Among the Felt's many clocks, a magic timepiece
connected to conditional immortality is a central item in Doc Scratch's apartment.
Concept and creation[]
The clock itself is a grandfather clock, green in color like the rest of Doc Scratch's upholstery and decorated with varying cherubic imagery; compared to the original stock image, the wings of the angelic humanoids on the crown of the clock have been greatly enlarged and the heads of lions on the side have been replaced with the heads of crocodiles. A screen or container between the two angels shows the rotating Skaia, and flanked by a pair of snake-legged Echidna-like women, also present on the original clock (though their human faces, as with the angels on the crown, have been obscured), an opening or window shows the clock's pendulum, topped with a magic cue ball as a weight, possibly contributing to the clock's divining attributes.
Function[]
Normally the face of the clock resembles a regular clock face. When a god tier hero is killed, however, the clock's true purpose is revealed; the face is split into two horizontal halves, decorated in the colors of Derse on the left and Prospit on the right, and with the deceased hero's symbol in the middle. Rather than a traditional clock, the pendulum swings a single hand between these two halves, causing the clock to glow alternatingly with purple and golden energy; if the hero's death is just, it will fall on the left side, and if it is heroic, it will fall on the right. If the death is ruled to be neither, however, the hand will land directly in the middle, and the clock will pulsate with the same rainbow energy that accompanies the hero's revival and that “perme8[s] all those endowed with immortality”.
It is left deliberately ambiguous as to whether the clock itself magically decides a god's fate, or if it merely keeps track of a natural process, as a typical clock keeps track of time. During the process of Vriska Serket's ruling, Spades Slick attacks the clock with the Crowbar - you mean the crowbar - and in its skewed state, the pendulum appears stuck on the just side. As discussed by Andrew Hussie, it is impossible to know whether this forced Vriska into dying a just death, preventing her from potentially receiving a neutral ruling, or if Vriska would have died regardless, Slick's attack merely obscuring the result from onlookers. Hussie also suggests that the clock may be "enchanted" in a way that can be negated by the crowbar, in which case the clock, or perhaps the attached magic cue ball, would be a juju.
The matter is complicated by Caliborn's destruction of the clock in Act 7. After his defeat of Yaldabaoth, when Caliborn gained both the clock and the ultimate weapon, he is said to have received “the 8oon of unconditional immortality, where resurrection would not 8e linked with the just or heroic nature of death”; whether his destruction of the clock is merely symbolic of this, or if the rush of rainbow energy that came to him immediately afterwards and later manifested in “MAGIC RAINBOW EYES” was literally the cause of his “DOMINANT INVINCIBILITY”, is not explicitly clear. Regardless, the clock seems to have a special connection to Caliborn and Lord English, flashing with rainbow energy as Doc Scratch undergoes his transformation, causing the attached magic cue ball to break.
Spades Slick enters the clock and comes out the other side.
One special trait of the clock unrelated to its measurement of death is that it acts as a kind of double or gateway to a server in the Furthest Ring, where code relating to Lord English's birth was stored. The connection between English's summoning and the clock (see History below) presumably has something to do with English's immortality; however, it could also relate to the ~ATH language in which the code was written, which uses the death of organisms to execute functions.
History[]
Seemingly a symbol of Yaldabaoth himself, the clock first "chronologically" appears is in Collide, sitting at the end of a pathway as one of two rewards for the denizen's defeat. In its following appearance in Act 7, Caliborn removes the pendulum and snaps it in two before proceeding to break the whole clock apart with his crowbar, causing rainbow energy to flood his body in through his eyes and mouth.
The clock then next appears in Doc Scratch's apartment, where it rules on the deaths of John and Vriska before being attacked by Spades Slick with a crowbar, in retaliation for which Doc Scratch books Slick in the face. It is next seen in Intermission 2, reacting to Doc Scratch's transformation into Lord English. After the destruction of the tower, along with the rest of the two universes used to ignite the Green Sun, it seemed to return to acting as a mostly normal clock, save for containing a doorway through which Slick and the the Felt were able to escape.
A stroke of luck.
Later on in the story, though seemingly prior in Alternia's timeline to the destruction of the cue ball pendulum, the clock also weighed in on the death of Jade Harley, ruling it just. Again it is unclear whether Aranea Serket was literally able to manipulate the outcome of Jade's death by manipulating the clock, or if it truly was a “Lucky 8r8k!!!!!!!!” that the pendulum stopped on the left side. The difference between these two possibilities, however, is also nebulous; and either option implies that, counterintuitively, there is an element of chance to the outcome of a hero's death.