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I'm still here. Glad things are getting sorted out for you.
Take all the time you need, I know I'll still be here.
Checking in.
Draegar is utterly fascinated by the stonework, his mind immediately working to reverse engineer the tools, techniques and mathematical principals the went into the construction and art.
Draegar grunted an affirmation, his preferences completely obvious.
In another part of the city, Draegar was also musing about the past. "Thane doesn't teach a lot of history. They claim the new ways are better than the old ways. It fascinates me though. Stuff like this? Those arches were built with only scaffolding and stone? No cranes. No steam drives. No automatons or engines. Just rocks, sticks, and math. It boggles the mind."
"Sure, if they'll let me in," Draegar shrugged.
"How... did those arches get built?" Draegar asked, still looking at the incredible architecture.
Draegar followed Benjamin without making a scene.
Draegar was starting at the architecture in wonder. The arches were a marvel. They should have been impossible to craft. He was sure that magic, or some lost engineering technology, had been used to make them. Or both. The planning that must have gone into the layout boggled the mind. "Huh? Oh, uh... I guess I'll go with Ben. Probably a bad idea for me to wander around by myself. Where will I be staying? Or do I need to sort that out myself?"
Any preferences? Either choice works for me.
"So who do I talk to about my billing rates?" Draegar said with a grin once the work was done. He was covered in scrapes, abrasions, small superficial burns, and streaks of engine grease tracked through with sweat and steam. The bandage from where he'd been stabbed earlier in the day was soaked through and filthy, but beyond rolling his eyes when he finally noticed it, he didn't bring it up. He carried his automaton like a suitcase, it's mangled legs and partially crushed frame were testaments to the danger that was now averted.
Didn't the Cardinal wan to have dinner or something? Or is that happening after we are off the ship.
Draegar threw himself into the dangerous work without a second thought. He seemed to enjoy it. Wherever he thought the risk was too great, he deployed his spider-mech off his back and sent it to get mangled.
Draegar shook the engineer's hand with an easy smile. "The words mean the same no matter who they're coming from. The High Cardinal just has a fancier hat." He stayed in the engines, letting the engineers point him to where they were shorthanded, and making suggestions where he could think of them. For the first time since getting on the ship, he was relaxed.
"All engines have a sound, right? All those sounds you get used to down here are just rhythms and tones. If you know what a machine is supposed to sound like, you can just tell when something is off." "One of the b~~~$&@* jobs that I used to get assigned was to find the pipes with broken pressure gauges. I eventually figured out that a pipe under pressure sounds different than one that isn't. Also, a pipe full of oil sounds different than a pipe full of water, that sort of thing. I'm not sure exactly what your coolant mixture is, but I bet it sounds different than water too." "So all you might need to do to check which pipes have what in them now is tap them with a ball peen. It's like music. You figure out what the right tones are. Then you just look for the ones that sound wrong." "It's not a perfect diagnostic, but you don't have to turn things off to do it. All you need is a few pipes that you know are right to establish a baseline. Like tuning an instrument off of a pitch pipe."
"So you need to go through each pipe to see what it does now, versus what it was originally supposed to do. What a pain in the ass." Draegar sighed, clearly sympathetic to the plight of the engineers. "Have you done a temperature diagnostic? Or sound-density test?" he asked, rattling off his own list of possible fixes.
Thanks." Draegar handed the young engineer the technical manual and ignored the awkward implications. "I just wanted to see if you needed some help. I figured having me down here would make it easier, rather than having to reverse engineer all my patch-fixes. I've never had to jury rig anything quite like this before," he shrugged. "Looks like you found a bunch of Forg's traps. I was hoping to warn you about those before you got started. Sorry I'm late."
"It was almost a lot rougher," Draegar shrugged sympathetically. "Thanks." He headed down into the engines.
Draegar raised an eyebrow. He pulled out the engine's technical manual and looked around for a place to sit. "Alright, I'll just wait here with some light reading. Wouldn't want to interrupt."
