The area of wildspace above the Gray Ridge League of Armed Neutrality is called Freespace. Unlike Fedspace to the east, Firespace to the west, and Flayerspace to the north, it is not controlled or settled by a major military power. It was once part of Flayerspace, until several decades ago when the Imperial Elven Navy sent several carrier battle groups to drive the mind flayers out in a campaign of epic and titanic battles. The elves began to colonize some of eastern moons of the area, in their slow methodical way, and they patrolled for signs of mind flayer or fire giant military activity, but they made little effort to explore or settle most of it.
The Federation gladly gave the races of the League permission to operate and settle in Freespace, aside from a few significant places marked as off-limits. The elves welcomed and encouraged the development of a non-hostile spacefaring civilization, as a buffer between the other powers and a way to keep the area from becoming a haven for halfling space pirates.
This meant that, while the various moons and archipelagos had been charted and classified based on long-range vegetation scans, there were rarely any details beyond that. Space was vast, and travelers were few in the early years of League civilization. The only thing that the crew of Fortuna's Kiss knew about the Garcia-17 archipelago was that its vegetation indicated a Level 3 ecosystem, and that there was a decent chance it had the hypoallergenic wildspace turnips that they were on a mission to collect.
And so, they were on high alert as they approached. Ra fal barked out orders, not because anyone needed to be told their jobs again, but because her voice carried a subtle but powerful enchantment that would keep everyone focused, confident, and better at their tasks.
"Sofonisba and Tsinta, scan the islands for animals or creatures. We need to know what the apex predators are. Gladys, look at the vegetation and see if you can deduce the food web from that. Mary, look behind and around us to make sure nothing is flanking or following us. Mabellyne, look for anything that resembles ship movement or architecture in any direction. I will also look out for signs of civilization."
Gladys swapped out a lens on her goggles. "Scrubland, nothing larger than bushes and shrubbery. Probably supports herds of goats. Could be anything eating them."
Everyone was silent, searching and surveying with emotions ranging from confused nervousness to grim caution. After a couple minutes, Tsinta spoke quietly.
"soft silent wingspans, drifting hungrily through space: we face owlbears."
Ra fal grunted. "Good catch. Nasty, but it could be worse; they have no ranged attacks and we know what to expect now."
Mary spoke up. "I have heard of those. They were made by a mad wizard who crossed an owl and a bear to create an unnatural monstrosity."
Gladys scowled grimly. "Maybe on land. Wildspace owlbears different story. Well-evolved apex predator, perfectly suited to environment. They fly, very silently. Watch you, wait, glide down to strike you and grab you off ship. Like owl strikes mouse. You lose crew, never know what happened.
Ra fal replied. "That will not happen to us."
Sofonisba nodded. "They are territorial, so we should not have to face more than one at a time. We can lay a trap for it, knowing its behavior."
Gladys sighed. "Yes, know job. Stand alone on deck, looking weak, with chain on ankle tethering to ship. You all hide, light it up with spells and fill it with arrows as it glides in to strike."
Gladys had already donned her armor, a haphazard collection of goblin crash safety gear and castoff dwarven munition armor segments that somehow managed to work almost as well as a suit of full plate. Her helmet looked nothing like any knight's helmet that Mary had seen: it was like a large rounded bubble over her head, made of a strange alchemical substance rather than steel, and painted bright white with a flame motif. It made her look like a demon or some other unearthly thing, and no predator would think her an easy meal while we wore it.
Gladys unstrapped her helmet and replaced it with a leather skullcap, and then threw a burlap cloak over the rest of her armor, strapped a shield to her forearm, and started slouching and hobbling around. This would never fool a person, but Mary could see that it mimicked a wounded weakling in a way that would attract most predators.
Ra fal nodded. "Aye. Mary, Mabellyne, get below decks and shoot through portholes. One hit from an owlbear's claws could kill you, so you are staying safe. The rest of us will hide in the cargo netting. Hold your fire until it is 60 feet out, we do not want to scare it away too soon."
Tsinta added, "Watch all directions. Two thumps on deck is signal - we have spotted foe."
As Mary and Mabellyne quietly followed these orders, they head Ra fal say, "Spread out and set up a crossfire. Cantrips only unless there is an emergency, we will be killing a lot of these so we need to save our spell slots."
The topside crew made a couple minor adjustments to the wings, so that the ship was drifting slowly toward the islands. Mary heard armored boots moving around the deck, and then silence. They waited.
Mary knew that she would go crazy if she stood still, so she practiced loading the crossbow: Point at ground, attach bowstring to the hook on her belt, foot through stirrup, stomp down until bowstring clicks into place, remove foot, release belt hook, raise, load the bolt, look out the porthole, and aim. After looking around for a few seconds, she would remove the bolt, pull the trigger to 'fire' at something imaginary, and start again. It was weird and strange and she did not like it. It had taken a couple of days of drills under Mabellyne's patient supervision until she was able to load the bow in a couple seconds. At least, she could when nothing scary was happening.
This continued for several minutes. Then, they heard two thumps on the port side, followed by a third thump in a different place to indicate the direction the owlbear was coming from. Mary finished loading the bow, rushed over to a porthole, and looked up in the indicated direction.
She and Mabellyne both saw it, even though the owlbear's gray feathers blended well against the sky. It was silently swooping in, not flapping, its downy owl feathers making no sound at all even though it was the size of a grizzly bear and it was moving through the air faster than a broomstick could fly.
Mary was tense, and fidgety. She tracked the owlbear with the crossbow, leading it as Mabellyne had taught her, keeping her finger alongside the stock instead of inside the trigger guard, so she would not accidentally pull it. She did not trust her ability to judge distances. When should she fire?
Mabellyne whispered, "Just wait for the elves to cast their spells, and fire when you see the magic flash."
Soon after, Mary saw two streaks of light racing toward the owlbear: an arrow glowing with the blue-white light of winter sun shining through icicles, and a beam of greenish light that reminded her of the summer sun shining through the forest. Mary and Mabellyne both fired, as they heard Ra Fal yell "Goatsucking freak!"
The green beam and Mabellyne's bolt missed, but the ice arrow hit, bursting with a crackle and coating the owlbear with a frost that coated its wings. Mary's bolt hit as well. The beast responded with a monstrous sound, a cross between an owl's shriek and a bear's roar.
Mabellyne had finished reloading her crossbow while the first shot was still sailing through the air, and launched another shot, which hit. But before Mary or anybody else could fire again, the owlbear finished its swoop, passing over the deck and out of their sight.
They heard the scraping of talons on metal, and then the ship shook as the beast slammed into the deck. There was a twang of a bowstring, a thunk of an arrow hitting flesh, and then the booming of Ra fal rushing across the deck in her massive boots, and then two sickening crunches, then a few seconds of silence, and then regular rhythmic squishy thumping.
They heard Sofonisba's slightly exasperated voice saying, "Ra fal already killed it."
Gladys replied grumpily, "Whetstones cheap. Healing expensive. Making sure it is dead."
After a bit more of this, Ra fal called out to the people belowdecks. "You can come up now. Bring a mop and bucket of water."
"And sample collection kit," Gladys added.
Mary saw that Mabellyne was starting to look sick, so she waved the goblin over to her bunk, collected the requested items, and climbed up to the deck.
Ra fal was cleaning blood and brains off of the paddle of her favorite oar, the one that had been with her so long that it had become a magical weapon. Gladys was cleaning her sword, and the elves were scanning the sky for any more threats.
Gladys looked at Mary. "You wanted to learn medicine?"
"Oh, are you hurt?"
"No, not a scratch. Operating on owlbear."
Mary looked down at the mangled remains of the owlbear. Its head had been smashed open, and then severed from its body. "Um, okay?"
"Their gallbladders make good healing potions. Going to cut the beast open, hope bladder did not get ruined by arrow, and collect it. While inside, demonstrate basic anatomy."
Thus began a messy but informative lesson. As Gladys peeled away layers of skin and flesh with her knives and surgical tools, she pointed out the anatomy of the creature, and showed where the crossbow bolts and magic spells had hit and what damage they caused as a result.
When Gladys got to the stomach and guts, she started peeling things away very carefully, noting their names and function to Mary as she did so. After she lifted away the liver, she stuck her face inside the body cavity and inhaled deeply.
"Woah, awesome! This thing is super potent! Smell that beautiful taurocholic acid!"
Ra fal asked, "What does that mean for us?"
"It means that I can make a Keoghtom's Ointment instead of just a healing potion."
Mary's face brightened in excitement. "Oh! Is that the healing thing we wanted to get but could not afford?"
"Yes. Very good tactical reserve. Ra fal now not only only source of magical healing, and can be healed if down. Significant reduction in risk of disaster. Hopefully never need it, sell for profit."
Ra fal nodded in agreement, but grumbled a cautious warning. "Only if you get it extracted and prepared right. Don't count your treasure before it's looted." Her voice changed slightly, in a way that Mary was starting to recognize as having the subtle addition of magical power. "But I have complete confidence that you will succeed in this task. All of your biology training and your field experience will combine to guide you to do your best work."
Gladys nodded, and turned to Mary. "Now, back to lesson. Give scalpel. Watch closely. Will focus on surgery. No talking."
Mary did so, and watched breathlessly. Her presence, tense and quivering with suppressed excitement, was far more distracting than if she had been breathing normally, but Gladys did not mind. The goblin was a hardened veteran, and had, several times in her career, performed battlefield surgery on wounded comrades, or chopped valuable fast-degrading bits out of dead monsters, while a battle was actually raging around her. Long before Mary ran out of breath, Gladys had flawlessly extracted the gallbladder, tied up the tubes to prevent any loss of the vital magical fluid, placed it in a sample jar with alchemical preservatives, and sealed the jar.
After that, everyone relaxed. Gladys resumed the dissection and anatomy lesson. She was very knowledgeable, and clearly cared about the subject matter, but delivered the knowledge with a fast monologue and never stopped to check if her audience was actually understanding anything. It didn't matter. Mary absorbed everything with rapt attention.
Soon, the owlbear had been reduced to a completely disconnected pile of bones and tissue scattered across all available deck space, and in some cases hung over railings. This was more Mary's doing than Gladys's. Gladys would have simply chucked things over the railing, to drift away endlessly in zero gravity, after talking about them. But Mary insisted on placing them in a kind of exploded diagram, to try to see see how they would have all connected to each other in a living being. Everyone else tolerated this with a kind of stunned fascination, and an unwillingness to take a fun toy away from an excited child.
However, after it was all done, and Mary was confident that she knew how everything worked and fit together, and they had tossed everything overboard, Ra fal glared at Mary sternly and pointed at the mop and bucket.
It took her hours to clean everything off the deck and railings, until there was no longer any sight or scent that might scare off the next owlbear they planned to lure, but she did not seem to care. As she worked tirelessly, replaying the lesson in her mind, the rest of the crew sailed to the next island to repeat the process, with the goal of exterminating all of the owlbears in the archipelago.
Next (Tsinta)
All for one and one for all
Showing posts with label Mary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mary. Show all posts
4a: Mary Centipedes
The elves of the Holy Corellon Federation understand ecology very well. This is partly due to a desire to protect nature from civilization, but mainly due to a desire to protect civilization from nature. Under certain conditions, magical creatures can grow powerful enough to destroy entire cities, and can only be stopped by a high-level adventuring party or a major military power. Knowing what conditions cause these creatures to grow, and to leave their natural habitat and move into settled lands, is a vital skill for any government.
The more chemical and magical nutrients a biome has, the more life it can support. In general, when a biome supports more life, its food web is more complicated, its apex predators are more powerful, and it is more likely to have herbivores that are capable of fighting those predators.
In space, biomes are isolated. While some things do migrate through empty space, food webs are generally contained to a single archipelago. This means that a trained surveyor with the proper equipment can quickly scan a group of sky islands and estimate how rich its ecosystem is, and therefore how powerful the creatures in it will be. The wildspace navigation charts used by League members, purchased from the Federation elves who originally charted the region of space, have this information.
On the morning of the crew's fifth day of sailing, Mabellyne approached Ra fal with a sheaf of navigation charts. "Is this a good time to talk?"
"Aye."
"When I started my shift this morning, I double-checked the navigation charts for our approach to Garcia-17, and noticed that it is listed as a Level 3 biome."
Ra fal glanced over at Mary, who was practicing tying knots and looking at some clouds in the distance. The human did not appear to be listening to them, but Ra fal guessed that she probably was. "And it would probably be best for everyone if we did a Level 1 island first."
"Unfortunately, none of the Level 1 turnip islands are close by. There is a nearby Level 1 archipelago with both gravity islands and zero-gravity asteroids for us to practice in."
"How much would that delay us?"
"Only a couple hours for the course change and docking, if we make the course correction now. Plus however much time we spend training."
"It is worth spending an extra day on this." Ra fal grinned. "It will be good for us to kill a lot of bugs together."
"Should we wake Sofonisba and Gladys and have a crew meeting to discuss this before we commit to changing the plan?"
"Yes. They will almost certainly approve, but we should always be in the habit of doing things based on consensus."
Everyone quickly agreed to the plan. Sofonisba had not entered her meditation trance yet and was fine with talking. Gladys gave explicit permission for the crew finalize future decisions without her input if at least four people agreed, with the obvious implication that she cared more about her sleep than the feeling of being consulted, and went back to bed. Mabellyne and Tsinta made the course correction.
Later that day, after the shared meal, when Mary and Ra fal would normally be sleeping, they approached the island to dock. By unspoken agreement, Mary and Sofonisba were on their broomsticks again, moving alongside the ship as the rest of the crew prepared for their first island docking. Also by unspoken agreement, Sofonisba explained what was going on.
"In order to dock, you need to know exactly where the island's gravity plane is, and how far out the gravity bubble extends. They are going to toss a gravity probe soon."
The ship was moving very slowly under propeller power, with the sails furled and the wings in steering position. When it was a few hundred feet away from the island, they saw Gladys toss a disk toward the island. It spun slowly through space in a straight line, flinging off a cloud of glittery flakes that expanded in a cone.
When the probe was about 150 feet from the island, its trajectory suddenly changed into the familiar parabola of a stone thrown in gravity. It hurtled down for about a second, but then, when it went under the ground level of the island, its motion changed again. It slowed down, and then started rising back up to the ground level just as fast as it had fallen. When it passed the line, it started falling again. It repeated this cycle, bobbing up and down three times before hitting the rocky side of the island.
"Why does it do that? I thought it would just keep falling down?"
"A gravity plane actually attracts things from both directions. It extends a lot further out in the Air direction, but right at the plane, when a thing passes through, gravity reverses for it and it falls back."
"Weird."
"Yes. You can use it to your advantage, sometimes, if you can get accustomed to what the gravity changes do to your stomach. We may get a chance to practice later."
The flakes it had been spinning off followed its motion, falling and bobbing with it. Soon they had settled down, slowed by the air, and were drifting on the gravity plane and making it look like a rippling water surface. The flakes further from the island, however, simply stayed in space without moving, making it obvious where the island's gravity started taking effect.
"Now they need to line up the ship's center of mass as close to the gravity plane as possible, so that the ship does not bob up and down too much when it enters the bubble."
Mary and Sofonisba watched as the crew carefully inched the ship forward and lined it up with the island's gravity plane, using the wings to make small corrections up and down. Mary held her breath as the bow of the ship came within a few feet of the gravity bubble, even though the painted center-of-mass line on the ship's hull was almost exactly lined up with the glittering flakes. Closer, closer...
And then a sudden gust of wind pushed the ship forward and down.
At any other time, this would have been insignificant, a deviation of a few feet easily fixed by shifting a wing. But the elemental keel was turned off for the approach, and before anyone could react, the bow of the ship was inside the island's gravity bubble and under the plane.
The bow lurched up, while the stern kept moving down on its previous trajectory. Soon, all of Fortuna's Kiss was inside the gravity bubble, bobbing around like a ship on a stormy ocean, and moving towards a collision with the side of the island.
Mary screamed, "What do we do?"
"Catch anyone who falls overboard. Go between ship and rocks. You take starboard."
Mary nodded at Sofonisba's calm command as the elf rapidly moved to the ship's port side. She moved her broomstick forward a bit, and closer to the ship, looking at her friends to see who might be in danger of getting thrown off.
Gladys, Ra fal, and Tsinta were fighting with the wings and sail and accomplishing little, but Mabellyne quickly shifted the engine into reverse and activated the overdrive. The propeller spun rapidly, quickly stopping the ship's forward momentum and saving it from any collision.
However, the sudden change in the ship's velocity happened at the same time that the ship was under the gravity plane, meaning that it and everyone on it were falling up. Ra fal, able sailor that she was, had a firm experienced grip on the railings and rigging that would be dislodged by almost nothing. Mabellyne was prepared for the velocity change and holding on, but both Gladys and Tsinta flew forward over the ship's railing as it reversed.
Gladys was flying starboard toward Sofonisba, and Tsinta was going directly forward. Mary flew her broom forward as fast as it could go to catch Tsinta, but misjudged the velocity and overshot. She then wheeled around, putting herself between Tsinta and the island, and then used her foot to stop the velocity of the slowly spinning elf, just like she did when bouncing off asteroids. Then Tsinta was able to grab her waist and get on the broomstick behind her.
"Where should I take you?"
"Back to the ship."
Mary moved the broomstick forward, but was surprised at how much harder it was. It was like she was carrying the elf while running. She could feel fatigue build up by the second. But it only took a few seconds to get back over the still-bobbing ship. Tsinta leaped gracefully off the broomstick, but ended up landing badly and sprawling on the deck as the ship heaved unexpectedly.
