Original Post: https://kjworldsong.wordpress.com/2019/09/03/concerning-coggles/
Coggles are the smallest of the "humanoid" races that inhabit the Rossberan continent. Much like lavkins, votrels, and druorns, they are non-ape monkeys, but coggles are too distantly related to interbreed with the other three. They are very small, with adults typically standing at 61 cm (24 in) tall. They are also covered in brown fur of various shades, aside from their faces and chests (though adult males have fur on their chests as well). They have large, round ears, giving them an appearance reminiscent of Cheburashka, possibly the most famous Russian cartoon character. They also really like oranges, which is the reason that the second and third largest populations of Rossberan coggles are found in Breace and Southern Karaden, which are warm and humid for half the year. The majority of Rossberan coggles, however, live in Arcadia, though they make up a much smaller percentage of the population than in Breace.
Below: coggle character templates
Here is an adult male coggle compared to an adult male chuyinka (specifically, Adya Redmane):
Despite their adorable appearance, the life of a typical coggle is not at all like any of Cheburashka's cute adventures; The Nine Empires is grimdark, after all. Coggles tend to have very large families, and couples with a dozen children are not uncommon, though most have between four and eight. However, given their unfortunate status in most societies, the majority of coggles do not live long enough to reproduce. Outside of Bulmut, which tends to have a culture of multi-species tolerance, owing to the large population of dwarves, most societies treat coggles as second-class citizens or worse. Arcadia is, easily, the worst example of this. Despite the fact that slavery has been outlawed everywhere on Rossbera for over a century by the time that this story takes place, coggles are classified as animals in Arcadia, can be bought and sold like livestock, and are effectively no better off than slaves. This unfortunate fact was reflected in Arcadian technology, which was several decades behind that of Bulmut - allow me to go off on a tangent for a while.
Mechanical devices and factories alike require a tremendous amount of maintenance. More advanced technology allows that maintenance to be performed by fewer people. I could go on for several pages about the history of technology and how its design reflects the mindset of industry and society at large, particularly when it comes to hugely contrasting numbers of people required to operate similar systems in different times and places, but I won't do that now. Instead, I shall provide one specific example. Machines, such as steam engines, have many moving parts that require lubrication. In Bulmut, the approach was to incorporate a system of tubes connected to easily-accessible oil cups, such that the entire machine could be lubricated from a single location, and neither stopping nor opening up the machine was necessary. However, the Arcadian approach was to simply have coggles crawl into the tight spaces with oil cans, and hope that none of them got ground into a bloody pulp in the process. It certainly made machines simpler, since they didn't have a system of lubrication tubes connected to lots of little oil cups (which have springs, hinges, and the occasional sight-glass), but it also meant that machine operators needed to buy lots of coggles to maintain them. In short, the Bulmutian Method was to improve machines and systems to increase the throughput with the same number of people, whereas the Arcadian Method was the exact opposite.
Coggles tend to be very docile, and coupled with their small size, meant that there was nothing they could or would do about their position in society. However, not everywhere was as bad as Arcadia. In neighbouring Breace, clockmakers and other skilled craftsmen typically employed whole families of coggles to help them with simple, repetitive tasks. The exact nature of this "employment" varied wildly, with some clockmakers having multiple shops staffed entirely by coggles, such that customers might never see the clockmaker himself. Tailors frequently had a similar arrangement, with several coggles appearing out of seemingly nowhere upon being summoned to take measurements, which they would record all at once before the customer had enough time to ask what was happening.
The strangest social dynamic involving coggles is on the continent of Khandar, however. There, coggles actually make up the majority of the population. Khandarian technology was far behind Rossberan technology overall, but some types of mechanical devices were far more complex, and technology was heading in a very different direction anyway. However, coggles didn't develop any of it. Khandarian technology was developed by either druorns or black dwarves, which formed complex mechanics' guilds that behaved somewhat like monasteries. Study of mechanical principles was considered the highest calling, and mechanical inventors were beheld with almost religious reverence. Coggles would frequently make pilgrimages from their villages to the mechanics' guilds and return with sufficient knowledge to fully mechanise their hometowns. Agriculture became highly automated on Khandar, and also technologically advanced, with many cities making use of aquaponic terraces. Khandarian cities were typically self-contained and self-governing, owing to a lack of roads or anything else in between settlements. They had to be, considering that most of Khandar was nothing more than bare rock. I will probably go into more detail about the mechanic's guilds at a later date, since it ends up being a significant part of the plot in the last two books.
Below: a coggle mechanic
Aside from what I mentioned in the last paragraph, I have no idea how I'm going to include the coggles in my story. None of the POV characters are coggles, and neither clockmakers' shops nor haberdasheries are common settings. Bookstores are, so that's a possibility. I'll figure something out.
Shameless self-promotion:
Shapeways:
https://www.shapeways.com/designer/steampunkkaja
WordPress:
https://kjworldsong.wordpress.com/