The Cardinal wants to have dinner, so that's the scene I'm interested in next. I also want to make sure I didn't screw anything up below decks, so meeting with the ship's chief engineer might be a good idea.
"I'd say that's an accurate assessment, Your Holiness." Draegar agreed. The honorific was a little clumsy on his tongue. "I'll gladly tell you all-" There was a muffled clanking at the door and Draegar's automaton shuffled in flanked by confused looking knights. Draegar's enormous sword was borne point-down, it's tip sheathed inside the contraption's frame, the rest of the great blade stabilized straight up by the automaton's four upper arms. It walked over to Draegar and let out a series of small clicks as it completed it's task, settling itself to the floor next to it's master. Draegar looked more and more uncomfortable and pained as the mechanical spider awkwardly made its way into the suddenly silent room. He shook his head at the automaton. "You are no help at all, you know that?" The contraption clicked happily.
"They don't run institutes for Skive children," Draegar shrugged. "They run institutes for their own children. As far a I know I'm the only Skive to be recruited." "I used to think I was lucky, but they weren't looking to do me any favors. I was just meat for the grinder. They recruit from orphanages because no one cares what happens to those kids. The less prestigious academies secure their funding by ignoring safety and letting apprentices run all the dangerous experiments. There's a lot of "accidents." I eventually caught on to what they were doing and left."
Draegar was lost in his thoughts at the news of Sir Ronius' death. He'd barely known the knight, but he'd liked him. Not many people would have listened to Draegar like Sir Ronius did. It took the big man a moment for the Cardinal's words to sink in. "Oh. I was a war orphan," Draegar explained. "I grew up in a Thanite orphanage in the borderlands. The Thane Technical Academies recruit apprentices out of those orphanages. They don't usually take Skive kids, but I had a knack for it."
"That's why I tied off the rope and left you in the water for a while," Draegar admitted. "Turned out Esdras didn't need my help, so I came back and hauled you up. Glad you were able to hang on." Draegar was one of those people who's reaction to nerves was to talk, so with everyone looking at him still he just kept going, while on the inside he felt like his mouth was a horse with the bit in it's teeth. "This whole day's felt like a mad scramble from place to place, one crisis after another," Draegar said with a sheepish grin on his face. "From the moment we went down into the engines, I knew something was really wrong. They did a number down below. Rigged the doors with electricity, cut the walkways, overrode the safety governors and pressure alarms, cut the wires to the claxons, superheated the boilers, aerosolized stabilizing compounds and vented it into the air, and basically turned the whole system into a bomb. We didn't figure out the rest of the plot until after we'd cleaned up that whole mess and gotten arrested. My lungs feel kinda like they've been peeled." "Oh, that's another thing I forgot. I don't know if the engineers have gone below decks yet, but they really need to be careful of traps I didn't catch." Draegar finally realized he'd been rambling and quickly shut up.
Draegar's awkward side is fun to write.
"Uh, thanks. I feel like I should come clean here. My intent wasn't to save you, I was going to try to come in through the window there. I was just in the right place at the right time, and already looking for rope. It was... pure luck. Which reminds me... A bunch of stuff that was tied down on deck went overboard because I cut the rope. It was probably important and... I'll pay for it," Draegar looked chagrined and ran his hand over his bald head.
Draegar was brash and bold and quick in times of crisis, but so unused to being praised or rewarded that his mind seemed to seize up. His discomfort and embarrassment at being the center of such attention and praise was obvious. "Uh, thanks... I mean, you're welcome... Your Grace. I... I'm not sure what to say here," He tried to deflect attention of of himself. "There's a Docker who came aboard with us. Topaz. If she hadn't recognized Forg we wouldn't have gotten involved at all. If there's a rewards being given out, she should be part of them."
After more than a minute of difficult pulling, Draegar hinally hauled the waterlogged man back on deck. After making sure the man was on his feet and looking him over for serious injuries, Draegar clapped him on the shoulder and said "Stay out of the water next time." Then he took off at a run, heading back down belowdecks.
