I met a haughty, oddly alliterative gnome by the name of Blantsworth Coggington III who vehemently relayed to me his moral outrage regarding my treatment of the erratic clockworks just outside Gnomeland Security. To appease him, I've agreed to save those clockworks in a very unconventional (and somewhat controversial) way: by incapacitating them and installing new tinkered brains to give them emulated sentience.
Create 5 tinkered clockwork brains. Scribe the Tinkered Clockwork Brain Blueprints that Blantsworth gave you. This is a Tinkering skill level 50 recipe so we suggest picking up Tinkering from the nearby trainer and the ability counters from the merchant to make it easier. To make all three combines (yields 2 per combine) you'll need to use the following on a Work Bench:
These clockworks are also used for the Great Balls of Fire quest so you may have to range out a bit further if others are working on that quest.
Each clockwork has its own fun and unique dialogue that it goes through!
Return to Blantsworth and show him the clockwork that is following you around. This will complete the quest.
I attempted to "save" several erratic clockworks, but the tinkered brains I installed mostly caused further malfunctions. One of the clockworks, however, followed me back to Blantsworth, where I discovered that the schematics he gave me for the tinkered clockwork brains were actually copies of his own brain. He kept that clockwork for his own personal, somewhat disturbing use, but gave me one of his prototype sentient clockworks in thanks. I'm not sure how this psychotic little thing could benefit me, however...