Fable - Ask Engineering our way Home

A roleplay which may be open to join but you must ask the creator first
Mai'Traya

Mai'Traya

Drow Engineer
Member
Seriously Likeable I
Messages
12
Character Biography
Link
Zar'Ahal was many things to many, different, people but to Mai'Traya it was a complicated mess of a place that was almost entirely out of the range of her special interest - so she really didn't care too much about it.

Some people (her mother especially) found it unseemly that her workshop was on the line between the Slave Slums and the rest of the city but she didn't really mind. A plus-side of slaves was that they made for neighbours who wouldn't complain about a lot of thing. Mostly out of fear that they'd be lashed for daring to complain in the first place but Mai didn't much mind that it was clearly due to fear.

All she cared about was the peace and quiet was only interrupted by herself and her own experiments.

It was a quiet day in the neighbourhood and everyone around the workshop likely thought she was only working on something small, something delicate and something that wouldn't cause too much noise.

Ha!

Joke was on them, really, she thought as she travelled through the air - carried as she was by the shockwave of the explosion that she had caused with something small and something very delicate and not at all quiet. Crashing through the main doors to her workshop, Mai'Traya skidded along the paved road in front of her workshop, battered, burned but very much alive.

"Amazing!" she cried out even as she sat upright, staring at the small fire that appeared to have started in her workshop, "Absolutely amazing yield for something so small... I wonder if I reinforce the metal if I might be able to channel the explosive force..."

She didn't even notice that one of her bangs was lightly smoking from being mildly on fire.

Vel'duith Voiryn
 
  • Wonder
Reactions: Vel'duith Voiryn
Vel'duith peered out into the lower city from the jutting end of the side chute she had diverted to during the escape from House Suulet-Jabar. It swayed gently from side to side, which really should have been the diminutive drow's warning. But she was exulting in the moment, finally free again after some dozen hours that had seemed a full week - though the formality of a sending-spell would soon be in order. The queen and general were not enemies she wished to make. For as vast as she was learning Arethil truly was, it could seem quite small at times, like when she...

...and then the chute end snapped, collapsing forward, dumping its new tenant face-first toward the ground below. Was that an awning coming up fast? She seized the ends of her lurker mantle, the smelly rag-cloak over it snapping free into the dark as the mantle billowed full. She swung her legs, diverting herself onto the awning just in time. She released the mantle ends as she landed hard with an oof, then slid down and off, falling several yards to catch hold of another awning edge, dropping to the top of a neighborhood wall, arms windmilling for balance. Normally that might have worked, save for the silk-wrapped battleax stuffed into her satchel tugging her a bit more back and leftwards than expected. Her instant reaction was a foot shuffle... just an inch too far, and over she went, grabbing a pole and leverage swinging sideways onto a roof, just as it shook and rose up to greet her, pushed by a thunderous explosion below. She didn't even have time to puzzle about it.... WHAM!!!
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
After the now askance lead-tin roof panel resettled, the unconscious, diminutive cloaked figure slid to its edge, which was just enough lever-force to finally tumble it down into the workshop below, rag-dolled drow and all, with the cheap clangor of flimsy lead-tin spranging on stone followed by a soft thuddle and the more solid muffled clank of the silk wrapped adamantine battleax striking a crate-band.

The figure having just landed on Mai'Traya's crate -one of the only non-smoldering ones- by way of a piece of her roof was a drow woman, abnormally short and thin, wearing spidersilk robes and a lurker-pelt mantle pinned inside out with some manner of silver device-pin, the device it bore hidden beneath. She had a hand crossbow, bolts, a shortsword, and a dagger on a waist-belt, all fine weapons of adamantine and silver with polished darkwood fittings, and the aforementioned silk-wrapped battleax slung in a now ripped from overstretching spidersilk carryall satchel. Half her face was covered by a dented-coned, broad-brimmed spidersilk hat, with a simple but perfectly even snow white braid splayed out and partially dangling over the crate-edge. Her mouth dripped a bit of blood from where her teeth had cut her lip, but her limbs looked more or less correctly articulated, all her fingers still seemed attached within the bloodied, partially rent lizardskin gloves covering them, and her chest softly rose and fell with a faint groan. One odd detail was that while most of her clothes looked like well-kept, well-worn lesser noble house fare, her boots looked nearly brand-new, and were surely of dwarf-make. Surface dwarf-make, at that.

Mai'Traya
 
Last edited:
Mai'Traya had only just gotten back into her workshop when someone fell down into the workshop itself. Someone she had never seen before, someone who looked like they'd landed badly on one of the crates of ingots she'd managed to buy from some of the local forges. Someone who was dressed in spidersilk and had some weapons on her but...

"Your landing was terrible - are you dead?" she asked as she stepped closer to the downed Drow, nudging at her ribs with the tip of one boot, "Come on, wake up... I'm not allowing corpses in my workshop and you look like you'd be heavy."