Mary looked over to check on Gladys, and saw that Sofonisba had already landed her on the island.
The ship's bobbing was less violent now. Mary saw the wings catch the air and slow the ship down a little with each motion. As soon as Gladys found a firm footing, Ra fal threw a line to her. The line missed, but Sofonisba quickly flew out to grab it where it had fallen into the gravity plane and handed it to the goblin. Gladys carefully hauled on the lines to control the bobbing, heaving and tugging with her great strength. As she was doing this, Ra fal and Tsinta used the wings to get the ship back under control, and soon the three of them were able to bring the ship in close to the island.
Tsinta tossed another line to Mary and gestured to her to tie it to a rock. Ra fal threw another to Sofonisba, and soon the ship was securely berthed.
They found Mabellyne curled up in a ball near the engine, nauseated and barely able to move. She had been violently ill, but had managed to catch everything in a waxed paper bag.
Gladys gave Mabellyne water and a pill, which seemed to help, and then Ra fal held her hand.
"You did good. You saved the ship from crashing by reversing the engine."
Mabellyne nodded weakly.
"Do you want me to get you to land?"
Mabellyne nodded again. Ra fal easily and tenderly picked her up and carried her over the gangplank to the island.
"Most people get spacesick the first time they bounce around on a gravity plane. The lurching up and down and gravity changing direction even started to affect me, and I have been sailing rough waters for years. You kept yourself together really well. Did you have that bag on you the while time?"
"Yes."
"Smart woman."
Ra fal deposited Mabellyne on the green grass and soft loam, but only after making sure that Gladys, Tsinta, and Sofonisba had formed a perimeter to keep watch for any danger. She raised her voice to address everyone.
"Well, that could have gone a lot better. But we are all in one piece, the ship is fine, and we got some good experience. You all did good, really good. Now we can prepare for the hunt."
Next (Tsinta)
Next Mary
The more chemical and magical nutrients a biome has, the more life it can support. In general, when a biome supports more life, its food web is more complicated, its apex predators are more powerful, and it is more likely to have herbivores that are capable of fighting those predators.
In space, biomes are isolated. While some things do migrate through empty space, food webs are generally contained to a single archipelago. This means that a trained surveyor with the proper equipment can quickly scan a group of sky islands and estimate how rich its ecosystem is, and therefore how powerful the creatures in it will be. The wildspace navigation charts used by League members, purchased from the Federation elves who originally charted the region of space, have this information.
On the morning of the crew's fifth day of sailing, Mabellyne approached Ra fal with a sheaf of navigation charts. "Is this a good time to talk?"
"Aye."
"When I started my shift this morning, I double-checked the navigation charts for our approach to Garcia-17, and noticed that it is listed as a Level 3 biome."
Ra fal glanced over at Mary, who was practicing tying knots and looking at some clouds in the distance. The human did not appear to be listening to them, but Ra fal guessed that she probably was. "And it would probably be best for everyone if we did a Level 1 island first."
"Unfortunately, none of the Level 1 turnip islands are close by. There is a nearby Level 1 archipelago with both gravity islands and zero-gravity asteroids for us to practice in."
"How much would that delay us?"
"Only a couple hours for the course change and docking, if we make the course correction now. Plus however much time we spend training."
"It is worth spending an extra day on this." Ra fal grinned. "It will be good for us to kill a lot of bugs together."
"Should we wake Sofonisba and Gladys and have a crew meeting to discuss this before we commit to changing the plan?"
"Yes. They will almost certainly approve, but we should always be in the habit of doing things based on consensus."
Everyone quickly agreed to the plan. Sofonisba had not entered her meditation trance yet and was fine with talking. Gladys gave explicit permission for the crew finalize future decisions without her input if at least four people agreed, with the obvious implication that she cared more about her sleep than the feeling of being consulted, and went back to bed. Mabellyne and Tsinta made the course correction.
Later that day, after the shared meal, when Mary and Ra fal would normally be sleeping, they approached the island to dock. By unspoken agreement, Mary and Sofonisba were on their broomsticks again, moving alongside the ship as the rest of the crew prepared for their first island docking. Also by unspoken agreement, Sofonisba explained what was going on.
"In order to dock, you need to know exactly where the island's gravity plane is, and how far out the gravity bubble extends. They are going to toss a gravity probe soon."
The ship was moving very slowly under propeller power, with the sails furled and the wings in steering position. When it was a few hundred feet away from the island, they saw Gladys toss a disk toward the island. It spun slowly through space in a straight line, flinging off a cloud of glittery flakes that expanded in a cone.
When the probe was about 150 feet from the island, its trajectory suddenly changed into the familiar parabola of a stone thrown in gravity. It hurtled down for about a second, but then, when it went under the ground level of the island, its motion changed again. It slowed down, and then started rising back up to the ground level just as fast as it had fallen. When it passed the line, it started falling again. It repeated this cycle, bobbing up and down three times before hitting the rocky side of the island.
"Why does it do that? I thought it would just keep falling down?"
"A gravity plane actually attracts things from both directions. It extends a lot further out in the Air direction, but right at the plane, when a thing passes through, gravity reverses for it and it falls back."
"Weird."
"Yes. You can use it to your advantage, sometimes, if you can get accustomed to what the gravity changes do to your stomach. We may get a chance to practice later."
The flakes it had been spinning off followed its motion, falling and bobbing with it. Soon they had settled down, slowed by the air, and were drifting on the gravity plane and making it look like a rippling water surface. The flakes further from the island, however, simply stayed in space without moving, making it obvious where the island's gravity started taking effect.
"Now they need to line up the ship's center of mass as close to the gravity plane as possible, so that the ship does not bob up and down too much when it enters the bubble."
Mary and Sofonisba watched as the crew carefully inched the ship forward and lined it up with the island's gravity plane, using the wings to make small corrections up and down. Mary held her breath as the bow of the ship came within a few feet of the gravity bubble, even though the painted center-of-mass line on the ship's hull was almost exactly lined up with the glittering flakes. Closer, closer...
And then a sudden gust of wind pushed the ship forward and down.
At any other time, this would have been insignificant, a deviation of a few feet easily fixed by shifting a wing. But the elemental keel was turned off for the approach, and before anyone could react, the bow of the ship was inside the island's gravity bubble and under the plane.
The bow lurched up, while the stern kept moving down on its previous trajectory. Soon, all of Fortuna's Kiss was inside the gravity bubble, bobbing around like a ship on a stormy ocean, and moving towards a collision with the side of the island.
Mary screamed, "What do we do?"
"Catch anyone who falls overboard. Go between ship and rocks. You take starboard."
Mary nodded at Sofonisba's calm command as the elf rapidly moved to the ship's port side. She moved her broomstick forward a bit, and closer to the ship, looking at her friends to see who might be in danger of getting thrown off.
Gladys, Ra fal, and Tsinta were fighting with the wings and sail and accomplishing little, but Mabellyne quickly shifted the engine into reverse and activated the overdrive. The propeller spun rapidly, quickly stopping the ship's forward momentum and saving it from any collision.
However, the sudden change in the ship's velocity happened at the same time that the ship was under the gravity plane, meaning that it and everyone on it were falling up. Ra fal, able sailor that she was, had a firm experienced grip on the railings and rigging that would be dislodged by almost nothing. Mabellyne was prepared for the velocity change and holding on, but both Gladys and Tsinta flew forward over the ship's railing as it reversed.
Gladys was flying starboard toward Sofonisba, and Tsinta was going directly forward. Mary flew her broom forward as fast as it could go to catch Tsinta, but misjudged the velocity and overshot. She then wheeled around, putting herself between Tsinta and the island, and then used her foot to stop the velocity of the slowly spinning elf, just like she did when bouncing off asteroids. Then Tsinta was able to grab her waist and get on the broomstick behind her.
"Where should I take you?"
"Back to the ship."
Mary moved the broomstick forward, but was surprised at how much harder it was. It was like she was carrying the elf while running. She could feel fatigue build up by the second. But it only took a few seconds to get back over the still-bobbing ship. Tsinta leaped gracefully off the broomstick, but ended up landing badly and sprawling on the deck as the ship heaved unexpectedly.
Mary looked over to check on Gladys, and saw that Sofonisba had already landed her on the island.
The ship's bobbing was less violent now. Mary saw the wings catch the air and slow the ship down a little with each motion. As soon as Gladys found a firm footing, Ra fal threw a line to her. The line missed, but Sofonisba quickly flew out to grab it where it had fallen into the gravity plane and handed it to the goblin. Gladys carefully hauled on the lines to control the bobbing, heaving and tugging with her great strength. As she was doing this, Ra fal and Tsinta used the wings to get the ship back under control, and soon the three of them were able to bring the ship in close to the island.
Tsinta tossed another line to Mary and gestured to her to tie it to a rock. Ra fal threw another to Sofonisba, and soon the ship was securely berthed.
They found Mabellyne curled up in a ball near the engine, nauseated and barely able to move. She had been violently ill, but had managed to catch everything in a waxed paper bag.
Gladys gave Mabellyne water and a pill, which seemed to help, and then Ra fal held her hand.
"You did good. You saved the ship from crashing by reversing the engine."
Mabellyne nodded weakly.
"Do you want me to get you to land?"
Mabellyne nodded again. Ra fal easily and tenderly picked her up and carried her over the gangplank to the island.
"Most people get spacesick the first time they bounce around on a gravity plane. The lurching up and down and gravity changing direction even started to affect me, and I have been sailing rough waters for years. You kept yourself together really well. Did you have that bag on you the while time?"
"Yes."
"Smart woman."
Ra fal deposited Mabellyne on the green grass and soft loam, but only after making sure that Gladys, Tsinta, and Sofonisba had formed a perimeter to keep watch for any danger. She raised her voice to address everyone.
"Well, that could have gone a lot better. But we are all in one piece, the ship is fine, and we got some good experience. You all did good, really good. Now we can prepare for the hunt."
Next (Tsinta)
Next Mary
3a: Mary First Flight
There are many different ways of traveling through Wildspace. Most of them are too limited, dangerous, or expensive to be useful.
The simplest way is to ride on an animal that flies. There are several trainable flying animals that can carry a person in a gravity well, and many more than can do it in zero gravity. A related method is the flapboat, which is like a rowboat but with large wings instead of oars. Many civilizations in sky archipelagos or asteroid fields need nothing else, but flight powered by muscle needs food, water, and rest, and so is rarely useful for longer journeys through empty space.
At the other extreme, the great-power navies like the Mind Flayers and the Holy Corellon Federation use extremely expensive spelljamming helms that move their massive ships at incredible velocities by directly warping space, in a manner similar to telekinesis and teleportation magic.
Civilizations in the middle have several options, and Fortuna's Kiss was equipped with several of the more practical ones, devices that can be constructed by anyone capable of making basic magic or alchemical items and used by anyone with a little training.
Earth-elemental reaction engines, like the ones that power magical constructs such as golems, generate a slow steady amount of power. They can easily be made with a variable power output and connected to a propeller. This is very useful for docking and other precise maneuvers, but too slow for long voyages.
Fire-Water reaction engines generate much more power and thrust, with a reaction somewhat like chemical rockets but more efficient and safer. They are good for emergency thrust, but using them exclusively for long voyages would be very expensive and require you to start off loaded with dangerous and volatile refined elemental matter.
The safest and most energy-efficient travel method is sailing with an elemental keel. In waterboats, the water provides the leverage that allows the ship to sail at an angle to the wind. In spaceships, the elemental keel serves this function. When activated, it holds the ship in a certain orientation, like iron filings in a magnetic field, and any force that would push the ship sideways or make it spiral in a corkscrew instead pushes it mostly forward.
Sailing with an elemental keel is much like sailing in water, but there are several important differences that must be learned through experience. Ra fal, Mabellyne, Tsinta, and Gladys were going through training drills, learning how to steer the ship under various conditions. Ra fal and Gladys each controlled one wing, using strength to pull and twist it into position. Tsinta handled the lines controlling the sail and watched for wind currents, while Gladys controlled the keel orientation. The engine had been shut down for safety and the propeller had been removed and stowed, to protect it and the crankshaft from strain as the ship lurched around.
They had progressed through the basics relatively smoothly, and were able to reliably travel at most angles against a steady wind, including sailing full and by and tacking. But then, after sailing for several hours and getting a very safe distance above the ground, they deliberately steered out of the Gray Ridge Thermal and into an area of unpredictable choppy winds in order to practice in rougher conditions.
"Strong gust incoming, two o'clock low."
"How low?"
"Um, about 60° below plane"
"Spin 40° clockwise and turn us, um, 30° port"
"Setting keel to 63° Air, 22° Fire, 5° Dark."
"That will put us in irons!"
"I think she meant 22° Water!"
"Yes, sorry!"
"Warp that wing more!"
"Teetdullh! We're too slow!"
"Watch the boom!"
"What the gritginding friction are you doing?"
The process made Mary and Sofonisba uncomfortable, both physically and socially. The random lurching and spinning of the ship threatened made them both airsick, and the constant frustrated bickering of the others made them ill at ease.
During a calm patch, Mary carefully and gently approached Ra fal, like she would approach one of her family's hounds in an ill temper. "Sofonisba needs to teach me how to ride a broomstick. Is it okay if we leave the ship and go exploring that asteroid field?"
"Yes, of course. Take as much time as you need." Mary could see the relief in Ra fal's eyes. As she guessed, part of the orc captain's stress came from looking bad in front of an audience, and removing that audience would help.
Mary was already wearing her armor and helmet, and was eager to go, but the older elf stopped her.
"Before we go out, have you ever been in zero gravity before?"
"No, I have not. Um, I don't even know what that is."
"Did you ever wonder why the ships and floating islands do not come crashing down to the ground?"
"I just assumed they were magic, or that they were made of those strange materials that don't fall."
"That is not a bad guess, but the truth is even stranger. Gravity is generated whenever there is a sufficiently flat boundary between Earth and Air. Imagine an invisible bubble..." Suddenly, wind changed, the ship lurched beneath them and started spinning, and orc and goblin curses started flying through the air. Sofonisba steadied herself and took a deep breath. "We should go now. We can talk on the way. I was planning on teaching you how to deal with nausea, but staying longer will just make things worse."
The others managed to steady the ship again, and Sofonisba showed Mary how to mount and activate the broomstick, then quickly taught her an exercise to steady her stomach. "As soon as you turn it on, it will cancel the ship's gravity and you will be floating. Just think about standing still, and then think about walking slowly. Be sure that your feet are in front of the foot peg, not on top, or you may slide off. Just push off and move a little away from the ship. Walking pace, no sudden movements."
Mary nodded nervously, and then activated the broomstick, going through the sequence she had been shown. It worked on the first try, and, with a brief lurch, all of her weight disappeared and her armor no longer pressed down on her shoulders and hips. It still fit well, however, and she was now very glad for the hours of armor adjustment she had stood through. She gradually began to drift away from the deck.
After the first shock, it felt good. She had no nausea or stomach problems at all. She floated for a few seconds, then imagined herself gently floating forward, and was soon drifting over the ship's railing and into space. She was flying!
Then Sofonisba took off, moving with practiced ease and speed. She came alongside Mary and gestured for her to follow, away from the ship and toward the asteroids.
Mary yelled, "I'm flying! This is great! I can go anywhere in any direction and I feel like I can do anything!"
When they were safely away from the ship, the elf warrior smiled at Mary. "Yes. You are doing good. I am very happy that you are comfortable with flying; it makes things easier. Now, the most important thing to remember about flying with broomsticks is that it drains you, just as though you had run that same distance. But it can move twice as fast as you can, so you can get drained quite rapidly if you are not careful. So, to start out, we should fly slowly, at a walking speed."
Sofonisba set the pace, and Mary flew close by her side. It was surprisingly easy. She simply thought about how fast she wanted to go, by imagining walking faster or slower, and gently moved the stick in the desired direction by shifting her arm and hips. Mary desperately wanted to cut loose and fly around faster, but she followed the elf's instructions, and took the time to notice the sensations in her body as she moved. Although her legs and arms were not moving at all, it did feel like she was walking at a brisk pace. After a couple minutes, she turned and asked, "Does it drain you like running a distance, or swimming that distance? Swimming is harder because the water gives way instead of being solid. And what is the broomstick pushing against?"
Sofnonisba looked at Mary with respect. "That is a very good question. Yes, in order to move forward, you have to push something backwards. The very short version of what broomsticks do is that they take Life from your body and combine it with some of the Death stored in the broomstick. The Life and Death destroy each other, and the resulting energy is hurled backwards from the bristles at an extreme velocity, much faster than the speed of sound. The process is efficient, so it feels like walking or running."
Mary flinched a little during the elf's talk, and her direction changed before she corrected it. "That sounds dangerous. What does this energy do to the stuff it hits?"
"In a well-tuned broomstick, the energy vanishes into the astral plane after a meter or so. And yes, you do need to make sure that the bristles are not pointed at anything you care about. Anyone hit by bristle exhaust will need magical healing to stabilize their life-energy within a month or so, or they risk getting a kind of cancer."
"Is all this why brooms have a really bad reputation? My family always said that they are a dangerous menace, only used by mad witches and, um.." Mary was about to say 'demihumans' but then she stopped herself, as some part of her had realized that she had never heard a non-human use that word, so it might be considered rude, and it was definitely rude in this context. She lamely finished "and other bad people."
Sofonisba knew exactly what word was left unsaid, but chose to ignore it. "Yes, brooms are easy enough to make that almost any magic-user can throw one together with a couple dark rituals, but without proper maintenance and safety precautions they will twist and pollute both the user and the surrounding area."
