NOVEL WEB 113: Inauguration
Rain and Tallheart sat in the two seats of the forgewagon inside an open-roofed garage that screened them from view. Rain wasn't that concerned about people seeing the vehicle, not after he'd realized what Mlem's cart could do, but a private space for working on it had been vital to avoid distractions. It was hard to believe that it hadn't even been five days since he'd pitched the idea to Tallheart. The man wasn't just a smith; he was a certified miracle worker when it came to anything metal.
The forgewagon was a marvel, and it was at once both overcomplicated and not complicated enough. Rain had come up with an elaborate plan of trying to build an actual torque converter, but issues had arisen almost immediately—lack of a suitable transmission fluid, for one. It was on his list for later. Also on the list for later were friction clutches, chain derailleurs, planetary gears, and a whole host of other things that he had a surface understanding of thanks to long hours spent on YouTube, but no practical knowledge of how to build.
The final setup was far from ideal, but with Tallheart's massive strength, it got the job done. In the front of the forgewagon, there were two seats and two sets of pedals connected to the same shaft. In the center, between the seats, there was a large, fixed gear. A heavy chain linked that gear with a similar gear mounted in the back of the forgewagon, driving a shaft with a heavy flywheel. The second gear wasn't fixed. It was instead joined to its axle with a freewheel, a clever ratcheting bearing that made it so the flywheel could keep spinning even if the motors—Tallheart and an unfortunate friend—decided to take a break.
The gear ratio was fixed for now. A manual chain tension lever and a few concentric gears up front would have allowed rudimentary shifting as long as you didn't mind getting your hands greasy, but there simply weren't enough hours in the day. There'd been other problems to solve first. Still, Rain wasn't happy with leaving something undone.
Next came the issue of transferring power from the flywheel to the treads.
The transmission sat behind the driver's seat—transmissions, technically, as there was an independent mechanism for each side. The flywheel's axle turned a pair of fixed wooden drums connected via leather belts to corresponding drums on two independent driveshafts. Each driveshaft drove a wheel that was locked into the treads on that side, finally transferring power to the ground.
To control all of this, the driver had two levers of the ratcheted steampunk variety. When one was pulled, it would tension the drive belt on that side via a third free-spinning wooden drum. Steering was like an RC car. Push the right lever to turn left, push the left lever to turn right, push both to go forward, pull both back to stop.
Eventually.
Brakes were also on the list of things to worry about later.
While it was perfectly functional, the issue with this whole setup was the leather belts. They kept slipping and were also prone to failure. Leather wasn't something they could easily replace outside the city, so they'd have to bring spares. Lots and lots of spares.
Again, there weren't enough hours in the day. Proper friction clutch. On. The. List.
The suspension was perfectly acceptable, Rain felt, prior to any rigorous testing. The driveshafts included universal joints, allowing some degree of travel. There were five wheels inside each tread, with the drive wheel being the one in the middle. Thanks to the leaf springs on each and every axle, there was enough play in the tracks to drive over small rocks, logs, and woodland creatures without any issues. That last obstacle wasn't much of a concern, as nothing with eyes to see and ears to hear was going to miss this thing coming. All-terrain it was; stealth it was not.
Practicality had reared its ugly head as well, and they'd had to cut the size of the smelter to a third of Tallheart's original design, regrettable as it was.
The forgewagon was enormous. The bed was about the size of a normal wagon all on its own, perhaps slightly wider. The seats and all of the mechanics of the drive system took up the space that would have normally been occupied by a pair of horses. The flywheel poked up through the front-right corner of the bed, below a flat shelf that supported the smelter.
The smelter itself had been shrunken slightly and mounted transversely behind the transmission such that the 'asshole' was on the right side of the vehicle and the intake hopper was on the left. All of the smaller outlet valves had been moved to the rear face of the smelter on the right side, ending up just above the anvil. The smelter's left side was now home to a large cubic indentation that pulled double-duty as a firebox and a forge. Taking advantage of the spinning axle right below, they'd added a fan and some ductwork to pump air into it, eliminating the need for bellows. Standing at the back-left corner of the forgewagon's bed, you could work at the anvil with easy access to both the forge and the smelter's valves at your elbow.
The heat wasn't as much of an issue as you'd expect. Tallheart had resistances, obviously, but the metal that the smelter was made from thumbed its nose at thermodynamics, though it needed mana to do it. As long as it was charged, it acted as a sort of one-way insulator, making it much easier for heat to get in than to get out. Rain was currently sitting in the passenger's seat, which put the smelter about a meter behind him, completely full of molten metal. While it was a decidedly warm place to be, it wasn't unbearable. In fact, once they were out in the cold, it would become a feature instead of a bug. Heated seats were a part of the luxury package.