"I've got a man overboard here!" Draegar shouted down. Then he went back to his rope and started hauling the swimmer up to the deck.
Draegar ran to the railing, but didn't see anything. "I don't see him!" Draegar shouted down.
"Sonofa... don't have time for this," Draegar swore. Draegar took his rope and tied it to the handle of a smaller crate. Then he took a few runnign steps and hurled the entire thing into the water after the floundering man.
Draegar did a quick scan of the deck and went for the rope that he thought would cause the fewest problems to remove. When he was done, he went to the edge, looked over to find the open window, and the one next to it. That was the important one. The closed one behind the guy with the knife. Once he'd found the right window, he looked for a secure point to tie the rope to.
I'm going for it. Hopefully Esdras can keep them talking. Just let me know when I'm ready to get back into the scene.
"They don't know we fixed the engines. They're going to delay. Keep them talking," Draegar whispered to Esdras from just outside the doorframe. Then he took off at a quiet jog.
How long would it take me to get there?
F#!* Draegar swore inside his own head. A hostage situation. He had no plan for this. He looked at the open window, and thought about the splash they'd heard. Did they throw something overboard? Someone? He stepped to the side where the enemy couldn't see him and looked around for someone, anyone who he could tell to go check for a man overboard.
If only I had my whole adventuring kit. No grapple, no rope. Oh well. Guess someone who isn't me is going to have to talk his way out of this.
Next question- Those windows on the right side of the map- Do those go to the outside of the ship, or to the deck? How hard/how long would it take to do a surprise attack from behind, smashing through the window from the outside?
My rough intent (albeit unsaid because I figured we'd be rolling initiative before it mattered) was to charge in when the guards breached the door. Since readying outside of combat is loosely allowed, in the future I'll make sure to state my intentions before any door breach.
DM, from what you just said, you've ruled that it is possible to ready actions outside of combat. If that's how you want to do things that's fine, I just want to clarify that's your intention.
Mapmaking is a hobby of mine. I use Roll20, and at this point I have a lot of art assets. The sad thing is they aren't shareable. However, there is a workaround. I can host a game and promote other people to GM, which allows them to mess with all the art assets on a map I'm hosting. So if you want a high-detail custom map, you can link me to a few base images you want to use, I can put them down as a map, and drop a bunch of related art assets in the margins. Then you can mess with them as much as you want. It's basically art-legos. In my opinion, the lighting effects alone make Roll20 the best map platform out there. If you want to see what a finished map looks like complete with lighting effects, you can mess around with this one. There are 4 gold-bordered player tokens on the map you can freely move around ( If you zoom the map out to 20% they should be really easy to find. Then just center the map on the token and zoom back in to see the detail). I have it set so you can move through walls to make navigation easier.
Draegar was ready. His automaton would find him when it finished it's task. "Lead the way."
"Whoever these guys are, they don't know we are onto them yet. If you want to buy yourselves as much time as possible, don't advertise this. As soon as they figure out they've been made, they'll jump to their endgame," Draegar advised as he slipped his weapons back into their sheathes. He tapped his pack and his automaton unfolded. "Retrieval. Sword." His automaton left skittering down the hall as fast as it could go.
"I'm never unarmed," Draegar shrugged. "Alright, we might be going into a hostage situation. Kicking in the door will be too loud and take too long. I'm going to do something you're not going to like, but it will make the job a whole lot easier." He tapped his backpack and said "support routine, mechanical". His automaton reached out a limb, it's claw unfolded revealing a small tool, and it inserted it into the lock. Then Draegar pulled out a small mechanical device and fit it into the lock just above his contraption's claw. With a few quick adjustments, he pulled the trigger and tried to throw the tumblers inside.
Draegar held up a hand for quiet and put his ear to the door.
"Anyone have a key to this room?" he whispered.
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