bureaucracy, rebelled.  Reports flowed out of the Kingdom of Steam involving the implosion of the Turning Citadel and massive amounts of people being slaughtered by their former tools.  After a reign of terror, the Rozhodní naRhadí organized a retreat of their kind to the fortress of Rossumesto.  Since then, they have actively avoided contact with the human world, with the occasional (and often inexplicable) exception.