The frame of the forgewagon was made from steel. Pure iron would have been faster for Tallheart to shape, but it lacked the required strength. Force Steel would have had that strength and then some, allowing them to thin the material and thus reduce the weight. They hadn't used it, however. Apart from not having the Crysts to spare, they were trying to keep the full extent of Tallheart's enchanting abilities under wraps. The only enchanted piece was the smelter itself, which was honestly bad enough on its own.
All told, the entire thing was ridiculously Kerbal and more than likely to fall apart at any moment. It was also just so awesome that that didn't matter. If something went wrong, they'd fix it. They'd have the tools to make new parts on the road—that was the whole point of having a forgewagon in the first place. Rain was already thinking about steam power and the potential for integrating the generator. They could add headlights and—stretch goal—a sound system to play Rauta.
That came later, though. For now, there was just one last piece that was needed. Rain turned to Tallheart, who was sitting to his left in the driver's seat. "Ready?"
"Mmm," Tallheart rumbled. Rain could tell that he was excited. Who wouldn't be?
Reaching into a bag sitting below his seat, Rain removed two pairs of mismatched brass goggles. One pair had a leather strap with a buckle that would allow Tallheart to wear them without worrying about his antlers. Rain offered that pair to the smith, grinning. "Here. Our last test failed because we weren't properly attired."
Tallheart blinked, taking the goggles and looking at them curiously. He looked back up at Rain and raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
"It's to complete the look. Come on," Rain pleaded, "I had to look everywhere to find these." He slipped his own goggles on, tightening the leather strap. Eventually, Tallheart huffed and put his on as well. Rain had to fight down an undignified squee. So awesome!
Tallheart snorted in amusement at Rain's expression, then nodded toward the wooden door that hid the rest of the compound from view. "Ready."
"Initiating spin," Rain said excitedly, then began pushing as hard as he could against the pedals. It wasn't easy, especially with his legs already feeling shredded from his morning workout. The flywheel was steel-jacketed lead, and the effective gear ratio from it to the pedals was something like 1:1 at the moment. Myth and Reason had magically refined some lard into a stable high-performance grease, which helped, but the grease itself wasn't magical. Friction and inertia couldn't be ignored.
Things suddenly went from difficult to practically effortless as Tallheart began pedaling on his side. The flywheel rapidly came up to speed, with significantly less judder being transmitted through the frame than there had been last time. It appeared they had fixed the alignment problem. It remained to be seen if the rest of the issues had been resolved as well.
"Jamus!" Tallheart called.
"What?" came a voice from outside the garage. The door opened a crack, and Jamus's head poked through. "Oh, you're ready for another try? Here, let me open it up. Staavo! They're ready!"
"Coming! Wait for me!" Staavo's voice came from the distance.
Tallheart didn't wait. He reached up, grasping both control levers and pushed them forward, tensioning the belts that connected the treads to the flywheel. There was a rough jerk that settled Rain back into his seat as the belts engaged. Where the ratio from pedals to flywheel was 1:1, the ratio from the flywheel to the ground was more like 2:1. As a result, the forgewagon was now moving forward at a slow walking pace.
Rain whooped as Jamus hurried out of the way, clutching his orange hat to his head. The clank of the treads filled the air as the forgewagon cleared the garage. Rain kept pedaling, working with Tallheart to increase their speed as they headed toward the flimsy wall of the compound. Before they got anywhere close to it, Tallheart squeezed the releases and pulled the levers back to the neutral position. The treads kept rolling, but their speed fell off quickly.
"Okay, let's try a turn," Rain said over the clatter of the treads. "Just engage the right one."
Tallheart nodded, pushing the right lever forward. There was another jerk as the belt engaged, and the entire forgewagon started turning left, drawn by the right tread.
"Yes!" Rain shouted. "We have steering!"
Tallheart pushed the left lever forward again, and their course straightened. They were now headed away from the wall. As satisfying as crashing through it would have been, the ability to steer was, arguably, a more important test.
"Gods above, it's actually working!" Jamus exclaimed. There was a growing clamor as everyone dropped whatever they were doing and rushed over, except for Meloni. She was chasing Cloud, who was running about frantically, barking at the mechanical monster attacking the compound.