Mary had been feeling more and more unclean as she heard more about the broomstick operation, the feeling starting with 'take Life from your body' and slowly building from there. When Sofonisba said 'twist and pollute' Mary reflexively let go of the broomstick and jumped off. She tried to remain calm and composed, like a proper cosmopolitan woman, but completely failed, and her voice squeaked as she said, "What dark ritual was used to make this thing and fill it with Death?"
After she said this, Mary noticed that she was slowly spinning off in one direction, and her broom was moving much more quickly in the opposite direction, well out of reach. She moved her arms and legs around a little, trying to flap or swim, which only made her spin more. Then she tried not to think about what was happening, imagined that she was just lying down in a field, and forced herself not to move.
Sofonisba quickly looked at Mary and saw that she was not yet panicking. Instead of going directly to the human child, she quickly flew over to the drifting broom, grabbed it, and flew back to the still-spinning Mary and matched her velocity. Then she made a show of calmly and carefully examining the broomstick, as though nothing at all was wrong, and said, "This one is of fairly recent local Goblin manufacture, definitely after their conversion to Ioun worship..."
Mary was barely listening. She was spinning head over heels. When the elf started talking, she was looking at the blue-green blur that was the ground over twenty miles below, and then into the cloudy vastness of space, and now the ground was spinning into view again.
"... so they probably made it by going into some dungeon and harvesting the spines of a couple of low-level undead."
Panic was beginning to creep over her as she realized how stupid she had been and how bad her situation was. She was completely helpless. Now she was looking at the sky again. There was no way she could move, nothing to grab or push against. The ground spun back into view.
"There is no reason to manufacture Death energy when you can just take it,..."
One part of her thought about falling and crashing into the ground, and started to panic about that, but then as the ground moved away again she realized that she had no idea if she was moving toward or away from it, and that if the others left her, she would float helplessly until she died of thirst long before she crashed into anything.
"... and make the world a better place in the process."
Ground again. She could barely make out the Tuck River, and guessed at where her home was. Nobody would ever know what happened, nobody would ever find her. She could die, lost and alone. The only thing that might save her was the grace and kindness of people who had no reason but their sense of honor to help her.
Sofonisba held out the broom. Mary grabbed it tightly and then wrapped herself around it, clinging with both hands and her legs.
Nothing happened. She simply kept spinning and drifting. She could barely remember what she was supposed to do to reactivate it, but forced herself to calm down, put her feet back on the pegs, and turn it on. Even then, she kept spinning, and worried that it was not on, but when she imagined herself walking forward the broom edged forward, and Mary was able to pull out of the spin.
Sofonisba wordlessly started flying towards the asteroids again. Mary forced herself to calm down and focus on following her course and speed. She noticed, for the first time, that there was a leather strap on Sofonisba's wrist that was connected to the broomstick with a short silk cord.
After a few minutes, Mary said, as cheerfully as possible, "This might be a good time to keep telling me about how gravity works."
Sofonisba smiled at Mary with a knowing fae tinkle in her eyes. "Yes. Where was I?"
"Boundary between Earth and Air."
"Right. Gravity is generated whenever there is a sufficiently flat boundary between Earth and Air. Imagine an invisible bubble formed around the place where Earth and Air meet. Things, well, most things, get pulled towards the boundary, but only within the bubble. Go outside the bubble, and gravity just shuts off. There is no pull. In the Gray Ridge region, the gravity bubble extends a few hundred meters above the ground. If the ship ever got that close to the ground and entered its gravity bubble, we would fall and crash.
"So the gravity in Boomport was twisted because the mountain was poking out of the ground's gravity bubble?"
"You catch on quick. Yes, all spaceports are on the tallest mountains, the ones tall and sharp enough to be free of the bubble. By sculpting the mountain the right way, you can shape the gravity planes its rock produces and make a spaceport for ships to dock safely."
"So why did we have gravity on the ship?"
"There is a thick sheet of copper built into the bottom hull of the ship. It counts as Earth, so it generates a small gravity bubble. We fall towards it, but the ship is not falling towards anything."
"Are these asteroids going to have a gravity plane?"
"No, they are too small and rounded. That is good for us, because you will get to practice basic space movements before we add in the extra complications of shifting gravity planes."
The conversation had calmed Mary down, and she was able to once again enjoy flying. It really was a nice feeling. For a while, nothing seemed to be happening, and it was kind of like riding a boat on a wide boring river, but as they got closer to the floating space rocks Mary could appreciate her movement and the control she had over it.
Sofonisba saw that Mary was eager to approach the nearest rock, a boulder several feet in diameter. "Before you get any closer, I must remind you that there is a very big difference between weight and mass. The rock is floating weightlessly, and it may look harmless because of that, but if it hits you in the head it could easily kill you, just like a falling rock on the ground. We need to go alongside it and match its velocity before touching it. Watch me."
Sofonisba spun around in a graceful loop, and Mary followed, and the two inched closer to the floating, gently spinning boulder.
At first it looked like a fairly boring chunk of granite, but as Mary got closer she could see thin feathery lichen nestled in several of its cracks and depressions. Little gray-green strands, like the leaves of pond plants, drifted in space.
"They are harmless. You can touch them if you want."
Mary tried to pick some of the strands, but they disintegrated into dust as she touched them.
"Before we go deeper into the field. I want you to gain an appreciation of the forces here. Try to grab hold of the rock."
Mary watched the rock make a full rotation, then, when a suitable handhold came around, cautiously but firmly grabbed onto it. There was a jerk, like a strong hound tugging at a leash, and then she and her broom were pulled in the direction of rotation. The rock kept spinning, but Mary kept moving in a straight line, and she was not able to maintain her grip as the boulder spun away from her. She drifted off into space.
It was easy enough for Mary to use her broom to reorient herself, and when she looked back to the boulder, it was gently drifting along as though nothing had happened.
Next, Sofonisba had Mary practice slowly approaching and kicking or pushing off the rock from various angles while riding the broom, so that she could handle an impact without hurting herself. Sometimes she bounced gracefully off, and other times she went sprawling or spinning into space.
After Sofonisba was satisfied that Mary had learned the basics of self-preservation, she finally took Mary exploring deeper into the asteroid field.
Mary traveled slowly and carefully as she looked in all directions. "Oh wow, this is impressive. Look at that flower! It is so big and pretty. Ooh, a butterfly. Wait, oh, it is over a foot long! Hey, is that a spider web between those two asteroids? Yes, wow, it is over a hundred feet! Look at that! Oof, I swallowed a gnat. Oh wow, they are everywhere. Yuck, we really need to figure out how to fit goggles under my helmet."
"Move quickly, this way. You can outfly them."
Mary spent over two hours exploring and examining the asteroid field, looking closely at everything she could, and also looking at the whole scene many times from many angles. It was like a barren mountaintop spread over a collection of floating bubbles. Most of the surface of the asteroids was either bare rock or lichen, but soil had accumulated in some cracks, enough for small plants and flowers and clumps of grass to grow, but nothing larger. The plants supported a small ecosystem of bugs, with spiders as the apex predator. Everything was longer and frailer than its gravity-based equivalent, and the flying insects drifted along and moved with slow casual flaps rather than fighting gravity with fast-fluttering wings.
Sofonisba was with Mary for most of it, but after some time the elf went to the fringes and simply watched. Finally, Mary came to her. "I think I am done now, unless you have something else to show me."
"You have seen all there is to see here. Very few people would spend the time do that. You truly do have a passion for nature and an eye for beauty."
"Wow, thanks!"
"There is one more thing to do, if you are brave enough. I think you are ready to practice jumping from rock to rock."
"Really?"
"Yes. There are several safe jumps here. I will take your broomstick and catch you if you miss or bounce off."
"But I could not hold onto the last one."
"If you go slow and land on one with no spin, you have a good chance."
"Maybe I can start by jumping from my broom to a rock?"
"That is a wise idea, with the caveat that you cannot jump from the broom. If you tried, you would simply push the broom away. You must use the broom to set your velocity, and then simply release it. I will catch it. Let me see, I think I know a good spot for that."
"Okay, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this."
"Just be slow and patient. Aim, let go when you are about ten meters away, release, curl your knees to your chest, and when you touch down, use your legs to slow yourself down and then grab the rock."
"Right. Do you promise you will catch me if I miss?"
"As quickly as I can."
"Okay."
Mary followed Sofonisba to the chosen spot, and then followed her instructions. She felt a brief flash of panic after she released the broom, but this time, instead of spinning into nothing, she was drifting towards solid ground. Then, when that panic subsided, her perspective shifted and it felt like she was falling 30 feet and about to painfully crash. But when she kept drifting slowly after her instincts told her she should have already hit, she was able to calm down and prepare for the landing. Her feet touched, she crouched down, grabbed for the rock...
Success! Mary was clinging to the rock like a lizard on a wall. "I did it!"
"Congratulations!" Sofonisba was right beside her with the broom. "Take some time, collect yourself, and try crawling around the rock. Again, take it slow. The faster your body goes, the harder you need to grip to avoid flying off. I am right beside you."
Mary did so, hesitantly at first, but soon she started to enjoy the feeling of control. She was moving around, weightlessly, almost effortlessly, in a fantastic place among the clouds, using only her own power. With the barest flick of her arms, she could move from handhold to handhold, her face close to tiny sweet-smelling flowers growing among the gossamer lichen. She could scamper all over and around the rock...
She moved too fast, her grip slipped, and in trying to regain it she pushed herself back into space.
"I have you." Mary felt Sofonisba's gloved hand on her shoulder, stopping her motion and her spinning.
"Just push me back to the rock. I want to try again."
"Very good."
Mary played around on the rock for several more minutes, becoming more comfortable with the movement. Sofonisba saw that she was not afraid to keep testing her limits, moving faster and trying more things, and she was prepared when Mary inevitably pushed herself too far and slipped off again. "Do you want to go back to the rock, or your broom?"
"Push me back to the rock, then hold the broom out so I can jump for it."
Mary landed on the rock, crouched, looked at the elf 30 feet away, and jumped toward the broom. But as she did so, the rock moved and spun under her feet, and her angle was slightly off. She drifted past the broom, just a foot out of reach. Sofonisba flew over and handed it to her.
"When you jump from a rock, remember that it is not solid ground. Everything will be pushed back a little when you jump from it, and if you are not jumping directly away from its center of mass, you will make it spin."
"So it is like jumping off a boat."
"Exactly."
"I can do that. Let me try again."
Mary practiced for over an hour, first jumping from rock to broom and back, and then from rock to rock. Sometimes she made the jumps, and sometimes she missed, but she always tried again, and her improvement was rapid. By the end of the hour, she was able to make hundred-foot jumps, and managed a three-stage journey, jumping with careful timing from rock to rock to rock to rock and sticking to the last one.
After that triumph, Sofonisba handed her the broom. "I think we are done for today."
"Do I have to stop now? I feel great!"
"You are getting tired, and your jumping has made the rocks move and spin faster. It is no longer safe. We should go back and eat and rest, and wait for the next asteroid field."
Mary sighed. "You're right."
Once they were clear of the rocks, Mary moved close to Sofonisba and put her hand on the elf's shoulder. "You are a really good teacher. I had so much fun today, I saw and did so many wonderful things and I know that I will be a lot safer in space now. Thank you so so much, You have been so wonderful. I..." her eyes started to tear up, and she swallowed. "You are going to be a great mother. I'm jealous of your children."
Sofonisba could not think of anything to say. She simply held Mary's hand until they got close to the ship.
Next (Tsinta)
Next Mary
The simplest way is to ride on an animal that flies. There are several trainable flying animals that can carry a person in a gravity well, and many more than can do it in zero gravity. A related method is the flapboat, which is like a rowboat but with large wings instead of oars. Many civilizations in sky archipelagos or asteroid fields need nothing else, but flight powered by muscle needs food, water, and rest, and so is rarely useful for longer journeys through empty space.
At the other extreme, the great-power navies like the Mind Flayers and the Holy Corellon Federation use extremely expensive spelljamming helms that move their massive ships at incredible velocities by directly warping space, in a manner similar to telekinesis and teleportation magic.
Civilizations in the middle have several options, and Fortuna's Kiss was equipped with several of the more practical ones, devices that can be constructed by anyone capable of making basic magic or alchemical items and used by anyone with a little training.
Earth-elemental reaction engines, like the ones that power magical constructs such as golems, generate a slow steady amount of power. They can easily be made with a variable power output and connected to a propeller. This is very useful for docking and other precise maneuvers, but too slow for long voyages.
Fire-Water reaction engines generate much more power and thrust, with a reaction somewhat like chemical rockets but more efficient and safer. They are good for emergency thrust, but using them exclusively for long voyages would be very expensive and require you to start off loaded with dangerous and volatile refined elemental matter.
The safest and most energy-efficient travel method is sailing with an elemental keel. In waterboats, the water provides the leverage that allows the ship to sail at an angle to the wind. In spaceships, the elemental keel serves this function. When activated, it holds the ship in a certain orientation, like iron filings in a magnetic field, and any force that would push the ship sideways or make it spiral in a corkscrew instead pushes it mostly forward.
Sailing with an elemental keel is much like sailing in water, but there are several important differences that must be learned through experience. Ra fal, Mabellyne, Tsinta, and Gladys were going through training drills, learning how to steer the ship under various conditions. Ra fal and Gladys each controlled one wing, using strength to pull and twist it into position. Tsinta handled the lines controlling the sail and watched for wind currents, while Gladys controlled the keel orientation. The engine had been shut down for safety and the propeller had been removed and stowed, to protect it and the crankshaft from strain as the ship lurched around.
They had progressed through the basics relatively smoothly, and were able to reliably travel at most angles against a steady wind, including sailing full and by and tacking. But then, after sailing for several hours and getting a very safe distance above the ground, they deliberately steered out of the Gray Ridge Thermal and into an area of unpredictable choppy winds in order to practice in rougher conditions.
"Strong gust incoming, two o'clock low."
"How low?"
"Um, about 60° below plane"
"Spin 40° clockwise and turn us, um, 30° port"
"Setting keel to 63° Air, 22° Fire, 5° Dark."
"That will put us in irons!"
"I think she meant 22° Water!"
"Yes, sorry!"
"Warp that wing more!"
"Teetdullh! We're too slow!"
"Watch the boom!"
"What the gritginding friction are you doing?"
The process made Mary and Sofonisba uncomfortable, both physically and socially. The random lurching and spinning of the ship threatened made them both airsick, and the constant frustrated bickering of the others made them ill at ease.
During a calm patch, Mary carefully and gently approached Ra fal, like she would approach one of her family's hounds in an ill temper. "Sofonisba needs to teach me how to ride a broomstick. Is it okay if we leave the ship and go exploring that asteroid field?"
"Yes, of course. Take as much time as you need." Mary could see the relief in Ra fal's eyes. As she guessed, part of the orc captain's stress came from looking bad in front of an audience, and removing that audience would help.
Mary was already wearing her armor and helmet, and was eager to go, but the older elf stopped her.
"Before we go out, have you ever been in zero gravity before?"
"No, I have not. Um, I don't even know what that is."
"Did you ever wonder why the ships and floating islands do not come crashing down to the ground?"
"I just assumed they were magic, or that they were made of those strange materials that don't fall."
"That is not a bad guess, but the truth is even stranger. Gravity is generated whenever there is a sufficiently flat boundary between Earth and Air. Imagine an invisible bubble..." Suddenly, wind changed, the ship lurched beneath them and started spinning, and orc and goblin curses started flying through the air. Sofonisba steadied herself and took a deep breath. "We should go now. We can talk on the way. I was planning on teaching you how to deal with nausea, but staying longer will just make things worse."
The others managed to steady the ship again, and Sofonisba showed Mary how to mount and activate the broomstick, then quickly taught her an exercise to steady her stomach. "As soon as you turn it on, it will cancel the ship's gravity and you will be floating. Just think about standing still, and then think about walking slowly. Be sure that your feet are in front of the foot peg, not on top, or you may slide off. Just push off and move a little away from the ship. Walking pace, no sudden movements."
Mary nodded nervously, and then activated the broomstick, going through the sequence she had been shown. It worked on the first try, and, with a brief lurch, all of her weight disappeared and her armor no longer pressed down on her shoulders and hips. It still fit well, however, and she was now very glad for the hours of armor adjustment she had stood through. She gradually began to drift away from the deck.
After the first shock, it felt good. She had no nausea or stomach problems at all. She floated for a few seconds, then imagined herself gently floating forward, and was soon drifting over the ship's railing and into space. She was flying!
Then Sofonisba took off, moving with practiced ease and speed. She came alongside Mary and gestured for her to follow, away from the ship and toward the asteroids.
Mary yelled, "I'm flying! This is great! I can go anywhere in any direction and I feel like I can do anything!"
When they were safely away from the ship, the elf warrior smiled at Mary. "Yes. You are doing good. I am very happy that you are comfortable with flying; it makes things easier. Now, the most important thing to remember about flying with broomsticks is that it drains you, just as though you had run that same distance. But it can move twice as fast as you can, so you can get drained quite rapidly if you are not careful. So, to start out, we should fly slowly, at a walking speed."
Sofonisba set the pace, and Mary flew close by her side. It was surprisingly easy. She simply thought about how fast she wanted to go, by imagining walking faster or slower, and gently moved the stick in the desired direction by shifting her arm and hips. Mary desperately wanted to cut loose and fly around faster, but she followed the elf's instructions, and took the time to notice the sensations in her body as she moved. Although her legs and arms were not moving at all, it did feel like she was walking at a brisk pace. After a couple minutes, she turned and asked, "Does it drain you like running a distance, or swimming that distance? Swimming is harder because the water gives way instead of being solid. And what is the broomstick pushing against?"
