"By the Smith, what is that bulbous oaf doing on my bridge!?", rings out in an enormous voice as Bombor struggles over the rickety bridge towards the rest of you.
The voice booms out of a stone building flying the same red flag with a gold $ on it that you saw in the tower on the beach. The building sits on a slight rise next to the river in a clearing, surrounded by five slightly smaller stone buildings.
A short but broad figure with a beard even larger than the voice stamps out of the central building, apparently the voice's owner. It's a dwarf. He carries a large metal wrench of some kind which he hefts meaningfully. He wears a leather apron without a shirt, is covered with grease and dirt, and is sweating even harder than the heat warrants.
"That bridge wasn't built for you fool imperials, I keep telling you!", he bellows, eying Dane and his strategically misplaced bits of armor. "About time you got here! We've been waiting. We need the manpower! Can't run the Smith without it!"
Clearly disgusted, the dwarf turns around on his heel and stamps back into the central building. You can see him descending some stairs as he enters; the building is just the cap on an excavation down into the stony riverbank. "Heave! HEAVE!" you hear him bellow. This is followed by groans and muffled curses, and the clanking, creaking sound of big machinery of some kind issues from the door, as smoke starts to billow from a chimney in the roof.
He sticks his head out the door again, and bellows even louder, over the din of the machinery, "WELL?" Sheepishly, all of you head into the doorway behind the receding figure of the irate dwarf. Chip quietly perches on the lip of the chimney, inhaling the smoke as if he likes it.
The interior of the building seems bigger than it ought to be. The building seen from the outside is just a cap on an excavated hole maybe sixty feet deep. As your eyes adjust to the torchlit gloom, and your ears to the clanking noise, you see the machine that sits in the middle of the hole.
The dwarf is off on the far side of the space, yelling at a larger figure with a whip in its hand. Near them are several men in rags chained to the arms of a capstan (a vertical bar with horizontal handles that stick out at waist height to push on). They plod in circles. Perhaps this is what makes the machine go. There is another capstan near them with nobody on it, and it has no chains.
Torchlight flares off of rods, cranks, gears, chains, and hammers made of brass, bronze, iron and possibly steel. One long arm, or tube, plunges into the ground. A spout produces a steady stream of what looks like gold, which falls into an upended spout below it. And a belt of some kind coming out of the machine towards you bears nothing but a series of small spheres, in diameter about the breadth of a woman's hand, which glitter in the torchlight, but a little too much. They seem to be glowing a bit. Another dwarf snatches each sphere up as it emerges from the machine, polishes it with a dirty rag, and holds it up to turn it in a shaft of daylight from a hole in the roof to examine it with a squinted eye. You see a small, curious reptilian head silhouetted in the hole in the roof, but the dwarf doesn't notice.
He yells to the other dwarf with the big voice, "Get that other capstan moving, or we'll never finish this order. I TOLD the commander to send men. Get 'em moving!"
The dwarfs look expectantly at your party. The one with the big voice points at the empty capstan as the man with the whip urges on the other one.
4 comments:
Dane
My curiosity is piqued and I walk over to pick up one of the spheres. As my hand nears, I can tell they are incredibly hot. I snatch my hand away and then eye the dwarf who is holding a sphere with no apparent problem.
In turn, the dwarf eyes me. "By the Smith!" he thunders, "Are you deaf? Get cranking!"
I center myself and enter the pose of the corpulent merchant.
"In spite of my armor, we're not Imperials, and at this point we have no interest in helping you complete your order. But I wouldn't mind a glass of water. I'm parched. Is there a fountain around here?"
The dwarf's mouth drops open and he looks at me as if I have grown a third eye.
I continue. "However, even if water is not available, we might be persuaded to help in exchange for.... perhaps some decent clothes and a trip off this island with some valuable trade goods?"
With this statement, I eye the spheres meaningfully.
The dwarf's mouth closes into a tight line, and his knuckles whiten on the sphere he is holding.
Twix -
I'm starting to think that I've ended up with a bunch of clowns. What is he thinking? Does that kind of thing ever actually work? The dwarf looks furious. There only seem to be two of them, but that's misleading. Dwarf culture is extremely subterranean and there could be bolt holes all over this workshop. Chip would be of limited help, since Dwarf skin is heat-resistant. He could distract one or two of them, but that would be about it.
Then there's that -- thing -- with the whip. It's not human, and it's certainly not a dwarf. If anything, it looks like someone took a werewolf and shaved it. Large, muscled, pink and scarred with a long face with way too many teeth in a mouth that could probably snap up a dwarf whole.
It's clearly magically bound. There's no way it'd would take the kind of verbal abuse the dwarfs are giving it.