"Look out!" Rain suddenly shouted, pointing. Dozer had popped up out of a depression in the ground in front of them. The slime was oozing directly at the forgewagon, showing none of Cloud's wariness.
Tallheart quickly pulled the levers back, and their speed dropped. They came to a clanking stop just in time, barely avoiding learning whether a slime could survive being run over by a tank. Rain had to hang onto his seat to avoid being tossed by the bouncing suspension as the heavy vehicle shifted. Right, this thing is dangerous. Brakes first, then seatbelts, and damping for the suspension. Also, FUCK YES!
He cackled maniacally in the mid-morning sun, removing his feet from the pedals and standing unsteadily on the still-bobbing vehicle. He pumped his fist in the air in victory. A sudden impact against the side of his breastplate made him look down, and his smile grew even wider when he saw Tallheart offering him his closed fist in a familiar gesture. He bumped Tallheart's fist with his own, grinning from ear to ear.
Eight hours later, Tallheart was still working on the forgewagon, running more tests and ironing out (ha!) issues as he found them. He wasn't radically changing anything, though, as the plan was to leave first thing tomorrow. Staavo and Jamus were helping him, as well as Ameliah, who, apart from being the only other person who could really pedal the machine for any length of time, had also taken an interest in how it worked. Once she'd seen it running, she'd started peppering Rain with questions, delighting him with the reversal of roles.
Rain sighed, looking away from his friends and slumping down to sit on a crate. I wish I could just spend the rest of the day working on it too.
Unfortunately, as the newly-elected captain of the company, he had work to do, namely, making sure that everything was in order for their departure. First on that list was himself. His full status popped up in front of him with the barest exertion of will.
|
Richmond Rain Stroudwater
</center> <p align="center" style="margin-bottom: 0"> </p> <p align="center" style="margin-bottom: 0">Vitals</p> <center> <div style="max-width: 100%; overflow:auto">
</center> <p align="center" style="margin-bottom: 0"> </p> <p align="center" style="margin-bottom: 0">Dark Revenant's Armor</p> <center> <div style="max-width: 100%; overflow:auto">
</center> <p align="center" style="margin-bottom: 0"> </p> <p align="center" style="margin-bottom: 0">Attributes</p> <center> <div style="max-width: 100%; overflow:auto">
</center> <p align="center" style="margin-bottom: 0"> </p> <p align="center" style="margin-bottom: 0">Resistances</p> <center> <div style="max-width: 100%; overflow:auto">
</center> <p align="center" style="margin-bottom: 0"> </p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table>
It had been a long five days since the rescue mission and confrontation with Rankin. In addition to being incredibly busy with company business, Rain had made a specific point of setting aside two full hours to exercise every morning, and another two for meditation every night. Consequently, he hadn't been getting enough sleep, but it wasn't like he was sleeping well to begin with. When he closed his eyes, the memories were there. He was going to need time—something that he never seemed to have enough of. Early on in his training, Rain had come to the bitter realization that his initial gains had only been so fast because of how much room he had to improve. That had only spurred him on to train even harder, desperate to hold the pace. Results were mixed, and while Ameliah said that his rate of physical improvement was typical, Rain hadn't been happy to hear it. Typical wasn't good enough. Scanning his status, he didn't see so much as a single point of difference from when he'd checked it a few hours ago. Rain sighed, closing the window and taking a long drink from his waterskin. His gaze traveled over the piled supplies around him, though the sight barely even registered, so lost was he in thought. As he was in the relative safety of the city, his training focus was on tolerance for Recovery and Vigor. He didn't have much use for large health and stamina pools right now, so Strength and Endurance were getting synchronization training instead. If he improved his tolerance for the secondary stats first, that would increase his regeneration. More regeneration meant more training. More training meant faster improvement. At the moment, he'd decided to keep his Strength at a resting buff of ten. He could have gone lower, but while the city was safe enough, four hundred health was already pushing it. He wouldn't want to get hurt falling down a flight of stairs, for example. There were other reasons for keeping the stat low as well. Boosting Strength also made him stronger. In addition to being a contender for the 'obvious statement of the year' award, this also meant training became more problematic. At 6.6 effective Strength, Rain already felt superhuman compared to his past self. Going higher just meant he had to do even more pushups. He was already doing enough. Some would say too many, but after his experience with the obelisk, the normal pain of sore muscles was hardly worth mentioning. His training sessions were just as intense as those he'd subjected himself to while he'd been trapped underground. The rule was to keep going until his body physically gave up, then to refresh himself with the ring and keep going, stopping only when soulstrain started