The Premise: The world is inhabited entirely by biomechanical clay creatures who function like living clockwork and sculpted flesh. The story follows a society of these beings whose physical forms are beginning to rapidly degrade, turning their joints into brittle, shattering clay and fusing their metal spines into grotesque, locked positions.
The Conflict: A religious or scientific zealot among them believes that "breaking the joints" is the only way to achieve ascension, sparking a brutal, fanatical civil war where creatures actively dismantle and reshape each other's bodies while searching for a mythic "prime clay" core to stop the decay.