Sofnonisba looked at Mary with respect. "That is a very good question. Yes, in order to move forward, you have to push something backwards. The very short version of what broomsticks do is that they take Life from your body and combine it with some of the Death stored in the broomstick. The Life and Death destroy each other, and the resulting energy is hurled backwards from the bristles at an extreme velocity, much faster than the speed of sound. The process is efficient, so it feels like walking or running."
Mary flinched a little during the elf's talk, and her direction changed before she corrected it. "That sounds dangerous. What does this energy do to the stuff it hits?"
"In a well-tuned broomstick, the energy vanishes into the astral plane after a meter or so. And yes, you do need to make sure that the bristles are not pointed at anything you care about. Anyone hit by bristle exhaust will need magical healing to stabilize their life-energy within a month or so, or they risk getting a kind of cancer."
"Is all this why brooms have a really bad reputation? My family always said that they are a dangerous menace, only used by mad witches and, um.." Mary was about to say 'demihumans' but then she stopped herself, as some part of her had realized that she had never heard a non-human use that word, so it might be considered rude, and it was definitely rude in this context. She lamely finished "and other bad people."
Sofonisba knew exactly what word was left unsaid, but chose to ignore it. "Yes, brooms are easy enough to make that almost any magic-user can throw one together with a couple dark rituals, but without proper maintenance and safety precautions they will twist and pollute both the user and the surrounding area."
Mary had been feeling more and more unclean as she heard more about the broomstick operation, the feeling starting with 'take Life from your body' and slowly building from there. When Sofonisba said 'twist and pollute' Mary reflexively let go of the broomstick and jumped off. She tried to remain calm and composed, like a proper cosmopolitan woman, but completely failed, and her voice squeaked as she said, "What dark ritual was used to make this thing and fill it with Death?"
After she said this, Mary noticed that she was slowly spinning off in one direction, and her broom was moving much more quickly in the opposite direction, well out of reach. She moved her arms and legs around a little, trying to flap or swim, which only made her spin more. Then she tried not to think about what was happening, imagined that she was just lying down in a field, and forced herself not to move.
Sofonisba quickly looked at Mary and saw that she was not yet panicking. Instead of going directly to the human child, she quickly flew over to the drifting broom, grabbed it, and flew back to the still-spinning Mary and matched her velocity. Then she made a show of calmly and carefully examining the broomstick, as though nothing at all was wrong, and said, "This one is of fairly recent local Goblin manufacture, definitely after their conversion to Ioun worship..."
Mary was barely listening. She was spinning head over heels. When the elf started talking, she was looking at the blue-green blur that was the ground over twenty miles below, and then into the cloudy vastness of space, and now the ground was spinning into view again.
"... so they probably made it by going into some dungeon and harvesting the spines of a couple of low-level undead."
Panic was beginning to creep over her as she realized how stupid she had been and how bad her situation was. She was completely helpless. Now she was looking at the sky again. There was no way she could move, nothing to grab or push against. The ground spun back into view.
"There is no reason to manufacture Death energy when you can just take it,..."
One part of her thought about falling and crashing into the ground, and started to panic about that, but then as the ground moved away again she realized that she had no idea if she was moving toward or away from it, and that if the others left her, she would float helplessly until she died of thirst long before she crashed into anything.
"... and make the world a better place in the process."
Ground again. She could barely make out the Tuck River, and guessed at where her home was. Nobody would ever know what happened, nobody would ever find her. She could die, lost and alone. The only thing that might save her was the grace and kindness of people who had no reason but their sense of honor to help her.
Sofonisba held out the broom. Mary grabbed it tightly and then wrapped herself around it, clinging with both hands and her legs.
Nothing happened. She simply kept spinning and drifting. She could barely remember what she was supposed to do to reactivate it, but forced herself to calm down, put her feet back on the pegs, and turn it on. Even then, she kept spinning, and worried that it was not on, but when she imagined herself walking forward the broom edged forward, and Mary was able to pull out of the spin.
Sofonisba wordlessly started flying towards the asteroids again. Mary forced herself to calm down and focus on following her course and speed. She noticed, for the first time, that there was a leather strap on Sofonisba's wrist that was connected to the broomstick with a short silk cord.
After a few minutes, Mary said, as cheerfully as possible, "This might be a good time to keep telling me about how gravity works."
Sofonisba smiled at Mary with a knowing fae tinkle in her eyes. "Yes. Where was I?"
"Boundary between Earth and Air."
"Right. Gravity is generated whenever there is a sufficiently flat boundary between Earth and Air. Imagine an invisible bubble formed around the place where Earth and Air meet. Things, well, most things, get pulled towards the boundary, but only within the bubble. Go outside the bubble, and gravity just shuts off. There is no pull. In the Gray Ridge region, the gravity bubble extends a few hundred meters above the ground. If the ship ever got that close to the ground and entered its gravity bubble, we would fall and crash.
"So the gravity in Boomport was twisted because the mountain was poking out of the ground's gravity bubble?"
"You catch on quick. Yes, all spaceports are on the tallest mountains, the ones tall and sharp enough to be free of the bubble. By sculpting the mountain the right way, you can shape the gravity planes its rock produces and make a spaceport for ships to dock safely."
"So why did we have gravity on the ship?"
"There is a thick sheet of copper built into the bottom hull of the ship. It counts as Earth, so it generates a small gravity bubble. We fall towards it, but the ship is not falling towards anything."
"Are these asteroids going to have a gravity plane?"
"No, they are too small and rounded. That is good for us, because you will get to practice basic space movements before we add in the extra complications of shifting gravity planes."
The conversation had calmed Mary down, and she was able to once again enjoy flying. It really was a nice feeling. For a while, nothing seemed to be happening, and it was kind of like riding a boat on a wide boring river, but as they got closer to the floating space rocks Mary could appreciate her movement and the control she had over it.
Sofonisba saw that Mary was eager to approach the nearest rock, a boulder several feet in diameter. "Before you get any closer, I must remind you that there is a very big difference between weight and mass. The rock is floating weightlessly, and it may look harmless because of that, but if it hits you in the head it could easily kill you, just like a falling rock on the ground. We need to go alongside it and match its velocity before touching it. Watch me."
Sofonisba spun around in a graceful loop, and Mary followed, and the two inched closer to the floating, gently spinning boulder.
At first it looked like a fairly boring chunk of granite, but as Mary got closer she could see thin feathery lichen nestled in several of its cracks and depressions. Little gray-green strands, like the leaves of pond plants, drifted in space.
"They are harmless. You can touch them if you want."
Mary tried to pick some of the strands, but they disintegrated into dust as she touched them.
"Before we go deeper into the field. I want you to gain an appreciation of the forces here. Try to grab hold of the rock."
Mary watched the rock make a full rotation, then, when a suitable handhold came around, cautiously but firmly grabbed onto it. There was a jerk, like a strong hound tugging at a leash, and then she and her broom were pulled in the direction of rotation. The rock kept spinning, but Mary kept moving in a straight line, and she was not able to maintain her grip as the boulder spun away from her. She drifted off into space.
It was easy enough for Mary to use her broom to reorient herself, and when she looked back to the boulder, it was gently drifting along as though nothing had happened.
Next, Sofonisba had Mary practice slowly approaching and kicking or pushing off the rock from various angles while riding the broom, so that she could handle an impact without hurting herself. Sometimes she bounced gracefully off, and other times she went sprawling or spinning into space.
After Sofonisba was satisfied that Mary had learned the basics of self-preservation, she finally took Mary exploring deeper into the asteroid field.
Mary traveled slowly and carefully as she looked in all directions. "Oh wow, this is impressive. Look at that flower! It is so big and pretty. Ooh, a butterfly. Wait, oh, it is over a foot long! Hey, is that a spider web between those two asteroids? Yes, wow, it is over a hundred feet! Look at that! Oof, I swallowed a gnat. Oh wow, they are everywhere. Yuck, we really need to figure out how to fit goggles under my helmet."
"Move quickly, this way. You can outfly them."
Mary spent over two hours exploring and examining the asteroid field, looking closely at everything she could, and also looking at the whole scene many times from many angles. It was like a barren mountaintop spread over a collection of floating bubbles. Most of the surface of the asteroids was either bare rock or lichen, but soil had accumulated in some cracks, enough for small plants and flowers and clumps of grass to grow, but nothing larger. The plants supported a small ecosystem of bugs, with spiders as the apex predator. Everything was longer and frailer than its gravity-based equivalent, and the flying insects drifted along and moved with slow casual flaps rather than fighting gravity with fast-fluttering wings.
Sofonisba was with Mary for most of it, but after some time the elf went to the fringes and simply watched. Finally, Mary came to her. "I think I am done now, unless you have something else to show me."
"You have seen all there is to see here. Very few people would spend the time do that. You truly do have a passion for nature and an eye for beauty."
"Wow, thanks!"
"There is one more thing to do, if you are brave enough. I think you are ready to practice jumping from rock to rock."
"Really?"
"Yes. There are several safe jumps here. I will take your broomstick and catch you if you miss or bounce off."
"But I could not hold onto the last one."
"If you go slow and land on one with no spin, you have a good chance."
"Maybe I can start by jumping from my broom to a rock?"
"That is a wise idea, with the caveat that you cannot jump from the broom. If you tried, you would simply push the broom away. You must use the broom to set your velocity, and then simply release it. I will catch it. Let me see, I think I know a good spot for that."
"Okay, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this."
"Just be slow and patient. Aim, let go when you are about ten meters away, release, curl your knees to your chest, and when you touch down, use your legs to slow yourself down and then grab the rock."
"Right. Do you promise you will catch me if I miss?"
"As quickly as I can."
"Okay."
Mary followed Sofonisba to the chosen spot, and then followed her instructions. She felt a brief flash of panic after she released the broom, but this time, instead of spinning into nothing, she was drifting towards solid ground. Then, when that panic subsided, her perspective shifted and it felt like she was falling 30 feet and about to painfully crash. But when she kept drifting slowly after her instincts told her she should have already hit, she was able to calm down and prepare for the landing. Her feet touched, she crouched down, grabbed for the rock...
Success! Mary was clinging to the rock like a lizard on a wall. "I did it!"
"Congratulations!" Sofonisba was right beside her with the broom. "Take some time, collect yourself, and try crawling around the rock. Again, take it slow. The faster your body goes, the harder you need to grip to avoid flying off. I am right beside you."
Mary did so, hesitantly at first, but soon she started to enjoy the feeling of control. She was moving around, weightlessly, almost effortlessly, in a fantastic place among the clouds, using only her own power. With the barest flick of her arms, she could move from handhold to handhold, her face close to tiny sweet-smelling flowers growing among the gossamer lichen. She could scamper all over and around the rock...
She moved too fast, her grip slipped, and in trying to regain it she pushed herself back into space.
"I have you." Mary felt Sofonisba's gloved hand on her shoulder, stopping her motion and her spinning.
"Just push me back to the rock. I want to try again."
"Very good."
Mary played around on the rock for several more minutes, becoming more comfortable with the movement. Sofonisba saw that she was not afraid to keep testing her limits, moving faster and trying more things, and she was prepared when Mary inevitably pushed herself too far and slipped off again. "Do you want to go back to the rock, or your broom?"
"Push me back to the rock, then hold the broom out so I can jump for it."
Mary landed on the rock, crouched, looked at the elf 30 feet away, and jumped toward the broom. But as she did so, the rock moved and spun under her feet, and her angle was slightly off. She drifted past the broom, just a foot out of reach. Sofonisba flew over and handed it to her.
"When you jump from a rock, remember that it is not solid ground. Everything will be pushed back a little when you jump from it, and if you are not jumping directly away from its center of mass, you will make it spin."
"So it is like jumping off a boat."
"Exactly."
"I can do that. Let me try again."
Mary practiced for over an hour, first jumping from rock to broom and back, and then from rock to rock. Sometimes she made the jumps, and sometimes she missed, but she always tried again, and her improvement was rapid. By the end of the hour, she was able to make hundred-foot jumps, and managed a three-stage journey, jumping with careful timing from rock to rock to rock to rock and sticking to the last one.
After that triumph, Sofonisba handed her the broom. "I think we are done for today."
"Do I have to stop now? I feel great!"
"You are getting tired, and your jumping has made the rocks move and spin faster. It is no longer safe. We should go back and eat and rest, and wait for the next asteroid field."
Mary sighed. "You're right."
Once they were clear of the rocks, Mary moved close to Sofonisba and put her hand on the elf's shoulder. "You are a really good teacher. I had so much fun today, I saw and did so many wonderful things and I know that I will be a lot safer in space now. Thank you so so much, You have been so wonderful. I..." her eyes started to tear up, and she swallowed. "You are going to be a great mother. I'm jealous of your children."
Sofonisba could not think of anything to say. She simply held Mary's hand until they got close to the ship.
Next (Tsinta)
Next Mary
2a: Mary Meeting
Mary was fascinated by Boomport as her coach made its way up the Great Spiral Road to the elite commerce section. The sights, sounds, smells, and overall feel of the city were beguiling, tantalizing, and energizing. There were things here that she had only heard of in distant legends, if at all. She knew of the ancient fallen empires and the relics they had left behind, but this was like one of those great civilizations brought to life again. She could feel the newness and the energy of it all, and wondered how this had happened and what it might mean for the future.
Centuries before Mary was born, the elves of the Holy Corellon Federation set in motion a secret plan to grow peace and civilization in the Gray Ridge Mountains by converting the various savage races to the worship of civilized gods. At the time Mary visited Boomport, it was known only to a few that the elves had been responsible for the recent conversion of the goblins to the worship of Ioun, goddess of knowledge.
When an entire civilization religiously devotes itself to knowledge, skill, and reason, the results can be impressive and somewhat alarming, especially if old books and devices from fallen technological civilizations are available to study. Less than a decade after their conversion, the goblins laid claim to a mountain tall enough to escape gravity, named it Boomport, and started exploring wildspace, first with incredibly dangerous rocket-powered ships, and later with magitech spelljamming engines.
Boomport soon became the political, cultural, and economic center of a rapidly-developing goblin civilization. Ships came into the mountaintop spaceport with wonders to be studied. Shipyards were built just below the port. Workshops, laboratories, makerspaces, and schools sprang up on the sides of the mountain. Banks, high-value storage vaults, military facilities, and government offices were established in fortified tunnels within the mountain. Raw materials flowed into warehouses on the bottom of the mountain, and smaller nearby mountains were terraced to form farmland.
When a tribe of kobolds in a strategically important location was converted to the worship of the good dragon-god Bahamut, the elven plan of Gray Ridge civilization was nearly complete. They recruited the wizard Martin Cooper, a cultural anthropologist who had done fieldwork in the region, to be their ambassador to the kobolds, and tasked him and his party of adventurers with protecting and nourishing this young civilization. Martin succeeded admirably in the job, completing a series of great tasks and adventures while working to advance peaceful cooperation and protect local traditions. Soon, Martin made contact with the local network of clerics, and through them various local leaders. He was a key player in the formation of the Gray Ridge League of Armed Neutrality, of which the Boomport goblins were a founding member, and soon became a local legend and the de facto leader of the League.
With the creation of the League, Boomport grew even more, becoming one of the main commercial hubs of an entire region of peoples just starting to enjoy the possibilities and benefits of peaceful trade and coexistence. Adventurers from all over the League came to sell books and devices they had pulled from Dragonborn and Tiefling ruins, and to buy magical and alchemical devices from goblin workshops. Merchants came to buy and sell raw materials and more mundane goods. Inns and taverns sprang up on the lower levels of the city to cater to this crowd. Higher-end meeting-houses, hotels, shops, and depots were built at the mountaintop, near the spaceport, to cater to the spacefarers, richer adventurers, high-end businesspeople, and other elites. Various government and diplomatic offices for the League, such as its Space Command, were set up close to the goblin government offices deep in the mountain.
As the carriage slowly moved past all of this, offering tantalizing hints of a larger picture that Mary desperately wished to know and understand more fully, she longed to burst out of the shell of the carriage and disappear into the winding alleys and chaotic markets of the city to explore and adventure. There were so many amazing things to experience.
But the rational part of her knew that this was dangerous, so she stayed in the carriage with Captain Daniels and Belén. Hopefully Susan would take her out into the city after they met and went over her intel.
Thanks to the advance notice from their sages and spies, the Hanover family had been preparing Mary for adventure for two intense weeks before her official invitation came from the League Space command. The letter confirmed the tales of Martin's harebrained eccentricity. Mary and five other women were instructed to join together into an adventuring party and gather plants for Martin in space. It was obviously a test, and as soon as the letter came, the Hanover family and all of its advisers began gathering information and plotting.
Much of this operation had been directed by Mary's cousin Susan, the family's agent in Boomport. Given her location near the place where the adventurers would meet, it made sense for all information to flow directly to her. Susan lived in a small house over a narrow storefront in the wealthy commercial region of town near the spaceport. The storefront had two signs. To the left of the door there was an ornate steel sign encrusted with magically enchanted glowing and glittering mica flakes that read "Mecklenberg Mica: Bespoke Magical Armor and other Fine Creations." To the right of the door there was a subdued and official-looking carved-granite sign that said, "Embassy of the Kingdom of Mecklenberg."
The shop was incredibly profitable, and as far as anybody in League intelligence knew, the sole foreign policy goal of the Kingdom of Mecklenberg, aside from continued independence, was maximizing their income from this one store. This was a mostly accurate assessment of the situation.