Tilting her head to the side slightly, she nudged at the hand-crossbow with her foot and made a noise. It was a pained, disgusted, noise.

"Ew! What is that?! What even IS that?!"

Huffing some hair out of her mouth, she batted at her now shorter bangs, the fire having gone on a little longer than expected.

"Gross Dwarf-work... no wonder you're falling through ceilings and being all corpse-y!"

At no point at Mai'Traya actually checked if the woman was a corpse, at this point she had already decided that her corpse-ness or un-corpse-ness was entirely irrelevant in light of the sub-par quality of the woman's equipment.

Vel'duith Voiryn
 
  • Yay
Reactions: Vel'duith Voiryn
Vel’duith stirred groggily, stiffly, a bit painfully. The world spun in triplicate, with three leather-aproned drow rummaging and insulting her gear…

“What… no! It was commissioned from Jael’brin, near House Suulet-Jabar. Only my boots are dwarven… am I still in the city?”

She sat up perhaps too quickly, nearly swooning again. She started rubbing her temples, wincing as her palms decided to finally inform her brain that she had gashed them grabbing that awning-frame. The fall… oh, there’s part of the roof on the floor… she turned back to the questioner, trying to focus.

“Your…” Her voice trailed off a second as her foggy brain and dizzy eyes argued over the best classification of the smouldering room they were swirling amidst. “…dwelling…. just exploded?”

Mai'Traya
 
Oh, so not a corpse.

That was good because Mai'Traya did not look forward to trying to get corpse-smell out of her workshop. It had the unfortunate trait of lingering when it should otherwise have left. Still, alive was better by only some minor degree because she was trying to defend dwarven boots and another, vastly inferior, craftsdrow as well.

Poor near-dead thing thought she was defending her choice of kit like this? Probably the concussion talking.

"I'll choose to ignore how badly you're outfitted - and that you tried to defend such a decision. I know how hard it is to think clearly after head trauma and you must have been hit very hard." she tutted, reaching out and, very gingerly, giving Vel'duith a pat on the shoulder, "There. There."

The action had the feel of someone afraid of dogs petting a particularly nasty-looking variety. Still, the near-dead fashion-failure of a drow before her had stumbled across a topic of actual importance.

Mai'Traya's workshop!

"My workshop exploded, thank you very much!" she corrected archly, before grinning and gesturing to her alchemy table, which was very singed, "And only some of it actually exploded. Did you know that if you had Beakborrow Tusk dust to Distilled Water and shake in a confined metal container... that it explodes with energy and sends flammable material everywhere around it?"

Mai'Traya flicked her own nose with her thumb, adopting a smug look.

"I just discovered it. Isn't it exciting?!" she gushed, grabbing Vel'duith firmly by the shoulders and stopping just shy of shaking her, "Do you know what this means?!"

Vel'duith Voiryn
 
  • Yay
Reactions: Vel'duith Voiryn
Vel’duith considered the volatility of such a mixture of reagents and her garnet eyes widened. Now there were only two questioners flipping like spinning coins caught in some elliptical orbit close before her.

“Without some manner of reduction to act as a reverse catalyst? I feel fortunate the roof didn’t shatter and shred me to bits as I fell!”

She tried to stand, cautiously, definitely wobbly, woozily trying to take inventory of what exactly hurt, how much it hurt, and whether anything screamed for relief, aside from the now throbbing battleax-shaped welt across her lower back. Luckily, her limp, unconscious state had given her as soft of a landing atop a crate of metal ingots as could be imagined. Absent her clearheaded level of discretion, a somewhat decidedly un-Zar’Ahalan murmur slipped out of her lips as she slowly rotated her arms, bent elbows, knees-another big wobble, and a wincing half windmill to correct it.

“Seelah’s shimmer… nothing feels broken, at least…”

She gasped and bit hard on her lip as the other drow shook her excitedly.

“What?! What does it mean-is someone coming?”

She looked around too quickly, and nearly swooned again.

Mai'Traya
 
Last edited:
Mai'Traya tilted her head to the side slightly as she turned to look at Vel'duith as though she was mentally disturbed. At length, the Drow engineer stared at her newfound companion before moving over to a table and grabbing a small flask. She tossed the flask to Vel'duith with the cap screwed on tight.

"That's some water - you seem delirious with thirst or something." she explained, blinking slowly, "Why would I want to reduce the effect? I want to increase it!"

Grabbing a small tube of metal, open at one end with a cap in the other, she shook them in the general direction of Vel'duith with her eyes sparkling.

"The weapon isn't the explosion, it's the metal that is forced away from it, fast! So fast it tears through flesh and armour!"

Still, she tossed the un-made bomb to the side as it was not her current product. She still wanted to get back to work but she had enough social grace to know she should probably clean up around the workshop - she had a guest and her mother would have had words for her being so rude! Turning back to Vel'duith as she dusted at one of her workbenches, Mai'Traya watched as she started to panic.

