Caitlyn Browning's page

The chair beneath her feet wobbles but she catches herself with one hand on the workbench before her. The thick wood surface of the table is scorched in several places and covered in deep gouges but still a relative rock of stability.

Giving up on the chair, young Caitlyn climbs onto the table itself, stepping carefully to avoid jostling the mountain of glassware balanced across the entire tables surface. Here, a translucent green liquid boils in an alembic, its fumes rising into a long segment of tubing. Coming out the other end, the fumes, now a pale yellow, turn the sails of a turbine, its spinning shedding fat sparks as though possessed by something from the outer planes.

Finally able to remove the cap, our heroine drops three leaden spheres into the beaker. Initially, nothing happens, leading to a look of consternation on the young scientist. Muttering, Caitlyn runs through the entire process in her mind, trying to imagine the problem.

"Hmmm, I paid good gold for real adamantine, why isn't it working? I should at least see a color change as the pH drops. Is the delta change not precipitous enough or could the gila spit I collect be impure?"

Lost in thought, the barely perceptible tremor of the table goes unnoticed. It is not until the glassware itself begins ringing from the vibration that Caitlyn looks up, her smile a beacon of happiness. Swiftly, the ringing of the glassware climbs three octaves, the high pitched sound promising disaster just as certainly as the climbing doppler of an approaching train.

Now containing only the remnants of hydroxyadamantine gas, the beaker beneath her hand shatters from the heat applied to its base. As the crystal shatters, Caitlyn's attention is snapped back to the present, just in time to notice the same H2Ad3 gas reach the spinning thurible connected to the spinning rotor.

Wait a second, that's not supposed to be there? It has to go through the particle receptor before it reaches the thurible! Who set it up that way?

Desperately trying to disconnect the thurible, the halfling scientist notes the pitch of the glassware extend yet another octave higher. With a final yank, the thurible jerk free and she grabs the tubing from the particle accelerator in her other hand. Jamming it into place, she barely makes it as the grey fumes of the hydrogen adamantite flow into the accelerator chamber.

Leaping down from the table, she crosses the room to her desk, only to grab her blueprints and begin pouring over them.

"Right, so the spit is heated in the alembic which drives the purified steam into the accelerator chamber just as the freed adamantite gas enters the thurible. The gas is then spun, condensed and the liquid adamantine titrates into the accelerator, after which I get the green color change.

Looking across the room at the still screaming glassware, her eye falls onto the join between the adamantine beaker and the accelerator chamber.

"Right, so the steam enters the thurible before titrating into the accelerator. I mean, it's right here where I wrote it, clear as day in purple crayon...

Looking up again, her eyes once again find the beaker's connection to the accelerator chamber. Like a stroke of thunder, she feels the first aetheric blast wave hit her dilated eyes. Without thinking, her quick reflexes are already dropping her below the level of the heavy oak desk as a shining curtain of glass washes over the room. Immediately, the shrill whine dies into a low hum and Caitlyn breathes a small sigh of relief.

Slowly, a little halfling head rises from behind the desk, its two sapphire eyes peeking at the remains of the experiment. Slowly, both eyes open more widely than any would think possible. Ducking back below the desk, the girl hugs herself tightly and curls into a ball, trying to forget the image she'd just seen.

On the other side of the desk, a pressure wave hangs suspended in the air. Imperceptibly, its contents move out into the room - shining shards of glass, boiling chemicals in gemlike hues and flames, dancing amongst the wreckage like imps wafting on warm currents. At the front of the wave, a massive oak workbench leads the way like a unit of cavalry, ready to crush all before them through sheer mass alone.

Caitlyn feels herself lifted by the desk as it is struck by the workbench. Flying through the air, the world seems to hang in place, each second passing as an eternity. Quickly calculating her course, she sees the new glass windows of her lab meet her estimated destination. Scrabbling atop the desk, she grabs her favorite paperweight before hurling it at the window slowly coming closer.

Disappointingly, the brass orb hangs in the air, matching every other physical object in the room, all crawling together on the front of the blast wave.

Hmmm, I've seen a lot of good and bad in my life, short though it's been. The two often look remarkably similar, but this equation is beginning to look as though it might solve as a negative on the good:bad continuum. If only I could find a piece of paper and a crayon, I'm sure I could work out exactly how negative.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the brass orb strikes the window, followed almost immediately by the diminutive halfling. Through a sheer twist of fate, the kind usually reserved for only the extremely young or intoxicated, the desk slams into the wall on either side of the window, it's massive bulk unable to fit through. Half a second later however, its inertia is quadrupled as the workbench, a flying monstrosity of wood, glass, caustic chemicals and flame hit it from the rear.

