I first came across the story of the mechanical head as a throwaway reference in an issue of the [ ftp://theory.lcs.mit.edu/pub/people/wald/sandman/sandman.22 Sandman] where an immortal compared computers to Bacon's head, in a dream, of course.
These photos came from [some sort art project], but provided me with odd visions of what a clockwork beasts might look like. Perhaps they work better for the Chancel inhabitants, though.
"Poets do not go mad; but chess players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination." -G.K. Chesterton
My imagination of what my character looks like when Guised as a normal person:
[Retrograde motion of the planets]. This is an astronomical phenomena where a planet appears, from an earthly perspective, to travel backward along its orbit for a time. It's caused by the relative motion of the earth along its orbit, but it caused a lot of problems for geocentric astronomers in the past.
I choose it because it is a regular, predictable phenomena that seems impossible at first, but with further examination reveals greater truths.
Red gold, an alloy of gold and copper, representing my mechanical heritage and the divine spark intermingled.
A tortoise. Methodical, careful, immortal.
A warm, fuzzy grey. #878787 in html, for example. Reserved, steadfast and unthreatening.
[Nabu], Babylonian patron of scribes and knowledge. He who watches over all learning and thought. [Prometheus] minus the "rebel god" schtick, and hopefully minus the ["chained to a rock while birds repeatedly eat your liver"] bit as well.
[Bertrand Russel], I think (if he is sufficiently famous). Concerned with logic both in mathematical and philosophical forms.
Thought. Particularly solitary introspection on the logical results of your own beliefs. The Buddha sitting [under the Bo tree], and the physicist deriving cosmological equations are equally representative.
[Euclid's Elements]: possibly the most elegant construction of abstract thought ever, it is as representative of humanity's ability to create beauty on earth as any work of the visual or performing arts. If one would debate its status as a work of art, then likely a fractal image (being a complex image generated from a few simple starting points). [The Mandelbrot set], perhaps.
Deception. The use of doubt and cunning argument to make your opponent doubt oneself, or to make millions follow your every whim is a subtler and deadlier weapon than any knife or bomb.
Other than a mechanical head constructed by a medieval alchemist? A machine in which you put coffee in one end and mathematical theorems come out the other (as [Paul Erdos] [defined a mathematician]).
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