Clock Town (Clocktown)

Clock Town (also known as Clocktown) is the de facto capital city and center of culture and learning for the Levels of Poorthwart, and is located on Level 3.

Description
Clock Town occupies the Eastern half of Level 3, and gets its name from the fact that almost every single building in the town bears at least one prominent clock. Because of Clock Town's Poorthwart-wide reach, the clocks may tell different times based on what the time is in a particular location.

The classic Clock Town building resembles a traditional clock tower or obelisk in shape, and is four-sided with a pointed top and a clock on each of its four faces. Over the years, more complicated buildings were designed to meet updated needs, but retained the clock motif. One example is the Old Guild, the center of student life and study in the university. The top of this building is highly jagged, and contains numerous small bodies of water, which were used by the students in olden days to calculate information about the Sea of Ships without having to venture into its dangerous waters.

As Clock Town continued to develop, newer buildings ditched the clock motif altogether, so long as they had some element of measurement or precision to them. For example, Bariius Hall, the center of Astronomy on Poorthwart (and the primary building in which Tyco Brahe studied while in school) has no clock at all, and instead holds the most important astronomical instrument in all of Poorthwart: the Bariius. Keeping with the design motifs of the time, the crown of the hall's roof contains a decorative wave and rain pool, to link it to the Old Guild's design.

History
Clock Town was founded by Olinianayat the Smooth in ancient times. A knight of Poorthwart, Olinianayat lived a life of violence and war until one day finding himself, like so many others, called through fate to the cave of the Oracle Drear. Faced with the choice between renouncing violence or continuing it, he became the first visitor to the cave to choose to go forward in peace, and he threw his armor and weapons into a deep hole, where they remain to this day. As of the events of Poorthwart: The Cataclysm, he is the only of the thousands of visitors to the cave to make this choice.

Clocks were chosen as the focus of the town due to the infamous indifference Poorthwart's citizens have about the passage of time. Even historical records do not properly record this, and the unusual length of nights versus days further complicate the matter. It was the hope of the builders that having clocks everywhere could help to turn this tide.

Clock Town was the location of Poorthwart's most prominent university, and likewise the business center of the four Levels, until its destruction shortly after the Cataclysm by an unknown force. The sole survivors of the destruction were the Vain Men, the leaders of Clock Town.