to set in. He'd slowly recover over the rest of the day, abusing the ring to make sure that he never hit his cap on any resource. Rain snorted and took another swig of water. Always. Be. Regenerating. People had started looking at him strangely, but he didn't care. He wasn't abusing potions this time, at least. If he'd wanted to, he could have gone even harder, pushing through the soulstrain. Unfortunately, he needed to be at least somewhat functional. Wobbling around on jelly legs all morning was bad enough. It would be hard to take care of the preparations for departure if he couldn't even move. Even with all that work, the results were disappointing. Over the past few days, he'd only earned himself nine Recovery tolerance, eight Vigor tolerance, four percent Strength synchronization, and two percent Endurance synchronization. It wasn't enough. If his progress kept slowing down, he wasn't sure what he was going to do. For Endurance, anyway, the gains seemed to be tied to his resistances somehow. A few of the awakened he'd talked to—though he'd yet to find anyone that even approached being expert on the subject—had said that damaging himself might help. Punching hot sand, maybe? Rain shook his head, clearing away the half-remembered flash of some random kung-fu movie. Vigor training still came first. As for his mental stats, Clarity was the name of the game. He'd been boosting it as much as he could every night, despite the fact that it kicked his mind into overdrive and made his sleep even more restless. It hardly mattered with as tired as he was each night, and he wanted his armor fully-charged, especially after the incident with the Razorspine. There was no excuse for slacking off. He'd finally gotten the durability to max and was steadily working on filling the capacitance rune. All of his questionably-restful power-sleeping had earned him twenty-three points of Clarity tolerance—proof positive that Dynamo made training his mind easier. It had also gotten him a rank-up of Mana Manipulation, which was now creeping toward the cap, something that he had mixed feelings about. On one hand, Ameliah said max-level Mana Manipulation would reveal a bunch of hidden skills. On the other hand, it was his last skill. Once it was rank ten, that was it until he found a high-level blue, and there was no telling how long that would take. The promise of hidden skills even made it worse, in some ways. It wasn't like he'd be able to get any of them. Focus… Focus could take a hike. A bigger mana pool did nothing for him, and the tiny boost to his damage output wasn't worth sacrificing regeneration. Besides, thanks to the ring, he could get that benefit anyway just by dumping points into Focus right before using a spell, then taking them out again when he was done. He'd tried automating that using a macro but found that while he could script his own skills as much as he wanted, controlling an item was different. It was tied in with bonds, and—though this was somewhat speculation—the damage to his paling. The paling was the interface between his soul and the outside world, after all. Rain yawned, not yet noticing that he'd forgotten why he'd come over here in the first place. Thinking about his soul had turned his thoughts to the subject of bonds. He kicked his feet against the side of the crate idly as he stared vaguely in the direction of Dozer, following the connection between himself and the slime. Linksight was still broken outside of soulspace, despite his efforts to fix it. The bond with Dozer was the only one that he could truly interact with out here in any real sense. That wasn't even linksight when it came down to it. His slime-whisperer powers came from something inherent to the nature of the pet-bond. Of course, that, too, was dysfunctional. Rina gets an interface for her slime. Why don't I? Damn paling. Rain sighed, picking at a splinter of wood on the top of the crate. His broken soul was making things difficult. All he got from linksight out here were flashes. When something accessed a bond strongly, he'd get a flicker of awareness in his mind—plus a headache, eventually. The awareness wasn't even enough to identify what had happened, only that something had. It was a far cry from what he'd had in soulspace, but amazingly, it was only mostly useless. For example, something in his brain had twitched violently when he'd received his custodian's plate. That had been linksight's way of telling him that the plate had bound itself to him, though he hadn't realized that until after he'd had Tallheart examine the thing later. The enchantment on the plate was threefold, yet harmless. It was just a permanent binding rune, a unique identifier rune, and an ambient mana rune to power the other two. It wasn't a homing beacon or anything. Tallheart said that a real tracking enchantment like the one Rain had been afraid of was impossible, and he trusted Tallheart when it came to these things. The issue was distance, Tallheart had said. Still, harmless as the plate was, Rain would have liked to have known about the self-binding enchantment before opening the box. Setting that small annoyance aside, he found his thoughts dragged back to linksight. The major revelation there was that it didn't just work on items. It also worked on people—specifically, people in his party. Whenever someone joined or left, he'd get the faintest flicker of awareness, still without any meaning other than the fact that something had happened. He was