I apologize, as I'm not always clear when I'm starting things out:
From a chargen perspective, I would treat this a a regular dnd world, eg, not steampunk. I guess I was hesitant to say that before, as I kind of wanted it to be part of a reveal, but I can trust you all to RP properly. When you wake up, your characters find themselves in a world with technology you don't recognize (well, you have amnesia, so you don't recognize anything really, but some things will be more familiar than others).
Some of the ideas presented so far, like automatons were interesting, as they actually play into the storyline I'm building. I'm not saying you have to play them, just saying that if this was a regular DnD world, and you decided to play an automaton, that'd be fine; I'd be providing you details on your automaton-ness.