Watching the entire front of her lab collapse in a shower of rubble, young Caitlyn raises her head from the dust of the street.

Thank goodness the whole lab didn't go up. Dr. Westinghouse would simply go spare if I blew up the whole building and ruined his cold generation experiment. Yes, this is a setback, but the theory is sound so tomorrow I'll clean up and begin again.

Smiling, the young scientist sits up, eyeing the rubble and the massive clean-up project ahead of her. Seeing a piece of paper in the dust, she grabs it, pulls a familiar purple crayon from her pocket, and begins scribbling notes.

Without warning, a noise akin to the hosts of Heaven storming the gates of Hell strikes the central square of the city of New Oasis. Tossed like a rag doll, Caitlyn flies through the air five, ten, fifteen feet before coming to a shuddering stop, her back against the town's well. Before her, a giant hole sits where her lab once did. Actually, the hole sat, with obstinate permeability, where Dr. Westinghouse's lab once did as well. And the Menagerie. And the coopers on the corner. But wait, it looked like the smith's to the east still stood...until a dizzy cow emerged from the dark interior just before the roof caved in.

With a sigh, the dejected halfling stared at the dust between her feet. To her left, a pile of roofing shingles slid to one side revealing a frost covered man in his fifties, his hair sticking out wildly in every direction. With a scream, his eyes found the halfling. "Browning!"

Scuttling sideways, Caitlyn, tried to get around the well, desperately running from his angry scowl and accusing eyes. Finally reaching the edge, she turns, her legs already pumping, and runs as fast as she can. Behind her, Vengeance flew on a pale horse and she could feel its hot breath on the back of her neck the whole way across town.
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Standing on the outskirts of town, Caitlyn stood forlorn, nothing near and only the railway station in the distance. Falling to the dust in dejection, she studies the her previous figures on the scrap of paper found in the dust. Turning it over, she reads the words:

Passage For One
Cross The Continent In Luxury!
Marvel At The Miracle Of Steam!
Visit Outpost 13 and find your fortune!

"Train leaves in fifteen minutes. Give me five to get back to the lab, five more to dig out my pack and my rifle and another five to get to the station. I'll need to avoid Dr. Westinghouse, but he's no doubt still cursing me somewhere between here and there."

Without a second of regret, the rejuvenated halfling leaps to her feet, running back the way she came.

"Tin Star! Here I come!

The next oldest child, Mary Caleb, married a hardworking business acquaintance of her father's and was rapidly raising a halfling horde of her own. Her father was very proud of her and the family house was always hopping on holidays.

The third child, Wyatt Browning, trained in The Way of the Gun and was a successful sheriff on the frontier. No one was prouder than his father when Erasmus captured the notorious bank robber Two Gun Pete, getting his picture on the front page of the newspaper.

Jasmine Browning had always had a way with a brush and color. She was currently touring across the sea in the Browning family's traditional homeland where her shows were drawing the rich and famous throughout the Old World. Her father, extremely proud, bragged of his second daughter constantly.

Erasmus Browning entered the church upon his sixteenth birthday. Instrumental in establish religious settlements and converting the heathen goblin tribes of the south to civilization, he has rapidly made a name for himself as a man of peace, for which his father is extremely proud.

The youngest of the Browning brood is another daughter. Caitlyn combined James's skill as an inventor, Mary's love of family, Wyatt's skill as a shooter, Jasmine's love of life and Erasmus's care for those less fortunate.

On her fifteenth birthday, friends and family alike ate her cake in her absence, the young girl having run off to join the circus the night before.

Returning two years later, the third Browning daughter served as the county teacher down at the school for three whole months before running off to the World's Fair in the capitol.

Caitlyn returned home later that year, in a giant flying balloon, piloted by the mad gnome inventor Silas Green. The young halfling girl spent all that evening at the table regaling her family with Silas's exploits while the geriatric gnome blushed crimson over his starched white collar. Leaving that very morning, she hugged her papa before scampering up the rope ladder of the dirigible.

Jeb Browning watched his daughter go with a tear in his eye. A solid halfling man, he found it difficult to approve of his youngest daughter's life. Despite scampering around the countryside, avoiding responsibility and ignoring decorum, he may have loved his youngest more than any of his other children. And yes, Jeb Browning was proud of them all, even his pint-sized whirlwind, for her zest, for her bravery, and for her need to always live life to the fullest.