hoping that it would one day let him do cool things such as summoning the party interface while not in a lair, or creating a macro trigger based on party-member status. At the moment, it did none of that, despite his efforts. It had given him a bit more information about how parties worked, though. Parties were weird. Rain flared Winter with Aura Focus for a second and concentrated, dragging a few scattered memories to the front of his mind. ["Val, Samson, I'm going slime hunting near the barricade. Want to come?" *Twitch* *Twitch* Party.] ["Hey guys. Still working on the suspension? I've got a few minutes. Want some help?" *Twitch* *Twitch* *Twitch* Party.] ["Vanna, I'm going to go see Khurt about the ration bars. Want to come? No? Okay, I'll help you finish this later, then." *Twitch* No more party.] Rain let Aura Focus fade, exhaling a breath that only felt like it should have fogged the air. The memories were clear, but it was just so strange. The world—or the system or whatever—somehow knew what everyone's intentions were. In essence, if you were working with someone on something, you'd automatically get grouped up, provided that there were eight people or less involved. Why eight? Nobody seemed to know. That was just the way it was. Just one more thing for the pile. Depths, I'm getting distracted…and I'm thinking in common again. With an effort, Rain switched his thoughts back to English. Fuck off, mind readers. I need to get me a Magneto helmet or learn how to boobytrap my soul or something. I've got some heavy ordnance packed away… I wonder if I can weaponize my trauma? Rain chuckled, but his mirth didn't last. The damage to his soul still wasn't healing. As amusing as it was to picture a mentalist getting obliterated by one of his memories, he was fully aware that he had some serious issues. Meditation helped with most of them, but only temporarily. He needed a more permanent solution. Fortunately, his continued efforts to access his soul each night had borne fruit. Two nights ago, he'd managed to tolerate the tumultuous insanity for a full second instead of being immediately hurled back into his body. He had yet to be able to repeat the feat, but the mere fact that he'd done it was proof that progress was possible. It gave him hope. The chaos in his soul was…difficult to describe. It wasn't pain. It also wasn't color, sound, smell, or even something intangible like emotion. The closest sensation that Rain could think of was the experience of tipping back slightly too far in a chair—that sudden flash of utter certainty that you were going to die. It was like that, except much, much worse, and not nearly so narrowly defined. It was as if the entire logical underpinning of reality had been shredded and thrown into constant flux. The more he thought about such things, the more questions he had about what the soul actually was. It couldn't be his consciousness. If it were, he'd have been a complete drooling potato, not just slightly scatterbrained from time to time. Likewise, it couldn't be his system-self. His skills worked fine, which wouldn't be the case if they were all twisted up in that insanity. Solving the mystery wasn't going to be easy. His memories of freshman year covered physics, not metaphysics. Rain sighed. Of course, there was always the possibility that the chaotic realm that he was trying to enter wasn't even his soul in the first place. His intuition told him that it was, but intuition wasn't something you should be trusting when it came to these things. He needed help, but the only person so far who'd offered was the reason he'd been thinking about a Magneto helmet. That was not an option. With a groan, Rain rubbed at his temples. He could feel a real ripper of a headache building, but he had too much to do to just go lie down in a dark room, not that there was any darkness to be found in Fel Sadanis. The company wasn't going to manage itself. Rain lowered his hands, looking around at the toiling workers as he admonished himself for getting distracted. There were approximately two hundred people inside the compound now, though only a fraction of those had joined the company itself. The rest were those who wanted to help but were unwilling or unqualified to join. In addition to not being an asshole, anyone who came with them would need to be able to defend themselves and travel for days on end through difficult terrain. To that end, he'd set up something of a test. Anyone who wanted to join had to fight Carten's Aunt Mazel. They didn't need to win, mind. It was more of a test for bravery than anything else, though they did need to get her approval. Mazel herself wasn't coming. Rain would have been happy to have her along, despite the fact that her injuries would make things difficult. There were others for whom exceptions had been made. Mazel was an experienced fighter, and more importantly, disciplined. She'd had long years of experience as a merchant's guard, and she knew how to take orders and how to give them, a skill that was in short supply. Nevertheless, she didn't want to come. She'd agreed to help him screen applicants, but that was it. Rain clicked his tongue, then summoned the beta-version of his word processor, which really wasn't much more than his terminal plus buttons for bold, underline, and italic, though he hadn't gotten the last one to work yet. He spent a moment digging through his disordered mind for the specific memory he wanted, then slotted it into the display.
|