A slow blink.

"Um... no. It means that I have created a new form of weaponry! One that cares not for how skilled an enemy is - FOR ALL ARE EQUAL BENEATH THE BOOM!"

Suddenly, her excitement took over and she tilted her head back, cackling to the ceiling of her workshop for a solid seven seconds before reigning herself in. It was, from the outside, a very precise seven seconds... like someone who had mentally confirmed that seven seconds was the optimal amount of time to cackle to the heavens before getting back to work.

"Oh don't worry - people leave my workshop alone all the time! They think weird noises coming from here are perfectly normally, though I can't imagine why."

Vel'duith Voiryn
 
The offer of water reminded Vel'duith that she had ale; it should at least numb the pain enough to complete her escape. Though no one seemed to be coming for her yet. She opened the flask stopper with a slight wince, foam frothing out, then she gurgled down the remainder, making a sour face. She wasn't entirely sure yet whether she wanted to acquire that particular taste.

She relaxed at the drow's reassurance, seeing the logic immediately. But then she realized with a bit of a start that this workshop lay perilously close to the slave pens, and thus the queen's possible return route.

"I see... I am truly sorry to both intrude into your workshop in such a manner, and to also dare to impose to ask a favor of you, but is there someplace fully dark that I might rest for a short while before taking my leave? I fear I have struck my head rather hard, and the dizziness is lingering."

Looking over the various paraphernalia and the bomb this drow was proudly showing her, she arched a snowy eyebrow, nodding her head.

"I have not seen such designs before, at least not made with such cunning and skill. Do you suppose that they might work well against large, primordial beasts, such as sometimes emerge onto the surface to hunt? Or would you recommend other armaments for such targets?"

Mai'Traya
 
Mai'Traya sniffed the air, catching a whiff of the scent of ale before narrowing her eyes in clear disgust. Anything that dulled the brain, made thoughts sluggish and slow, was the enemy and Mai'Traya did not drink the enemy! Instead she turned her nose up at the drinking drow in a clear display of the superiority of sobriety!

Ugh.

And now she wanted somewhere dark and, probably, far away from the explosives in the workshop? That was just a little bit too boring for Mai's taste but she knew that people did often have headaches from being in her workshop, but Gods be damned if she knew why.

"... there's a cot on the far wall for when my body fails to keep up with the hours my mind demands of me." she declared with a small scowl, "If only my efforts into the effects of sleeplessness had come good..."

Still, her eyes lit up and her ears wiggled slightly of their own accord as Vel'duith showed some measure of interest in her work. Not only interest but even asked questions as well!

Oh she liked this Drow now - she could stay awhile longer!

"As you should well have not! These are all Mai'Traya Originals! Everything you see here I made myself, even the tools for the most part!"

Standard tools were not up to her standards after all.

"For hunting large beasts? Hmm... depends on if you want the beast for its hide or not." she admitted, tapping at her lips as she thought, "I could see a harpoon launcher being effective. With some explosive force, it could pierce almost any hide and the damage would mostly be internal!"

Vel'duith Voiryn
 
  • Yay
Reactions: Vel'duith Voiryn
The dizzy diminutive drow couldn’t help but half cackle at the irony in the description of the cot… her own body was certainly failing to keep up with what her mind wanted from it at the moment. She was curious now about the boom cylinders, for they certainly seemed both potent and easily portable.

“What of resistance to magical or elemental attack? If, say, a wizard hurls flame perilously close by, would these ‘boom’ contraptions explode prematurely, dooming their bearer? Or what if one should be struck by a weapon or simply clumsily dropped onto the floor?”

She hazarded first one step, then another, slowly making her wobbly way to the cot.

Mai'Traya
 
Resistance to magical or elemental attack?

Mai'Traya rubbed at her chin - were she another species, she would have been rubbing at her beard but she had no beard so it probably looked rather peculiar. In the end, she tapped her fingertip against the metal and listened as the metal made a hollow noise.

"It would need to heat the metal up rather significantly - but in all likelihood would probably need a breach in the metal first." she admitted with a small frown, "The alchemic powders and liquids are rather combustible. Unfortunately, I fear it might just need to be something for the users to watch out for."

She stared at Vel'duith with as much seriousness as she could muster.

"It will be a skill issue."

If the users got dead then that was on them! Keep the reagents away from the flames and everything would be just fine. Was she supposed to make EVERYTHING idiot proof? If she was, then that would be exhausting because she was outnumbered!
 
  • Yay
Reactions: Vel'duith Voiryn
The woozy drow eased gingerly onto the cot, fingers wincingly assuming a tantric shape, drawing in what was meant to be a deep breath, up until the skill issue comment. She sat up and frowned.

“Skill issue? Weapons are tools to keep oneself alive against unfavorable odds… if it’s beyond your skill to render your booms stable against reasonable occupational hazards, I would think that many customers might instead take their electrum to Astathar and chance his gnomish potions.”
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back