When the coach rattled to a stop in a parking space front of the storefront, Daniels looked around the street, and also up at the rooftops, scanning for threats, and then opened the door and hopped out. He went for the footstool, preparing to help Mary down, but Mary, eager to leave the coach and prove her independence, jumped out, just like she would jump when running through a forest. However, as she landed, her foot slipped on a smooth, oil-coated cobblestone, her leg shot out in front of her, and she sprawled painfully onto the ground.
As Daniels helped her up, he said, "Yew need to treat these streets like rocks in a river. Take it slow. Ya never know what kinda crap these filthy goblins have tossed inta the street."
As soon as Mary put weight on her left foot, she yelped in pain and nearly collapsed again, but Daniels caught her. "Looks like ya twisted yer ankle up pretty bad. Let's gitcha inside."
And so, Mary's first steps in the big city were a few hop-limps, clinging to Daniels's arm, from her family's gilded coach to its high-end boutique. She said nothing, focusing on not crying from pain and embarrassment.
When Daniels opened the door, Mary was confronted with a store full of giant insects: tall lanky golden-brown mantis-like things, standing on their back two legs while waving the other four around. They wore varying amounts of clothing, from a ragged loincloth to clean ornate white robes, but all had belts and bandoliers full of tools and weapons, including vicious-looking three-pointed throwing stars. Several of them were clustered around Susan. Mary's first instinct, when seeing her cousin surrounded by armed giant insects, was to panic, but she quickly realized that they were just talking, so she kept quiet and watched.
Susan was wearing a bizarre-looking helmet. The visor was golden, with a purple lens over one eye, and the rest was made of a strange gray material patterned to look like a giant brain. She was gesturing and pointing, but not moving her mouth or saying anything. Then an insect would wave its arms and antennae and make clicking sounds, and then Susan would respond with a quiet look and gestures.
Susan saw Mary and Daniels come in, but did not acknowledge them immediately. Instead, she kept 'talking' to the insects until one of them took a Mica shield from her to examine and another consented to be measured by the gnome clerk. Then, she took the helmet off and came to greet her cousin.
"Did you feed the meter?"
Mary, confused and a little shocked, said nothing. Daniels also looked perplexed.
Susan fished for a coin from her purse. "You have to put a shilling into the slot in that box on the pole with the flags poking out.... Oh, never mind, I'll do it. Take this key, go behind the counter, and let yourself into the apartment through the left-hand door."
Daniels gingerly helped Mary through the crowded store, carefully and slowly moving around the insects, who stared at them unsettlingly. Mary got the feeling that at least one of them was looking at her limp and thinking of her as an injured prey animal, but they did nothing. She was happy to get behind the counter and through the door, even though it meant that Daniels would have to carry her up the narrow staircase. When they got to the parlor, he deposited her into the couch, took up a guard stance with his back to the wall covering the doors and window, and they waited for Susan to return.
It took quite some time for Susan to return, and when she did she seemed tired and frazzled. "Oh Mary, I am so happy to see you. It is such a relief to have family around. I am sorry if I was short earlier, I was in the middle of a big sales pitch and I didn't want us to get ticketed or booted and have to deal with the traffic bureau."
She plopped down into the armchair opposite the couch and started taking her shoes off. "Ugh, those roaches are always a pain in the ass to deal with. They don't understand the concept of 'certified banknotes only' and always insist on bartering and then I have to arrange for an appraiser and escrow broker to make sure I am not getting ripped off. If they weren't loaded with the treasures of a hundred moons I'd kick their skinny asses right out the door as soon as they tried to walk in. Anyway, let's have dinner. I'll have the runner fetch us some whale tacos from the Olmos joint down the road."
Daniels spoke up. "Also, please arrange for a healer for Mary. She twisted her ankle on the journey here."
Susan rushed over to Mary and looked at her foot. "Oh, my poor dear! Of course we'll get you fixed right up. I know someone discreet; it won't do to have rumors going about. And while we're at it, I need to have your name added to the arrival board at The Open Shell."
After a strange but delicious dinner and a visit from a taciturn cleric, Mary felt much better. After the servants had finished moving in all the luggage and setting up the guest room for Daniels and the driver, and a cot for Mary in Susan's room, Susan dismissed them, locked the doors and shutters, and started the intelligence briefing.
"Okay, so here's the scoop. The crew is you and a bunch of demihumans: An orc, two goblins, and two elves. You are the only human, so it is pretty clear that this is a test for you. Martin is good at managing the demis; he got them to stop butchering each other and act like real people. So he is probably testing you to make sure that you can do the same thing. Basically your job is to keep them from killing each other or sabotaging the mission, and once you have done that, you will have passed the test. From what I hear, you're pretty good with the demis, so it should be easy for you to get along with everyone. Just be good to them and talk them out of anything stupid, and when you get back, you will be Mrs. Cooper!"
Susan pulled out a folder of notes. "Now, on to specific advice and plans. Our cover story is that you have been adventuring for a few years in and around Mecklenberg, protecting its people from various bad things. Basically, you just claim credit for the stuff that Captain Daniels and his men have been doing. I am sure you remember most of the stories, but you should memorize all of his reports as well, and work with Daniels to add some realistic details to your 'memories' so you can convince people you were there. Oh, and change the story so you were leading a group that included gnomes and elves. That should be precedent for you to have a respected leader and peacekeeper role.”
Susan checked off another item on the page. “Demis all hate each other for one reason or other. They obviously will not trust the other races, the wood elf and high elf will be at odds because of that screwy caste thing they have, and one goblin is nobility and another is a commoner so they will also not get along. That will leave you as the only person they can trust."
Susan flipped to a new page of notes. "Okay, now on to racial psychology, so you know what to expect and how to approach them. Orcs are full of bluster. They come out bragging, with a big list of demands, and they expect you to haggle them down. Try to arrange for the elves and goblins to do that for you. This one will probably demand to be named captain and combat leader to soothe her fragile ego, so you should let her have that. It actually makes sense, because she is an experienced adventuring captain, so hopefully she can keep the others in line in an emergency. But don't let her have any more power than that.
Susan flipped the page again. “Now, goblin women are vicious cunning little bitches"
"Butch bitches" Daniels interjected laconically.
Susan burst into a whistling high-pitched screech of a laugh before continuing. "Right. They'll try all sorts of crap, like to make your head spin. But the nice thing is they are pretty easy to bribe. As far as we can tell, neither one actually loves Martin, so if it becomes necessary you can just pay them off to keep them in line. The commoner might think she loves him, but really she just wants to hang out with a high-level wizard. She'd probably be fine with the kobolds of Team Wormslayer, and we think we can arrange that, so that is your trump card for her. And the noble is just doing this to buy time in a political game. We are still working on the details, but whatever problem they have can probably be solved by some kind of special treaty between her clan and Mecklenberg, so again you have a trump card to buy her loyalty if you can't just sweet-talk her.”
Susan flipped to another page. Mary was starting to hate that sound. Susan continued. “Elves are pretty easy to manage. They are obsessed with aesthetics and sensation, so as long as you let them take charge of things like cooking and decoration, you can get away with controlling the real power. You and the orc and goblins will end up as the actual owners of the adventuring company, which means control of all the mission details. Now, about that corporate ownership..."
And so began a tedious evening of money and plotting. Susan went over negotiating strategy, with the goals and estimated assets of the others. She also went over more 'racial psychology' manipulation tricks, to which Daniels added lessons from his experience dealing with the family's nonhuman servants.
During a particularly vile and demeaning digression, Mary interrupted him to try to regain conversational control, and her sanity. "Wait, sorry, it is hard for me to focus on this. Something has been bothering me."
Daniels looked at her. "Yes?"
"What will happen to me if Martin ends up choosing one of them as a wife?"
Susan and Daniels looked at each other, as if they had never even considered this, before Daniels responded, "Well then, that'd mean he's just crazy. He may know how to keep them in line, but surely he's not that much of a demi-lover."
Susan added, "If it turns out that he is, then nobody will blame you for not marrying him. We'd be happy not to have that in the family, so you can just come home and pretend this never happened and we'll find another place for you."
Mary nodded politely. "Can we stop for now? I could really use a good sleep so I can be at my best."
"Oh, of course, dear. We can stop now. But you probably won't meet tomorrow. You meet for breakfast the day after everyone posts that they have arrived, and last I checked only two others are in town. I'd expect it will take several more days before everyone arrives."
Susan was correct, and the days of waiting were mostly enjoyable. Susan took a few hours a day, when no customers were expected, to show Mary around the city. Susan knew the city, its rules and patterns and tricks and treasures. She was smart and sassy and fun to be with, as long as Mary could keep the topic of conversation away from the supposed inferiority of anyone who was not a Hanover. Daniels insisted on following them the first couple times, but then he saw that the city was actually pretty safe if you knew the rules, and Susan managed to persuade him that she knew how to keep anything bad from happening.
Sometimes Mary went out wearing her armor, sometimes she went in nicer noblewoman's clothes, and a couple times Susan had her wear her old woods-tromping clothes. These were very different experiences, even when walking the exact same streets, and Mary learned a lot about cities, and about people, in those few days.
She learned how people judged her by her clothes and walk, knowing nothing of her rank and station. She learned that different races had very different ideas about what was appropriate to be sold and advertised in an open market. She learned what it was like to pull a knife on a stoned goblin in a seedy bar to stop him from trying to grope her.
When Susan was busy, Daniels would continue Mary's combat training. When Susan had to be watching the shop but nothing was happening, they went over the intel again. More information about the mission and other women would trickle in, usually just confirming or adding a little detail to what Susan had already gathered.
After days of this, Mary felt that she already knew these women, even though the information about them was fragmented and filtered through Susan's contempt: Ra fal, the orc river captain, a bold, flamboyant, experienced adventuress. Gladys, a goblin commoner born with nothing, who used alchemy to change her body and her fate and give herself a place in the world. Mabellyne, a quiet goblin noble from a minor family caught up in intrigues. Sofonisba, a high-elf whose job was to collect books for a library but who loved nothing more than living alone in the woods. Tsinta, a mysterious wood-elf beauty who came and went at the behest of inscrutable Powers.
On the morning of the meeting, Mary got up early, full of excitement to meet everyone, and quickly strapped on her armor. She checked herself in the mirror. The cleaned and polished armor was gorgeous, glimmering with flakes of mica embedded in each of the chrome-steel scales riveted to a brown leather backing. The main armor vest covered her neck, torso, and waist. She wore nine more segments: two for each arm and leg and a separate thigh-length skirt. Her thick steel-clad hiking boots almost counted as two more pieces of armor. The helmet, shield, and sword would be left at home; it was rude to wear them for social meetings. Under the armor she wore a purple silk shirt and tan silk leggings. Her long black hair was pulled into a tight braid.
But instead of getting an early start, she ended up sitting and seething after Daniels and Susan insisted that she show up late to establish her dominance, and Belén fussed with her makeup to try to give just the right appearance of nobility and power.
And so, when she finally arrived at the restaurant and was ushered into the private meeting room, everyone was there, silently watching her come in.
Ra fal, the orc, was resplendent in shiny chrome-steel chainmail armor, a single contiguous full-sleeved garment that went from the neck to below the knees. Over this she wore a cloth-of-gold cloak, and she had a ponytail of glittering blonde hair that pulled attention away from her fat green face, red eyes, and short white fangs. The tiny interlocking armor rings covered her torso, were squeezed around her waist by a thick leather belt, and then formed a knee-length skirt. Under the armor were a white silk shirt and black denim pants. She was about seven feet tall, stockier and probably stronger than any man Mary had seen. She had a figure that wanted to look like a chunky man's, but corsetry had squeezed it into something more feminine-looking, and Mary wondered, with sympathetic discomfort, why she would do this when meeting a group of women. But then Mary looked into the orc's red eyes and saw, beyond the obvious ambition and cunning, the familiar resignation of one who has found it necessary to always follow certain rules of appearance.
Gladys was wearing a large multilayered frilly hot-pink tutu. She was a little under four feet tall, but so burly she almost looked like a dwarf instead of a goblin, which made the tutu look even more out of place. The rest of her outfit, however, was starkly utilitarian: a stained tan undershirt, two crossed bandoliers full of pouches, a worn and scuffed leather jacket, loose baggy distressed blue denim cargo pants, and massive hobnailed steel-toed leather boots. Her head was completely bald, with no hair or eyebrows, which made her yellowish skin, pointy ears, large green eyes, and sharp feral face more prominent. A pair of orange-tinted laboratory safety goggles was strapped to her forehead. The overall appearance was ridiculous, even for a goblin, and Mary's first thought was that the tutu was a foolish lipstick-on-a-pig attempt to dress up, but then her family's paranoid warnings made her look more closely, and she noticed the telltale shadow and bulge of a large handaxe concealed under the tutu.
Mabellyne was a slightly taller but much thinner goblin wearing a simple conservative three-button woolen navy-blue pantsuit with a starched collared white shirt. The outfit was ornamented by two sleek tasteful utility belts made of black leather with gold-plated fittings. One, with smaller pouches, was cinched around her waist, accentuating her figure, and a larger one with larger pouches was slung around her hips. Her well-tailored pants managed to look flattering even with a half-dozen pockets and a hammer loop. Although her skin tone and facial structure were very similar to Gladys's, she had long fiery red hair fashioned into an elaborate princess braid, and had used makeup to soften her appearance, with the result that she looked almost like an elf or gnome.
Sofonisba was a regal elf wearing a full-sleeved turtleneck bodycon dress made from an ultrafine silvery metal weave that clung to and flattered her willowy six-foot-tall form. Fabulous sophisticated filigrees of gold and purple were woven into the dress, their color a perfect complement to her pale skin and light purple hair, which was pulled into a loose flowing ponytail that passed under a shawl. Underneath the dress there were leggings of the same material. She wore gloves of fine white leather, and her shoes were also like white leather gloves, skintight with a separate sheath for each toe. Although the outfit looked like a fragile party dress, Mary could tell that it was a rugged and magical suit of mithral armor just as strong as her own, but allowing more freedom of movement. She looked again at the shawl, and saw that it was actually a hood that could be quickly pulled up and over the face to give head-to-foot protection.
Tsinta was breathtaking. Her face and body were the artists' ideal of the perfect female form, and her coppery skin and light blue hair gave an unearthly feel to the beauty. Mary almost wanted to touch her to see if she was real. Although Tsinta was a half-foot shorter than Sofonisba, she was more regal and imposing. Mary was not sure if that was due to her stronger and fuller-figured build, her demeanor, or something more mystical. She wore a vest made from the bluish scaly skin of some kind of large aquatic creature, and a flowing blue knee-length skirt made from some kind of material that looked more like water weeds than cloth, catching the light in a watery glimmer. On her feet she wore simple moccasins just like most other elves. Her deep blue eyes held portents of distant wisdom and mystic dreams.
In the back of her mind, Mary had been thinking through the possibility of throwing away all of her family's plotting and trying a different approach. She had rehearsed being honest with these women about her disinterest in Martin, revealing her actual youth and inexperience, acting a bit childlike to seem like a harmless and lovable little sister, and throwing herself on their mercy. Looking into their faces, and seeing their power and strength and competence, removed all doubt that this was the only way to go.
Mary curtsied. “Good morning everyone!”
Next (Tsinta)
Next Mary
Centuries before Mary was born, the elves of the Holy Corellon Federation set in motion a secret plan to grow peace and civilization in the Gray Ridge Mountains by converting the various savage races to the worship of civilized gods. At the time Mary visited Boomport, it was known only to a few that the elves had been responsible for the recent conversion of the goblins to the worship of Ioun, goddess of knowledge.
When an entire civilization religiously devotes itself to knowledge, skill, and reason, the results can be impressive and somewhat alarming, especially if old books and devices from fallen technological civilizations are available to study. Less than a decade after their conversion, the goblins laid claim to a mountain tall enough to escape gravity, named it Boomport, and started exploring wildspace, first with incredibly dangerous rocket-powered ships, and later with magitech spelljamming engines.
Boomport soon became the political, cultural, and economic center of a rapidly-developing goblin civilization. Ships came into the mountaintop spaceport with wonders to be studied. Shipyards were built just below the port. Workshops, laboratories, makerspaces, and schools sprang up on the sides of the mountain. Banks, high-value storage vaults, military facilities, and government offices were established in fortified tunnels within the mountain. Raw materials flowed into warehouses on the bottom of the mountain, and smaller nearby mountains were terraced to form farmland.
When a tribe of kobolds in a strategically important location was converted to the worship of the good dragon-god Bahamut, the elven plan of Gray Ridge civilization was nearly complete. They recruited the wizard Martin Cooper, a cultural anthropologist who had done fieldwork in the region, to be their ambassador to the kobolds, and tasked him and his party of adventurers with protecting and nourishing this young civilization. Martin succeeded admirably in the job, completing a series of great tasks and adventures while working to advance peaceful cooperation and protect local traditions. Soon, Martin made contact with the local network of clerics, and through them various local leaders. He was a key player in the formation of the Gray Ridge League of Armed Neutrality, of which the Boomport goblins were a founding member, and soon became a local legend and the de facto leader of the League.
With the creation of the League, Boomport grew even more, becoming one of the main commercial hubs of an entire region of peoples just starting to enjoy the possibilities and benefits of peaceful trade and coexistence. Adventurers from all over the League came to sell books and devices they had pulled from Dragonborn and Tiefling ruins, and to buy magical and alchemical devices from goblin workshops. Merchants came to buy and sell raw materials and more mundane goods. Inns and taverns sprang up on the lower levels of the city to cater to this crowd. Higher-end meeting-houses, hotels, shops, and depots were built at the mountaintop, near the spaceport, to cater to the spacefarers, richer adventurers, high-end businesspeople, and other elites. Various government and diplomatic offices for the League, such as its Space Command, were set up close to the goblin government offices deep in the mountain.
