Look, I've already been scarred for life after coming across Padme savoring JarJar Binks meat stick on google images when I was 9 so I would rather not.
Rome, having reached a steam-powered industrial period, spread across the world as a dominating power once again. Skip ahead to the Medieval era and clockwork machines have become commonplace. Though one day, solar flares begin striking the earth repetitively.
These flares sent waves of electricity through the earth and activates defenses placed by more advanced civilizations of the past. Some of these defenses took the form of mechs and began to attack at random. With no other way to defend themselves, some of the humans banded together to craft clockwork mechs of their own to defend themselves.