The hiss of steam filled the air like a serpent's warning.
Magnus Veyron stood atop the balcony of the new Iron Loomworks in Greystone Hollow, a previously sleepy village turned bustling industrial hub. Below him, rows of automated looms clacked and snapped in perfect rhythm—an orchestration of brass and pressure, each powered by steam conduits laced beneath the cobbled floors.
From raw wool to woven cloth, the machines could do in a day what the weavers of Greystone once took a week to accomplish.
It should have been a miracle.
Instead, it became a rebellion.
I. The Spark of Dread
Ellen Barrow was the first to cry out. A weaver for thirty years, her hands bore the calluses of a thousand threads and a thousand winters. When her loom was taken—replaced by a gleaming brass contraption named Model-3A—she'd screamed at the engineer sent to install it.
"This machine has no soul!" she spat, throwing her spindle across the floor. "You'll feed families to boilers next, will you?!"
The other weavers gathered. Some curious, some scared, most angry.
They weren't Luddites by name—they'd never heard the word. But they felt it in their bones: the death of livelihood.
And so, rebellion was not born in war cries—but whispers.
II. Oil on Fire
It began with sabotage.
Belts loosened just before shift. Valves cranked open to burst. A loom mysteriously exploded, its flywheel turning into a razor that nearly decapitated a supervisor.
Magnus investigated personally.
Beneath the twisted wreckage of the loom, he found a mark etched into the stone with coal:
"We are not gears. We are not yours."
His response was as cold as it was calculated.
He doubled pay for all loyal workers. Built a school adjacent to the mill to educate children in mechanics. Set up a pension fund for injured workers—the first of its kind in the duchy.
And yet, the weavers did not stop.
Because they saw the truth: their trade was dying, no matter the benefits.
III. The Widow's March
The rebellion came not from men with pitchforks, but women with shuttles.
Ellen Barrow led them, cloaked in mourning black, calling for a "March of the Loomhands." Two hundred women and young apprentices walked from Greystone to Emberhold in silence, bearing the broken parts of dismantled looms in wagons.
They gathered at the base of Magnus's palace forge.
No chants. No songs.
Just silence—and rusted brass.
Magnus descended to meet them.
"My forge," he said quietly, "burns for the future."
Ellen stood tall, face worn like old leather. "And we are the past, is that it?"
He looked her in the eye. "No. But you must learn to build. Or be outbuilt."
She spat at his feet.
IV. The Deal of Thread and Steel
It would have been easy to arrest them.
Magnus had the Iron Guard. He had the law. Even Duke Albrecht, though increasingly weary of Magnus's unchecked power, would not protect a mob defying industrial progress.
But Magnus didn't want martyrs. He wanted momentum.
So, he made an offer.
To the weavers, he gave The Spindle Guild—an institution funded by the Iron Vanguard, where veteran craftsmen could become teachers of mechanical weaving and earn stipends for training the next generation.
In return, the marchers disbanded. The rebellion was silenced—not by blade or flame, but by contract.
Ellen never spoke to Magnus again. But her granddaughter, Clara Barrow, became one of the first engineers licensed by the Guild.
V. Threads Across the Duchy
Word of the rebellion and its ending spread fast.
Other baronies took notice. Some feared Magnus less; others feared him more.
But none could deny his brilliance.
His looms created textiles ten times faster, exporting Emberhold's name across the kingdom. What had once been a sleepy backwater now competed with the capital's finest tailors.
Merchants flocked to him. Bankers whispered of coin that never slept. Nobles began to sew Magnus-wrought silks into their banners.
And all the while, the Iron Vanguard expanded—not with conquest, but with cloth.
Each bolt of fabric was a soldier. Each spool, a blade.
VI. Beneath the Thread
Still, not all was victory.
Late one night, Helena stormed into Magnus's study.
"You're feeding the world, Magnus," she said, slamming a ledger onto the desk, "but do you even know what it's costing?"
He barely glanced up from his schematics. "Cost is always relative."
"No. It's not. You've made machines smarter than their makers. You've replaced mothers and fathers with pressurized pipes. You're building a world that no longer needs its people."
Magnus leaned back. His eyes gleamed like polished obsidian.
"Then let them become more," he said. "Or be left behind."
Helena stared at him. Then, slowly, she turned and left.
The door shut with a final hiss.
And the machines continued to hum.