Dane continues to enrage the dwarf. I look at Gepetto and then look meaningfully over at the chained prisoners. I hope he gets my meaning. I try to remember how to break magical enchantments. There are eighty five known ways to bind a being to your will.
Then my eyes hit the orbs. I've seen something that they remind me of. Something recently. It's like a dream, but something about spheres... something about ... souls.
I moment of joy runs through me, followed by despair. I don't know how to do it consciously.
I start muttering through enchantment breaking spells.
Twix shows promise. He has noticed the fine Dwarven craftsmanship too. I thought I was the only one who appreciated it, but he looked from me to the pump knowingly.
I don’t know much about Dwarf history as it relates to their mechanics, but I’d judge this to be around 1900-2000 years old. From the Tremul epoch? The serpent inlay decorating the flywheels and gears are indicative of the all encompassing fear of the dragon menace which threatened sentient life at the time. Everyone had dragons on their mind then.
The slow trickle of golden liquid coming out of the massive pump which is the subject of all this attention… hrm? What is it? All this energy for not much more then drops slowly filling a 1/8th full glass carboy sitting below the spigot?
And then it dawns on me. Holy smokes. I can’t believe it. It would seem the guard wasn’t lying to me after all.
My precious time observing the wonderful machinery seems to be at end. Dane’s negotiations with the long bearded dwarf seem to have broken down miserably, because the dwarf is charging him with his impressive hammer drawn. The cobalt with the whip departs from the pathetic slave laborers and rushes Heflam and Bombor. It occurs to me that I should be more impressed, I’ve never seen a cobalt before. I’m both intrigued and petrified at the same time. If I live through this, I think I’ll write a song about cobalt’s. Maybe a speed-waltz?
Coincidentally, Twix appears to be singing folks songs to himself, when suddenly the orb in the non-hammer-hand of the dwarf rushing Dane zooms across the room and whacks Twix in the skull… knocking him unconscious to the ground instantaneously. Dane takes advantage of the surprised Dwarf by jigging left and disarming him while planting his elbow firmly in the base of the dwarf’s skull. I can see his eyes roll as his momentum carries him forward as his legs fail to move. He goes down like a chopped timber.
“Run” I yell.
Unfortunately, this seems to distract Dane just enough that he trips backwards and falls flat on his back between Heflam, Bombor and the oncoming cobalt… who promptly trips on the barely clothed swordsman and subsequently falls face first in front of his prey. Bombor deftly kneels down and with a swift motion twists the cobalt’s chin 180 degrees. The sound of snapping is sickening.
The second dwarf is the only being here to heed my advice. He has fled.
I step over to the now stopped pump and easily pick the lock that binds the men to the pump. They don’t even thank me as they flee out the same exit as the dwarf.
I say to everyone as I grab the glass jar, “We should probably get out of here too before something else happens. I don’t care who drags Twix… but I’ll carry the dragon blood.”
The gutteral moan of a great horn reverberates through the chamber. Clearly the loud-mouthed, bearded midget has sounded the alarm.
Gepetto's already out the door with his little jar of gold goo. Without speaking, Dane, Bombor, and I conduct the sacred ritual known as Rho-Sham-Bho. As the gods tend to frown upon me, favor goes to the others and I heft magic boy over my shoulder, bringing up the rear as we make our exit.
"Come on, you lot!" Gepetto makes a suprisingly quick pace whilst daintily holding his chalice aloft. He leads us away from the bridge, away from the dwarven structure, and into the woodland.
"Staying on this path will only make finding us the easier," I chime.
"No, no. This is great!" I can't tell if Gepetto is the eternal optimist or the harbinger of impending doom.
The Great Horn continues to groan in our wake.
In time, we pass a clearing. Seemingly on a whim, Gepetto bucks the path and we scatter across the open glade. For several long moments, we are exposed. No one speaks as we each hurry to return to the cover of the tall trees on the other side. Once there, we promptly settle in a smaller gap, with rising timber surrounding us on all sides and just enough room to lie on the terra.
We wait silently for a time. I think we all dose off for a short while.
I wake with a start. Have they found us? The Imperials? The dwarves? No. It's the pesky dragon babe, now at rest on a fallen trunk, staring me down. I whip my head about to spy Twix, now to his feet and gazing out beyond the trees.
"What do you see, Twix?" I ask, though I receive no reply. "Twix?"
He keeps his back to me. Impudent whelp. Then comes an odd voice, brimming at once with both confidence and maturity. Much to my confusion it seems to come from Twix.
"I know not of who you speak, boatman. However, our moment of honor is nigh upon us, and such trivialities are of no interest. Those who approach, be they friend, foe, or indifferent, shall not have long to bemoan the day they chose to impede Ravage Deathbringer, Eater of Souls."
I cast a glance at the dragon. It's just as confounded as me.
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