As the carriage slowly moved past all of this, offering tantalizing hints of a larger picture that Mary desperately wished to know and understand more fully, she longed to burst out of the shell of the carriage and disappear into the winding alleys and chaotic markets of the city to explore and adventure. There were so many amazing things to experience.
But the rational part of her knew that this was dangerous, so she stayed in the carriage with Captain Daniels and Belén. Hopefully Susan would take her out into the city after they met and went over her intel.
Thanks to the advance notice from their sages and spies, the Hanover family had been preparing Mary for adventure for two intense weeks before her official invitation came from the League Space command. The letter confirmed the tales of Martin's harebrained eccentricity. Mary and five other women were instructed to join together into an adventuring party and gather plants for Martin in space. It was obviously a test, and as soon as the letter came, the Hanover family and all of its advisers began gathering information and plotting.
Much of this operation had been directed by Mary's cousin Susan, the family's agent in Boomport. Given her location near the place where the adventurers would meet, it made sense for all information to flow directly to her. Susan lived in a small house over a narrow storefront in the wealthy commercial region of town near the spaceport. The storefront had two signs. To the left of the door there was an ornate steel sign encrusted with magically enchanted glowing and glittering mica flakes that read "Mecklenberg Mica: Bespoke Magical Armor and other Fine Creations." To the right of the door there was a subdued and official-looking carved-granite sign that said, "Embassy of the Kingdom of Mecklenberg."
The shop was incredibly profitable, and as far as anybody in League intelligence knew, the sole foreign policy goal of the Kingdom of Mecklenberg, aside from continued independence, was maximizing their income from this one store. This was a mostly accurate assessment of the situation.
When the coach rattled to a stop in a parking space front of the storefront, Daniels looked around the street, and also up at the rooftops, scanning for threats, and then opened the door and hopped out. He went for the footstool, preparing to help Mary down, but Mary, eager to leave the coach and prove her independence, jumped out, just like she would jump when running through a forest. However, as she landed, her foot slipped on a smooth, oil-coated cobblestone, her leg shot out in front of her, and she sprawled painfully onto the ground.
As Daniels helped her up, he said, "Yew need to treat these streets like rocks in a river. Take it slow. Ya never know what kinda crap these filthy goblins have tossed inta the street."
As soon as Mary put weight on her left foot, she yelped in pain and nearly collapsed again, but Daniels caught her. "Looks like ya twisted yer ankle up pretty bad. Let's gitcha inside."
And so, Mary's first steps in the big city were a few hop-limps, clinging to Daniels's arm, from her family's gilded coach to its high-end boutique. She said nothing, focusing on not crying from pain and embarrassment.
When Daniels opened the door, Mary was confronted with a store full of giant insects: tall lanky golden-brown mantis-like things, standing on their back two legs while waving the other four around. They wore varying amounts of clothing, from a ragged loincloth to clean ornate white robes, but all had belts and bandoliers full of tools and weapons, including vicious-looking three-pointed throwing stars. Several of them were clustered around Susan. Mary's first instinct, when seeing her cousin surrounded by armed giant insects, was to panic, but she quickly realized that they were just talking, so she kept quiet and watched.
Susan was wearing a bizarre-looking helmet. The visor was golden, with a purple lens over one eye, and the rest was made of a strange gray material patterned to look like a giant brain. She was gesturing and pointing, but not moving her mouth or saying anything. Then an insect would wave its arms and antennae and make clicking sounds, and then Susan would respond with a quiet look and gestures.
Susan saw Mary and Daniels come in, but did not acknowledge them immediately. Instead, she kept 'talking' to the insects until one of them took a Mica shield from her to examine and another consented to be measured by the gnome clerk. Then, she took the helmet off and came to greet her cousin.
"Did you feed the meter?"
Mary, confused and a little shocked, said nothing. Daniels also looked perplexed.
Susan fished for a coin from her purse. "You have to put a shilling into the slot in that box on the pole with the flags poking out.... Oh, never mind, I'll do it. Take this key, go behind the counter, and let yourself into the apartment through the left-hand door."
Daniels gingerly helped Mary through the crowded store, carefully and slowly moving around the insects, who stared at them unsettlingly. Mary got the feeling that at least one of them was looking at her limp and thinking of her as an injured prey animal, but they did nothing. She was happy to get behind the counter and through the door, even though it meant that Daniels would have to carry her up the narrow staircase. When they got to the parlor, he deposited her into the couch, took up a guard stance with his back to the wall covering the doors and window, and they waited for Susan to return.
It took quite some time for Susan to return, and when she did she seemed tired and frazzled. "Oh Mary, I am so happy to see you. It is such a relief to have family around. I am sorry if I was short earlier, I was in the middle of a big sales pitch and I didn't want us to get ticketed or booted and have to deal with the traffic bureau."
She plopped down into the armchair opposite the couch and started taking her shoes off. "Ugh, those roaches are always a pain in the ass to deal with. They don't understand the concept of 'certified banknotes only' and always insist on bartering and then I have to arrange for an appraiser and escrow broker to make sure I am not getting ripped off. If they weren't loaded with the treasures of a hundred moons I'd kick their skinny asses right out the door as soon as they tried to walk in. Anyway, let's have dinner. I'll have the runner fetch us some whale tacos from the Olmos joint down the road."
Daniels spoke up. "Also, please arrange for a healer for Mary. She twisted her ankle on the journey here."
Susan rushed over to Mary and looked at her foot. "Oh, my poor dear! Of course we'll get you fixed right up. I know someone discreet; it won't do to have rumors going about. And while we're at it, I need to have your name added to the arrival board at The Open Shell."
After a strange but delicious dinner and a visit from a taciturn cleric, Mary felt much better. After the servants had finished moving in all the luggage and setting up the guest room for Daniels and the driver, and a cot for Mary in Susan's room, Susan dismissed them, locked the doors and shutters, and started the intelligence briefing.
"Okay, so here's the scoop. The crew is you and a bunch of demihumans: An orc, two goblins, and two elves. You are the only human, so it is pretty clear that this is a test for you. Martin is good at managing the demis; he got them to stop butchering each other and act like real people. So he is probably testing you to make sure that you can do the same thing. Basically your job is to keep them from killing each other or sabotaging the mission, and once you have done that, you will have passed the test. From what I hear, you're pretty good with the demis, so it should be easy for you to get along with everyone. Just be good to them and talk them out of anything stupid, and when you get back, you will be Mrs. Cooper!"
Susan pulled out a folder of notes. "Now, on to specific advice and plans. Our cover story is that you have been adventuring for a few years in and around Mecklenberg, protecting its people from various bad things. Basically, you just claim credit for the stuff that Captain Daniels and his men have been doing. I am sure you remember most of the stories, but you should memorize all of his reports as well, and work with Daniels to add some realistic details to your 'memories' so you can convince people you were there. Oh, and change the story so you were leading a group that included gnomes and elves. That should be precedent for you to have a respected leader and peacekeeper role.”
Susan checked off another item on the page. “Demis all hate each other for one reason or other. They obviously will not trust the other races, the wood elf and high elf will be at odds because of that screwy caste thing they have, and one goblin is nobility and another is a commoner so they will also not get along. That will leave you as the only person they can trust."
Susan flipped to a new page of notes. "Okay, now on to racial psychology, so you know what to expect and how to approach them. Orcs are full of bluster. They come out bragging, with a big list of demands, and they expect you to haggle them down. Try to arrange for the elves and goblins to do that for you. This one will probably demand to be named captain and combat leader to soothe her fragile ego, so you should let her have that. It actually makes sense, because she is an experienced adventuring captain, so hopefully she can keep the others in line in an emergency. But don't let her have any more power than that.
Susan flipped the page again. “Now, goblin women are vicious cunning little bitches"
"Butch bitches" Daniels interjected laconically.
Susan burst into a whistling high-pitched screech of a laugh before continuing. "Right. They'll try all sorts of crap, like to make your head spin. But the nice thing is they are pretty easy to bribe. As far as we can tell, neither one actually loves Martin, so if it becomes necessary you can just pay them off to keep them in line. The commoner might think she loves him, but really she just wants to hang out with a high-level wizard. She'd probably be fine with the kobolds of Team Wormslayer, and we think we can arrange that, so that is your trump card for her. And the noble is just doing this to buy time in a political game. We are still working on the details, but whatever problem they have can probably be solved by some kind of special treaty between her clan and Mecklenberg, so again you have a trump card to buy her loyalty if you can't just sweet-talk her.”
Susan flipped to another page. Mary was starting to hate that sound. Susan continued. “Elves are pretty easy to manage. They are obsessed with aesthetics and sensation, so as long as you let them take charge of things like cooking and decoration, you can get away with controlling the real power. You and the orc and goblins will end up as the actual owners of the adventuring company, which means control of all the mission details. Now, about that corporate ownership..."
And so began a tedious evening of money and plotting. Susan went over negotiating strategy, with the goals and estimated assets of the others. She also went over more 'racial psychology' manipulation tricks, to which Daniels added lessons from his experience dealing with the family's nonhuman servants.
During a particularly vile and demeaning digression, Mary interrupted him to try to regain conversational control, and her sanity. "Wait, sorry, it is hard for me to focus on this. Something has been bothering me."
Daniels looked at her. "Yes?"
"What will happen to me if Martin ends up choosing one of them as a wife?"
Susan and Daniels looked at each other, as if they had never even considered this, before Daniels responded, "Well then, that'd mean he's just crazy. He may know how to keep them in line, but surely he's not that much of a demi-lover."
Susan added, "If it turns out that he is, then nobody will blame you for not marrying him. We'd be happy not to have that in the family, so you can just come home and pretend this never happened and we'll find another place for you."
Mary nodded politely. "Can we stop for now? I could really use a good sleep so I can be at my best."
"Oh, of course, dear. We can stop now. But you probably won't meet tomorrow. You meet for breakfast the day after everyone posts that they have arrived, and last I checked only two others are in town. I'd expect it will take several more days before everyone arrives."
Susan was correct, and the days of waiting were mostly enjoyable. Susan took a few hours a day, when no customers were expected, to show Mary around the city. Susan knew the city, its rules and patterns and tricks and treasures. She was smart and sassy and fun to be with, as long as Mary could keep the topic of conversation away from the supposed inferiority of anyone who was not a Hanover. Daniels insisted on following them the first couple times, but then he saw that the city was actually pretty safe if you knew the rules, and Susan managed to persuade him that she knew how to keep anything bad from happening.
Sometimes Mary went out wearing her armor, sometimes she went in nicer noblewoman's clothes, and a couple times Susan had her wear her old woods-tromping clothes. These were very different experiences, even when walking the exact same streets, and Mary learned a lot about cities, and about people, in those few days.
She learned how people judged her by her clothes and walk, knowing nothing of her rank and station. She learned that different races had very different ideas about what was appropriate to be sold and advertised in an open market. She learned what it was like to pull a knife on a stoned goblin in a seedy bar to stop him from trying to grope her.
When Susan was busy, Daniels would continue Mary's combat training. When Susan had to be watching the shop but nothing was happening, they went over the intel again. More information about the mission and other women would trickle in, usually just confirming or adding a little detail to what Susan had already gathered.
After days of this, Mary felt that she already knew these women, even though the information about them was fragmented and filtered through Susan's contempt: Ra fal, the orc river captain, a bold, flamboyant, experienced adventuress. Gladys, a goblin commoner born with nothing, who used alchemy to change her body and her fate and give herself a place in the world. Mabellyne, a quiet goblin noble from a minor family caught up in intrigues. Sofonisba, a high-elf whose job was to collect books for a library but who loved nothing more than living alone in the woods. Tsinta, a mysterious wood-elf beauty who came and went at the behest of inscrutable Powers.
On the morning of the meeting, Mary got up early, full of excitement to meet everyone, and quickly strapped on her armor. She checked herself in the mirror. The cleaned and polished armor was gorgeous, glimmering with flakes of mica embedded in each of the chrome-steel scales riveted to a brown leather backing. The main armor vest covered her neck, torso, and waist. She wore nine more segments: two for each arm and leg and a separate thigh-length skirt. Her thick steel-clad hiking boots almost counted as two more pieces of armor. The helmet, shield, and sword would be left at home; it was rude to wear them for social meetings. Under the armor she wore a purple silk shirt and tan silk leggings. Her long black hair was pulled into a tight braid.
But instead of getting an early start, she ended up sitting and seething after Daniels and Susan insisted that she show up late to establish her dominance, and Belén fussed with her makeup to try to give just the right appearance of nobility and power.
And so, when she finally arrived at the restaurant and was ushered into the private meeting room, everyone was there, silently watching her come in.
Ra fal, the orc, was resplendent in shiny chrome-steel chainmail armor, a single contiguous full-sleeved garment that went from the neck to below the knees. Over this she wore a cloth-of-gold cloak, and she had a ponytail of glittering blonde hair that pulled attention away from her fat green face, red eyes, and short white fangs. The tiny interlocking armor rings covered her torso, were squeezed around her waist by a thick leather belt, and then formed a knee-length skirt. Under the armor were a white silk shirt and black denim pants. She was about seven feet tall, stockier and probably stronger than any man Mary had seen. She had a figure that wanted to look like a chunky man's, but corsetry had squeezed it into something more feminine-looking, and Mary wondered, with sympathetic discomfort, why she would do this when meeting a group of women. But then Mary looked into the orc's red eyes and saw, beyond the obvious ambition and cunning, the familiar resignation of one who has found it necessary to always follow certain rules of appearance.
Gladys was wearing a large multilayered frilly hot-pink tutu. She was a little under four feet tall, but so burly she almost looked like a dwarf instead of a goblin, which made the tutu look even more out of place. The rest of her outfit, however, was starkly utilitarian: a stained tan undershirt, two crossed bandoliers full of pouches, a worn and scuffed leather jacket, loose baggy distressed blue denim cargo pants, and massive hobnailed steel-toed leather boots. Her head was completely bald, with no hair or eyebrows, which made her yellowish skin, pointy ears, large green eyes, and sharp feral face more prominent. A pair of orange-tinted laboratory safety goggles was strapped to her forehead. The overall appearance was ridiculous, even for a goblin, and Mary's first thought was that the tutu was a foolish lipstick-on-a-pig attempt to dress up, but then her family's paranoid warnings made her look more closely, and she noticed the telltale shadow and bulge of a large handaxe concealed under the tutu.
Mabellyne was a slightly taller but much thinner goblin wearing a simple conservative three-button woolen navy-blue pantsuit with a starched collared white shirt. The outfit was ornamented by two sleek tasteful utility belts made of black leather with gold-plated fittings. One, with smaller pouches, was cinched around her waist, accentuating her figure, and a larger one with larger pouches was slung around her hips. Her well-tailored pants managed to look flattering even with a half-dozen pockets and a hammer loop. Although her skin tone and facial structure were very similar to Gladys's, she had long fiery red hair fashioned into an elaborate princess braid, and had used makeup to soften her appearance, with the result that she looked almost like an elf or gnome.
Sofonisba was a regal elf wearing a full-sleeved turtleneck bodycon dress made from an ultrafine silvery metal weave that clung to and flattered her willowy six-foot-tall form. Fabulous sophisticated filigrees of gold and purple were woven into the dress, their color a perfect complement to her pale skin and light purple hair, which was pulled into a loose flowing ponytail that passed under a shawl. Underneath the dress there were leggings of the same material. She wore gloves of fine white leather, and her shoes were also like white leather gloves, skintight with a separate sheath for each toe. Although the outfit looked like a fragile party dress, Mary could tell that it was a rugged and magical suit of mithral armor just as strong as her own, but allowing more freedom of movement. She looked again at the shawl, and saw that it was actually a hood that could be quickly pulled up and over the face to give head-to-foot protection.
Tsinta was breathtaking. Her face and body were the artists' ideal of the perfect female form, and her coppery skin and light blue hair gave an unearthly feel to the beauty. Mary almost wanted to touch her to see if she was real. Although Tsinta was a half-foot shorter than Sofonisba, she was more regal and imposing. Mary was not sure if that was due to her stronger and fuller-figured build, her demeanor, or something more mystical. She wore a vest made from the bluish scaly skin of some kind of large aquatic creature, and a flowing blue knee-length skirt made from some kind of material that looked more like water weeds than cloth, catching the light in a watery glimmer. On her feet she wore simple moccasins just like most other elves. Her deep blue eyes held portents of distant wisdom and mystic dreams.
In the back of her mind, Mary had been thinking through the possibility of throwing away all of her family's plotting and trying a different approach. She had rehearsed being honest with these women about her disinterest in Martin, revealing her actual youth and inexperience, acting a bit childlike to seem like a harmless and lovable little sister, and throwing herself on their mercy. Looking into their faces, and seeing their power and strength and competence, removed all doubt that this was the only way to go.
Mary curtsied. “Good morning everyone!”
Next (Tsinta)
Next Mary
1a: Mary Intro
The varied terrain of the Gray Ridge Mountains contains many different biomes. There are places where a traveler can walk a few kilometers and pass through mountain scrublands, deciduous forests, and swampy bottomlands. Cross through a mountain pass and you could go from a rocky wasteland to a fertile river valley. The mountains themselves are riddled with caves, some leading to the Underdark.
