The Hundredfold Sybil was the first and only attempt by the Artificer of Graves' workshop to produce a 'thinking engine', and an extremely ambitious one at that. The design was simple: The question to be ask would be translated into Typesetter's Cant, and then inputted on a keyboard at the rear of machine. The machine would become active, with distinctive noises indicating electric and mechanical activity within it, for several minutes, after which one, two, or three of the 100 lights on the front of the machine would light up. Each of these lights corresponded to either one of the Sixty-seven Truths, one of the Seven High Virtues, one of the Seven Deadly Vices, one of the Ten Sacred Animals, or one of nine simple answers ("Yes", "No", "Maybe", "Ask again later", "You're asking the wrong question", "You don't really want to know", "Does it really matter?", "That's a good question", and "Sugar") After this, the operator (usually St. Pertempuran during the heyday of the device) would interpret the combination as it relates to the original question.

For example, in one well-photographed session, General Leontalos consulted the oracle over which of his lieutenants should be promoted to a lesser Generalship, guarding the eastern border, and the Sybil lit up "Yes", "Attachment", and the 35th Truth, "If you cut off his nose, a hog will never find a truffle. Nor should we mortify the senses that lead us to the Great God who is sweeter than any truffle." St. Pertempuran interpreted this to mean that the generalship should go to the candidate who had grown up in the east and had familiarity and contacts in the region.

After St. Pertempuran died, the quality of the oracles produced by the Sybil seemed to decline dramatically, with lesser operators unable to weave the answer lights into a reasonable answer to the question more and more often. With the device's creator deceased by this time, other engineers from the workshop were called in to inspect and repair it, but they got no further than the first step, refusing to even speak of what they had seen within. Eventually a rumor began to spread that one of those engineers, while in her cups, had blurted out that the Sybil was not in fact a Thinking Engine at all but that which lights went on when was purely a matter of chance. This made oracles from the Sybil even more desired, rather than less.

Over the next few years, an interesting fact was noted about the Sybil and it's oracles: while all of the other lights, over the long run, appeared, although in wildly-differing frequencies, the light corresponding to the Nineteenth Truth had never, in the memory of anyone that could be found, lit up. Students of the Sybil eventually succeeded in petitioning the temple to have the bulb replaced, after which the Sybil was asked if that was any better. After a gut-wrenching sound of metal scraping and sparks flying, the Sybil lit up the Nineteenth Truth light, along with "temperment" and "Starfish", after which it never functioned again, and was thus melted down for the value of the metals within within a year.

See Also:

Artificer of Graves

Chance

General Leontalos

Nineteenth Truth

Sixty-seven Truths

Sugar