These different biomes support a surprising variety of sapient species, each one in its ecological niche. Goblins take to the mountains, wild desolate places where less cunning races could not prosper. Orcs settle into the valleys of the rivers that can support the traffic of large boats. Gnomes favor the hidden and quiet places with access to smaller streams, brooks, lakes, and swamps. Hobgoblins scratch a living with three-sisters farming in the rough hills, forming sprawling clans to defend their turf. Kobolds live where there are animals to hunt and trap, and caves that can be defended with traps. Tiny villages of Dragonborn and Tieflings cling to places where their ancient fallen empires once had great cities. Other, stranger races lurk in various places, the details of their cultures and ways known only to pack-pedlars, mendicant clerics of evangelical gods, and the wizards of Iradin university, who send grad students on anthropological surveys.
Then there are the races that have moved in from the continents to the east. Dwarves claim those rare mountains that can be made into a great fortress, mining and burrowing into the mountain and terracing its outside to grow rows of grains. Elves move into forests and terraform them over hundreds of years, making them into beautiful orchards of diverse types of trees that grow everything from fruit and nuts to mithral armor, and eventually crafting grand courtly cities and splitting their society into the castes of wood-elves of the forests and high-elves of the courts. Halflings live wherever there is a civilization that will allow them, for their niche is the city.
Humans find defensible places that can support both farming and mining, and form proud independent fairy-tale kingdoms nestled in picturesque secluded valleys. They build castles to guard the mountain passes, and fill the valleys with farms divided by split-rail fences.
In the time our story begins, one of the richest and most prosperous of these was the Kingdom of Mecklenberg. It commanded a fertile river valley and a mine of enchantment-grade mica that was constantly renewed by a fast-upwelling mountain. Crafters turned this mica into magical shields and armor, which was sold to the wealthy and well-connected and also issued to a well-trained royal guard. The Mecklenberg Guard, along with an inaccessible location and the credible threat of a magitech self-destruct device to scuttle the mines, secured the kingdom against any outside threat smaller than a major world power.
The kingdom was ruled by the Hanovers. They descended from a bold adventurer who had, hundreds of years ago, driven the kobolds from the valley, cleared out the ghoul-and-construct-infested remnants of a Dragonborn logistics depot, and finally slain the dragon living in the mica mine. Rather than move on to the next adventure, she laid claim to the valley, invited all of her friends to join her, mail-ordered a wizard husband from Iradin, and settled down to live the good life.
Over the centuries, as her descendants and the descendants of her friends filled the valley, the royal family became focused on preserving its status among the other humans, which meant distinguishing themselves with a performance of being wealthy, powerful nobles. If they started doing common things, then the commoners might start to wonder what exactly the difference between commoner and royalty was.
And so it was that Princess Mary Hanover, who had inherited the wild energy and yearnings of her ancestor Charlotte, had a rough childhood. The demands of her family's status were constantly in conflict with the demands of her nature, and status usually won when a compromise could not be found.
Falconry was one of the better compromises, combining the pastimes of royalty with Mary's love of animals and wild things. Mary was in the middle of an ordinary enjoyable morning in the aviary, feeding her red-tailed hawks from a bucket of freshly killed rats, when she saw a young gnome, one of the house-servants, scurrying towards her.
"Your Highness, His Majesty has requested that you report to Emilia in the wardrobe vault immediately."
Mary sighed. "Thank you, I will be right over. Please have Soaring Eagle finish the feeding."
She knew how this worked. If she was late or did not come, the servant would be blamed and punished. This implied threat to others was the best way the family had found to make her obey. But as usual, she had a way to resist, to assert her will. You could never get in trouble if you obeyed commands to the letter, going to extreme measures to do so.
So she took a deep breath, turned towards the keep, crouched down, and took off in a very unladylike sprint. Although it was scandalously without decorum, her stride was graceful and her breathing steady as she bounded through the paths, turning swiftly and sidestepping around obstacles as necessary. She had a runner's thin physique, suited for swift movement and long steady effort, and her clothing of trousers and elf-made moccasins gave her the freedom of movement she needed.
As she ran, she took a moment to relish the feel of this practical clothing, knowing that she would soon be taken from it. She was surely being called to the wardrobe vault to be fitted for some kind of horrible confining corsetry and costuming, in preparation for being paraded around at some ball or ancient religious ritual or coronation or something. She was about to suffer through several hours of standing still inside, being poked and prodded and slowly encased in a stifling cocoon of elegant silken fripperies, like a web-trapped bug being wrapped up by a spider. Her running was not just petulance, it was a way to burn off energy so she could tolerate standing around and being cooped up for so long.
As much as she might have preferred to arrive at the vault sweaty and out of breath and looking like a miserable commoner, as a rebuke to being ordered around, she bounded in swiftly and gracefully, her breathing only slightly elevated, like a huntress reporting for duty.
She noticed one of the guards looking at her with appreciative interest. He obviously saw the Princess not as an untouchable distant noble, but as an attractive, healthy, graceful woman. He was doing his best, and failing miserably, to disguise his interest and desire. Mary grinned and winked at him, not because she had any interest in him, but because causing chatter and rumors would be excellent retaliation for whatever dignified indignity she was about to be subjected to.
Then she saw that there were five guards in the antechamber guarding the vault, including Captain Daniels. That was unusual. Usually there would only be one or two lower-ranked guards, to make sure that the servants did not filch any valuable pieces of clothing, or threaten a member of the royal family. And in addition to Emilia, the dressmaker, there was Gustavo the armorer and several of his workers.
The Captain nodded respectfully and seriously at her. "Thankyew for yer promptness." He looked to see if anyone was around, and after confirming that no household servants were anywhere nearby, continued, "Yer bein' fitted for a suit o' Mica Scale, and it's best we finish soon as possible, before any word can spread."
This was serious. The magic-resistant Mica Scale armor, the family's source of wealth and power, was real armor, for warriors and adventurers, not lady's costuming.
Captain Daniels opened the vault. "Private Shuford." He glared at the guard who had ogled Mary. "Guard the door. Ever'one else, inside."
They crowded in between the rows of fancy suits with their silk and lace and pearls and shiny glamoured magical baubles. Daniels then closed the vault door. "Everyone turn to face the door and close yer eyes. Even you, Princess."
They did so. Daniels moved about. Mary heard mechanical clicking and buzzing, then a sharp brief hum, like an insect but somehow more metallic and airy at the same time. "Okay, you can look now."
A part of the floor had swung up, revealing a ladder to a lower vault. Mary had been in the clothing vault many times, and had never seen a trapdoor there or guessed its existence. "Okay, ever'one down."
Mary had always known that her family must have a true treasure vault, one filled not with stupid gold and gems and decorations, but with real magical treasures: weapons, armor, shields, and fantastic devices. She knew that there were many warriors and adventurers in her family's history, and she knew that they shared the same magical equipment, a growing collection of heirlooms passed through the generations. She knew that somewhere in the castle, all of their gear would be stored, waiting to be used, a heaping pile of magical treasure glittering with enchantment and possibility.
This is not what she saw in the lower vault. Instead, she saw workbenches, tools, and mannequins for fitting. One wall was filled with a grid of locked steel doors, ranging in size from an oven door to a jewelry box.
Daniels looked at Mary. "Do not touch any of those doors. In fact, do not get within five feet of any of them."
The gnomes started arranging themselves silently at the workbenches, either following prearranged instructions or guessing their role. They very carefully did not look at Daniels as he went to one of the larger doors, tapped it with a wand in three places, unlocked it with a mithral key, and took out a suit of armor.
He handed the armor to Gustavo, who arranged it on a mannequin. Mary saw that it was fit for a woman, although one larger and more full-figured than herself. Why had she never heard any stories of a woman adventurer in her family's history?
She turned to Daniels. "Who did this belong to?"
He shrugged. "Dunno. I was just given box numbers and keys and instructions."
"Why am I being fitted for real armor?"
"I can't say."
His brusque manner, and the efficient technical chatter of the gnomes, told Mary that there would be no conversation. So she stood silently as she was measured, and various parts of armor were tested, strapped, unstrapped, and adjusted. This gave her plenty of time to ponder what was going on.
Why would she be dressed in real armor?
There was only one possible answer: She was being sent to meet Martin Cooper, and her father had calculated that this outfit was the best way to make her look attractive to him.
In her less fiery and more thoughtful moments, Mary understood her family's situation. She knew that roles must be performed and images must be maintained. If they were not, the social order that benefited her so much would be threatened. The continuation of her comfortable lifestyle, perhaps even her life, required that her family follow rules and conventions and play politics, sometimes ruthlessly. Mary, despite her hatred for the arrogant class-consciousness and racism of her family, understood this at some level, and so she usually did what was necessary to go along with their plots and schemes.
The daughters of the family were placed in political marriages that maintained the independence of Mecklenberg and the sovereignty of Hanover. Most of the women in her family were, or appeared to be, perfectly happy with this. Some were content to live happy lives of idle decadence, others enjoyed being the cunning and powerful center of vast intrigues, and a few cultivated the arts of magic and enchantment. The temperaments of Hanover daughters were visible at an early age, and they were generally were placed in situations that fit them. Mary was the only one who was not understood, who did not fit into any role they knew. She alternated between hating them for their stupidity and hating herself for being a freak.
Although at the time she saw only boneheaded rigidity, Mary would later learn that His Majesty, King Frederick, despite his many faults, was very good at playing politics, and at working with the tools and materials that the gods gave him. He knew that it would be a mistake to try to force Mary to be something that she was not. She had been given an unprecedented freedom to follow her whims and do her own thing, within reason. Her more traditional siblings could be fit into more traditional roles. Royal families were allowed to have a couple oddballs. Crushing her spirit would definitely destroy her and make her useless, and allowing her to do her own thing might have an unexpected benefit.
And in his own way, the king did care about Mary's well-being. Obviously he could not give her anything that threatened the kingdom or the family's place as its rulers, but she was his daughter, and he did love her, as much as he was capable of love.
So when Mary reached the age of marriage, His Majesty had her send a proposal to Martin Cooper, the powerful but uncouth wizard of common birth who had spent the last three years rearranging the political landscape (and occasionally the physical landscape) of the Gray Ridge region. Mary had no choice in this, but it was clear to her that in the unlikely event that a marriage actually happened, she would tolerate being Martin's wife much better than she would tolerate any other suitable husband. And she would tolerate being Martin's wife much better than any of her sisters would tolerate being hitched to a wilderness-tromping commoner.
Martin was, or pretended to be, the kind of scatterbrained wizard who would let marriage proposals sit around for years before he got around to answering them one way or another, or even acknowledging them. This meant that, while waiting for his response, Mary had enjoyed a nice time of freedom. This time had obviously ended.
After the initial fitting was done, and the gnomes strapped every piece of the armor on and were satisfied that it was all secure, Mary got another surprise. Captain Daniels said, "Okay, step down and start movin' around. Tell 'em if anything pinches or rattles or restricts your movement."
This was new. In dress fittings, nobody ever cared if Mary could move around comfortably. She was lucky if she could sit down without ripping something. She tentatively stepped down and started through a series of dance steps, gliding gracefully around in a waltz. The gnomes scurried around her, looking, listening, and occasionally poking at the armor.
It felt good. Mary had always assumed that armor was like her dresses, but even heavier and worse. But she could move around in this armor more easily than she could in most dresses. It was a revelation that made her even angrier at her family's stupid rules. She was constantly forced into in things that confined and hobbled her, and displayed parts of her body like some kind of prize horse, while men got to wear a shiny, comfortable, stylish outfit that could turn a boar-spear and stop a force bolt from a six-shooter. And the man's outfit came with pockets and a utility belt.
Captain Daniels watched this for a few minutes, letting Mary get used to the weight and feel of the armor. Then he called out. "Really move. Act like yer tromping through the woods in yer trousers. Cut loose. Drop to the floor, get up, run, jump, climb up the ladder, do a cartwheel."
Mary hesitated. This had gone beyond eccentric and into creepy. What exactly was she supposed to be doing when she met Martin? But she complied, tentatively at first, and then eagerly. She might never get another chance to play around in armor, so she might as well enjoy it.
It was hard to lift her arms to climb, and the armor nearly slid off when she did the cartwheel, but otherwise it worked really well. Obviously it was harder than moving around in a cotton shirt and trousers, but it was easier, and a lot more fun, than formalwear.
After she had gone through her paces, the gnomes took off the armor and started to fix the shoulder movement and adjust the waist and hips for a better fit when upside down. Daniels handed Mary a canteen to drink from, and then, almost before she realized what was happening, he handed her a shield.
It was beautiful. A mosaic of white and black mica flakes formed the falcon crest of House Hanover. Daniels showed her how to strap it onto her arm and hold it. Then he handed her a small curved sword in a steel scabbard. "Hold this gently, no sudden movements."
Mary immediately noticed that it clashed with the rest of the outfit. Both the scabbard and what she could see of the sword hilt were ridiculously ornamented, with inlays of gold and gemstones. The inlays on the scabbard formed a stylized picture of someone in an exotic outfit slashing a dragon's throat. It had obviously come from far away, no doubt taken in some grand adventure by one of her ancestors.
One of the gnomes looked at Mary's hand with a jeweler's loupe that had a glowing green pinwheel spinning on its side. "No odd magical effects detected, sir. Looks like a good match."
Daniels nodded, then took the sword and shield and put them back into their lockers. He then instructed Mary and the gnomes through a second round of movement testing and armor fitting, and then a third. After hours of work, he announced, "That's good enough for now. Get it oiled and coated and ready for field work."
Mary turned around at this. "Field work? What are you planning? Will I be going through a hike in the woods with Martin?"
"I can't say, ma'am. Now, let's go get you a good lunch."
Daniels took Mary out of the vault, locking the gnomes and soldiers inside, and then escorted her to the dining hall before going into the King's Chambers for a consultation with His Majesty and the royal advisers and sages.
After lunch, things got even stranger. Daniels took Mary to the training yard and explained that he would be teaching her the basics of fighting with the scimitar and shield. Mary, who had been hoping for something like this for as long as she could remember, did not ask any more questions about what was going on. She simply resolved to be the best student possible, to learn as much as she could and do as well as she could. It did not matter why this was happening, it only mattered that it not get interrupted and last as long as possible.
After two days of intense training, the armor was ready. Then Daniels and Soaring Eagle took her on hikes through the woods, showing her how to manage while equipped with armor, sword, shield, and an adventurer's pack. After they got back in the afternoon, Daniels would instruct the gnomes on more armor adjustments and continue her sword training. At night Mary would get luxurious massages and herbal treatments to help her heal and recover, and if that did not work, the family's cleric would give her a healing spell.
After four days of this, they stayed out for a night of camping in the woods (with Mary's maidservant Belén sharing her tent as chaperone, of course.) Then, things got even more intense. They woke Mary up early in the morning, before the sun rose, and walked her through deep woods in the dark. They took her to an abandoned mine shaft, where a gnome miner taught Mary the basics of mine safety and led her, still wearing full armor and kit, into the depths. Then Daniels drilled her again, sparring by the dim blue light of glowing miner's helmets.
After Mary got used to this, the miner started making a beastly racket, using a horn and some kind of gnomish noisemaking contraption. Mary almost lost her nerves at this, but pushed through, reminding herself that this was just a test. She knew that she was being trained to adventure the same way that she trained falcons to wear a hood and leash, by slow and steady habituation to overcome her instincts.
As a finale, they made it even scarier by having the gnome fire crossbow bolts over Mary's head. A week ago, she had been forbidden from even swinging a stick or carrying a knife into the woods. Now she was equipped with real armor and shield and a real-feeling bamboo scimitar, sparring with the captain of the royal guard, in dim ghostly light, in an abandoned mine shaft with bad footing, with a loud racket blaring in her ears, while bolts whistled over her head. And yet, she managed to keep calm and focus on the fast graceful sword style that she had been taught, sidestepping and parrying Daniels's strong fierce attacks.
When they went back to the castle that night, Mary saw her father for the first time in a week. She had not seen him at all since the morning she was first called into the armor fitting. That usually happened when he was plotting something. When he joined her and the family at dinner, she thanked him sincerely, but politely and with as much decorum as she could muster, for giving her the ability to train with weapons and armor.
He nodded regally. "My sages told me to prepare you for a great adventure in Wildspace to perform a task for Martin Cooper. We should know more soon. Keep up the good work."
That was about as warm and polite as he got. Mary curtsied, then ate dinner, reminding herself to eat slowly and with royal decorum even though her body was demanding that she consume twice as much food as she normally would.
Mary thought about Wildspace all night, her mind spinning with the rumors and stories she had picked up. Space pirates, horrible monsters, grand adventures, incomprehensible magic. A place for the wild and reckless, to be shunned by stable civilized people. And she would be going out there, knowing almost nothing of adventure. Would she make it back alive? Would anyone care if she did not? Did she even care?
The next morning, she went up to the tallest tower of the castle, the steel one with the black-mica runes of protection and the quad-mount anti-ship autoblaster, and looked up into the sky. It was a clear day, so she could see thousands of floating islands. She looked at them with a new perspective. They had never seemed real before. Like the mountains in the distance, or the clouds that also floated in the sky, she had always seen them as background details, flat distant things. Usually she forgot they were even there.
But now she knew that she would soon be going there, and that reminded her that they were real. People could fly to them in fantastic ships, and walk around on them. What would it be like to do that? Would it be like walking through the forests that she loved, with the trees and plants and animals that she knew, or would it be a bizarre alien realm? All she could see was big chunks of rock, sometimes with a haze of greenery on top and spilling over the sides.
What was it like, among the islands in the sky? What would she find there?
Whatever it was, it had to be better than her life here.
Next (Tsinta)
Next Mary
These different biomes support a surprising variety of sapient species, each one in its ecological niche. Goblins take to the mountains, wild desolate places where less cunning races could not prosper. Orcs settle into the valleys of the rivers that can support the traffic of large boats. Gnomes favor the hidden and quiet places with access to smaller streams, brooks, lakes, and swamps. Hobgoblins scratch a living with three-sisters farming in the rough hills, forming sprawling clans to defend their turf. Kobolds live where there are animals to hunt and trap, and caves that can be defended with traps. Tiny villages of Dragonborn and Tieflings cling to places where their ancient fallen empires once had great cities. Other, stranger races lurk in various places, the details of their cultures and ways known only to pack-pedlars, mendicant clerics of evangelical gods, and the wizards of Iradin university, who send grad students on anthropological surveys.
Then there are the races that have moved in from the continents to the east. Dwarves claim those rare mountains that can be made into a great fortress, mining and burrowing into the mountain and terracing its outside to grow rows of grains. Elves move into forests and terraform them over hundreds of years, making them into beautiful orchards of diverse types of trees that grow everything from fruit and nuts to mithral armor, and eventually crafting grand courtly cities and splitting their society into the castes of wood-elves of the forests and high-elves of the courts. Halflings live wherever there is a civilization that will allow them, for their niche is the city.
Humans find defensible places that can support both farming and mining, and form proud independent fairy-tale kingdoms nestled in picturesque secluded valleys. They build castles to guard the mountain passes, and fill the valleys with farms divided by split-rail fences.
In the time our story begins, one of the richest and most prosperous of these was the Kingdom of Mecklenberg. It commanded a fertile river valley and a mine of enchantment-grade mica that was constantly renewed by a fast-upwelling mountain. Crafters turned this mica into magical shields and armor, which was sold to the wealthy and well-connected and also issued to a well-trained royal guard. The Mecklenberg Guard, along with an inaccessible location and the credible threat of a magitech self-destruct device to scuttle the mines, secured the kingdom against any outside threat smaller than a major world power.
The kingdom was ruled by the Hanovers. They descended from a bold adventurer who had, hundreds of years ago, driven the kobolds from the valley, cleared out the ghoul-and-construct-infested remnants of a Dragonborn logistics depot, and finally slain the dragon living in the mica mine. Rather than move on to the next adventure, she laid claim to the valley, invited all of her friends to join her, mail-ordered a wizard husband from Iradin, and settled down to live the good life.
Over the centuries, as her descendants and the descendants of her friends filled the valley, the royal family became focused on preserving its status among the other humans, which meant distinguishing themselves with a performance of being wealthy, powerful nobles. If they started doing common things, then the commoners might start to wonder what exactly the difference between commoner and royalty was.
And so it was that Princess Mary Hanover, who had inherited the wild energy and yearnings of her ancestor Charlotte, had a rough childhood. The demands of her family's status were constantly in conflict with the demands of her nature, and status usually won when a compromise could not be found.
Falconry was one of the better compromises, combining the pastimes of royalty with Mary's love of animals and wild things. Mary was in the middle of an ordinary enjoyable morning in the aviary, feeding her red-tailed hawks from a bucket of freshly killed rats, when she saw a young gnome, one of the house-servants, scurrying towards her.
"Your Highness, His Majesty has requested that you report to Emilia in the wardrobe vault immediately."
Mary sighed. "Thank you, I will be right over. Please have Soaring Eagle finish the feeding."
She knew how this worked. If she was late or did not come, the servant would be blamed and punished. This implied threat to others was the best way the family had found to make her obey. But as usual, she had a way to resist, to assert her will. You could never get in trouble if you obeyed commands to the letter, going to extreme measures to do so.
So she took a deep breath, turned towards the keep, crouched down, and took off in a very unladylike sprint. Although it was scandalously without decorum, her stride was graceful and her breathing steady as she bounded through the paths, turning swiftly and sidestepping around obstacles as necessary. She had a runner's thin physique, suited for swift movement and long steady effort, and her clothing of trousers and elf-made moccasins gave her the freedom of movement she needed.
As she ran, she took a moment to relish the feel of this practical clothing, knowing that she would soon be taken from it. She was surely being called to the wardrobe vault to be fitted for some kind of horrible confining corsetry and costuming, in preparation for being paraded around at some ball or ancient religious ritual or coronation or something. She was about to suffer through several hours of standing still inside, being poked and prodded and slowly encased in a stifling cocoon of elegant silken fripperies, like a web-trapped bug being wrapped up by a spider. Her running was not just petulance, it was a way to burn off energy so she could tolerate standing around and being cooped up for so long.
As much as she might have preferred to arrive at the vault sweaty and out of breath and looking like a miserable commoner, as a rebuke to being ordered around, she bounded in swiftly and gracefully, her breathing only slightly elevated, like a huntress reporting for duty.
She noticed one of the guards looking at her with appreciative interest. He obviously saw the Princess not as an untouchable distant noble, but as an attractive, healthy, graceful woman. He was doing his best, and failing miserably, to disguise his interest and desire. Mary grinned and winked at him, not because she had any interest in him, but because causing chatter and rumors would be excellent retaliation for whatever dignified indignity she was about to be subjected to.
Then she saw that there were five guards in the antechamber guarding the vault, including Captain Daniels. That was unusual. Usually there would only be one or two lower-ranked guards, to make sure that the servants did not filch any valuable pieces of clothing, or threaten a member of the royal family. And in addition to Emilia, the dressmaker, there was Gustavo the armorer and several of his workers.
The Captain nodded respectfully and seriously at her. "Thankyew for yer promptness." He looked to see if anyone was around, and after confirming that no household servants were anywhere nearby, continued, "Yer bein' fitted for a suit o' Mica Scale, and it's best we finish soon as possible, before any word can spread."
This was serious. The magic-resistant Mica Scale armor, the family's source of wealth and power, was real armor, for warriors and adventurers, not lady's costuming.
Captain Daniels opened the vault. "Private Shuford." He glared at the guard who had ogled Mary. "Guard the door. Ever'one else, inside."
They crowded in between the rows of fancy suits with their silk and lace and pearls and shiny glamoured magical baubles. Daniels then closed the vault door. "Everyone turn to face the door and close yer eyes. Even you, Princess."
They did so. Daniels moved about. Mary heard mechanical clicking and buzzing, then a sharp brief hum, like an insect but somehow more metallic and airy at the same time. "Okay, you can look now."
A part of the floor had swung up, revealing a ladder to a lower vault. Mary had been in the clothing vault many times, and had never seen a trapdoor there or guessed its existence. "Okay, ever'one down."
Mary had always known that her family must have a true treasure vault, one filled not with stupid gold and gems and decorations, but with real magical treasures: weapons, armor, shields, and fantastic devices. She knew that there were many warriors and adventurers in her family's history, and she knew that they shared the same magical equipment, a growing collection of heirlooms passed through the generations. She knew that somewhere in the castle, all of their gear would be stored, waiting to be used, a heaping pile of magical treasure glittering with enchantment and possibility.
This is not what she saw in the lower vault. Instead, she saw workbenches, tools, and mannequins for fitting. One wall was filled with a grid of locked steel doors, ranging in size from an oven door to a jewelry box.
Daniels looked at Mary. "Do not touch any of those doors. In fact, do not get within five feet of any of them."
The gnomes started arranging themselves silently at the workbenches, either following prearranged instructions or guessing their role. They very carefully did not look at Daniels as he went to one of the larger doors, tapped it with a wand in three places, unlocked it with a mithral key, and took out a suit of armor.
He handed the armor to Gustavo, who arranged it on a mannequin. Mary saw that it was fit for a woman, although one larger and more full-figured than herself. Why had she never heard any stories of a woman adventurer in her family's history?
She turned to Daniels. "Who did this belong to?"
He shrugged. "Dunno. I was just given box numbers and keys and instructions."
"Why am I being fitted for real armor?"
"I can't say."
His brusque manner, and the efficient technical chatter of the gnomes, told Mary that there would be no conversation. So she stood silently as she was measured, and various parts of armor were tested, strapped, unstrapped, and adjusted. This gave her plenty of time to ponder what was going on.
Why would she be dressed in real armor?
There was only one possible answer: She was being sent to meet Martin Cooper, and her father had calculated that this outfit was the best way to make her look attractive to him.
In her less fiery and more thoughtful moments, Mary understood her family's situation. She knew that roles must be performed and images must be maintained. If they were not, the social order that benefited her so much would be threatened. The continuation of her comfortable lifestyle, perhaps even her life, required that her family follow rules and conventions and play politics, sometimes ruthlessly. Mary, despite her hatred for the arrogant class-consciousness and racism of her family, understood this at some level, and so she usually did what was necessary to go along with their plots and schemes.
The daughters of the family were placed in political marriages that maintained the independence of Mecklenberg and the sovereignty of Hanover. Most of the women in her family were, or appeared to be, perfectly happy with this. Some were content to live happy lives of idle decadence, others enjoyed being the cunning and powerful center of vast intrigues, and a few cultivated the arts of magic and enchantment. The temperaments of Hanover daughters were visible at an early age, and they were generally were placed in situations that fit them. Mary was the only one who was not understood, who did not fit into any role they knew. She alternated between hating them for their stupidity and hating herself for being a freak.
Although at the time she saw only boneheaded rigidity, Mary would later learn that His Majesty, King Frederick, despite his many faults, was very good at playing politics, and at working with the tools and materials that the gods gave him. He knew that it would be a mistake to try to force Mary to be something that she was not. She had been given an unprecedented freedom to follow her whims and do her own thing, within reason. Her more traditional siblings could be fit into more traditional roles. Royal families were allowed to have a couple oddballs. Crushing her spirit would definitely destroy her and make her useless, and allowing her to do her own thing might have an unexpected benefit.
And in his own way, the king did care about Mary's well-being. Obviously he could not give her anything that threatened the kingdom or the family's place as its rulers, but she was his daughter, and he did love her, as much as he was capable of love.
So when Mary reached the age of marriage, His Majesty had her send a proposal to Martin Cooper, the powerful but uncouth wizard of common birth who had spent the last three years rearranging the political landscape (and occasionally the physical landscape) of the Gray Ridge region. Mary had no choice in this, but it was clear to her that in the unlikely event that a marriage actually happened, she would tolerate being Martin's wife much better than she would tolerate any other suitable husband. And she would tolerate being Martin's wife much better than any of her sisters would tolerate being hitched to a wilderness-tromping commoner.
Martin was, or pretended to be, the kind of scatterbrained wizard who would let marriage proposals sit around for years before he got around to answering them one way or another, or even acknowledging them. This meant that, while waiting for his response, Mary had enjoyed a nice time of freedom. This time had obviously ended.
After the initial fitting was done, and the gnomes strapped every piece of the armor on and were satisfied that it was all secure, Mary got another surprise. Captain Daniels said, "Okay, step down and start movin' around. Tell 'em if anything pinches or rattles or restricts your movement."
This was new. In dress fittings, nobody ever cared if Mary could move around comfortably. She was lucky if she could sit down without ripping something. She tentatively stepped down and started through a series of dance steps, gliding gracefully around in a waltz. The gnomes scurried around her, looking, listening, and occasionally poking at the armor.
It felt good. Mary had always assumed that armor was like her dresses, but even heavier and worse. But she could move around in this armor more easily than she could in most dresses. It was a revelation that made her even angrier at her family's stupid rules. She was constantly forced into in things that confined and hobbled her, and displayed parts of her body like some kind of prize horse, while men got to wear a shiny, comfortable, stylish outfit that could turn a boar-spear and stop a force bolt from a six-shooter. And the man's outfit came with pockets and a utility belt.
Captain Daniels watched this for a few minutes, letting Mary get used to the weight and feel of the armor. Then he called out. "Really move. Act like yer tromping through the woods in yer trousers. Cut loose. Drop to the floor, get up, run, jump, climb up the ladder, do a cartwheel."
Mary hesitated. This had gone beyond eccentric and into creepy. What exactly was she supposed to be doing when she met Martin? But she complied, tentatively at first, and then eagerly. She might never get another chance to play around in armor, so she might as well enjoy it.
It was hard to lift her arms to climb, and the armor nearly slid off when she did the cartwheel, but otherwise it worked really well. Obviously it was harder than moving around in a cotton shirt and trousers, but it was easier, and a lot more fun, than formalwear.
After she had gone through her paces, the gnomes took off the armor and started to fix the shoulder movement and adjust the waist and hips for a better fit when upside down. Daniels handed Mary a canteen to drink from, and then, almost before she realized what was happening, he handed her a shield.
It was beautiful. A mosaic of white and black mica flakes formed the falcon crest of House Hanover. Daniels showed her how to strap it onto her arm and hold it. Then he handed her a small curved sword in a steel scabbard. "Hold this gently, no sudden movements."
Mary immediately noticed that it clashed with the rest of the outfit. Both the scabbard and what she could see of the sword hilt were ridiculously ornamented, with inlays of gold and gemstones. The inlays on the scabbard formed a stylized picture of someone in an exotic outfit slashing a dragon's throat. It had obviously come from far away, no doubt taken in some grand adventure by one of her ancestors.
One of the gnomes looked at Mary's hand with a jeweler's loupe that had a glowing green pinwheel spinning on its side. "No odd magical effects detected, sir. Looks like a good match."
Daniels nodded, then took the sword and shield and put them back into their lockers. He then instructed Mary and the gnomes through a second round of movement testing and armor fitting, and then a third. After hours of work, he announced, "That's good enough for now. Get it oiled and coated and ready for field work."
Mary turned around at this. "Field work? What are you planning? Will I be going through a hike in the woods with Martin?"
"I can't say, ma'am. Now, let's go get you a good lunch."
Daniels took Mary out of the vault, locking the gnomes and soldiers inside, and then escorted her to the dining hall before going into the King's Chambers for a consultation with His Majesty and the royal advisers and sages.
After lunch, things got even stranger. Daniels took Mary to the training yard and explained that he would be teaching her the basics of fighting with the scimitar and shield. Mary, who had been hoping for something like this for as long as she could remember, did not ask any more questions about what was going on. She simply resolved to be the best student possible, to learn as much as she could and do as well as she could. It did not matter why this was happening, it only mattered that it not get interrupted and last as long as possible.
After two days of intense training, the armor was ready. Then Daniels and Soaring Eagle took her on hikes through the woods, showing her how to manage while equipped with armor, sword, shield, and an adventurer's pack. After they got back in the afternoon, Daniels would instruct the gnomes on more armor adjustments and continue her sword training. At night Mary would get luxurious massages and herbal treatments to help her heal and recover, and if that did not work, the family's cleric would give her a healing spell.
After four days of this, they stayed out for a night of camping in the woods (with Mary's maidservant Belén sharing her tent as chaperone, of course.) Then, things got even more intense. They woke Mary up early in the morning, before the sun rose, and walked her through deep woods in the dark. They took her to an abandoned mine shaft, where a gnome miner taught Mary the basics of mine safety and led her, still wearing full armor and kit, into the depths. Then Daniels drilled her again, sparring by the dim blue light of glowing miner's helmets.
After Mary got used to this, the miner started making a beastly racket, using a horn and some kind of gnomish noisemaking contraption. Mary almost lost her nerves at this, but pushed through, reminding herself that this was just a test. She knew that she was being trained to adventure the same way that she trained falcons to wear a hood and leash, by slow and steady habituation to overcome her instincts.
As a finale, they made it even scarier by having the gnome fire crossbow bolts over Mary's head. A week ago, she had been forbidden from even swinging a stick or carrying a knife into the woods. Now she was equipped with real armor and shield and a real-feeling bamboo scimitar, sparring with the captain of the royal guard, in dim ghostly light, in an abandoned mine shaft with bad footing, with a loud racket blaring in her ears, while bolts whistled over her head. And yet, she managed to keep calm and focus on the fast graceful sword style that she had been taught, sidestepping and parrying Daniels's strong fierce attacks.
When they went back to the castle that night, Mary saw her father for the first time in a week. She had not seen him at all since the morning she was first called into the armor fitting. That usually happened when he was plotting something. When he joined her and the family at dinner, she thanked him sincerely, but politely and with as much decorum as she could muster, for giving her the ability to train with weapons and armor.
He nodded regally. "My sages told me to prepare you for a great adventure in Wildspace to perform a task for Martin Cooper. We should know more soon. Keep up the good work."
That was about as warm and polite as he got. Mary curtsied, then ate dinner, reminding herself to eat slowly and with royal decorum even though her body was demanding that she consume twice as much food as she normally would.
Mary thought about Wildspace all night, her mind spinning with the rumors and stories she had picked up. Space pirates, horrible monsters, grand adventures, incomprehensible magic. A place for the wild and reckless, to be shunned by stable civilized people. And she would be going out there, knowing almost nothing of adventure. Would she make it back alive? Would anyone care if she did not? Did she even care?
The next morning, she went up to the tallest tower of the castle, the steel one with the black-mica runes of protection and the quad-mount anti-ship autoblaster, and looked up into the sky. It was a clear day, so she could see thousands of floating islands. She looked at them with a new perspective. They had never seemed real before. Like the mountains in the distance, or the clouds that also floated in the sky, she had always seen them as background details, flat distant things. Usually she forgot they were even there.
But now she knew that she would soon be going there, and that reminded her that they were real. People could fly to them in fantastic ships, and walk around on them. What would it be like to do that? Would it be like walking through the forests that she loved, with the trees and plants and animals that she knew, or would it be a bizarre alien realm? All she could see was big chunks of rock, sometimes with a haze of greenery on top and spilling over the sides.
What was it like, among the islands in the sky? What would she find there?
Whatever it was, it had to be better than her life here.
Next (Tsinta)
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