“Master Rockland, I…genuinely do not know what to make of this,” Therin said, through Juniper’s voice. “I have never seen any technology like this before in all my centuries of smithing. And these Nephil – I’ve never so much as heard of them before today.”
It was odd, talking to someone you felt like you’d known your whole life who was speaking in another person’s voice. It was like she’d become the world’s greatest impressionist. Not only that, but her entire personality changed. It was…spooky. But then again, Juniper was technically a ghost, so spooky was kind of her entire job description. Still, it felt weird. Therin was a nice enough guy, but talking to him this way felt wrong. It felt like we were breaking some sort of cosmic law or something. But it was Juniper’s body to do with as she saw fit. So, if she was willing to lease the use of it to another spirit for a few minutes so that I could get some details on crafting my new weapon, I wasn’t going to argue with her about it.
“So, you can’t build it?”
“I didn’t say that, lad. It’s just that I have never seen anything like this. It technically shouldn’t exist, as far as I can tell. But then, I never saw anything like your handgun either before you showed up in the dungeon. This,” he said, laying Juniper’s hand on the Nephil blueprints, “will take time and some clever engineering to recreate. Lucky for you, you’ve got a master smith on the payroll.”
“That is lucky indeed,” I said. “I take it you’re interested in giving it a shot?”
“I’ll leave the shooting to you, if it’s all the same to ye. But this certainly does appear to be a worthy enough challenge. This technology…it predates anything I’ve ever seen. Anything I’ve ever even heard of. Where did you say you found this?”
“I didn’t say. And, no offense, but I don’t intend to either. Let’s say I had an extremely rare loot drop and leave it at that.”
“Extremely rare,” Therin agreed, turning the pages of the blueprint to inspect its various elements.
“Here are the challenges as I see them. First, materials. We need fairly specific types of several different kinds of ore. Second, I’ll need a workspace with a forge so I can turn that ore into ingots and those ingots into parts for the weapon. Third – and this is the hardest one – we need to find a power source. For the gun, I mean. The thing looks like it’s going to require an enormous amount of energy and I’m not sure where we are going to find that. I don’t know of any resource just lying around that puts out enough power to do what this weapon requires.”
That was disappointing. I had the plans in hand to build a weapon of potentially cosmic proportions and no way to actually use the thing. I wasn’t all that worried about finding resources. Environmental Mapping would likely make that an easy enough task. The workspace could be built fairly quickly, too, assuming Urz wasn’t too busy and could assign a crew to…wait. That was it. I shot a quick message to Urz to come quickly as I’d just had the best idea of my life. Or, at least, my best idea of the last five minutes.
When he arrived, I made the introduction I’d been meaning to make since we returned from the dungeon.
“Urz Stoneforge, meet Therin Oreclaw,” I said, cheerily. Urz looked at Juniper, and then back at me with a sour face.
“Master Rockland, I don’t have time for practical jo—”
“Good t’meet you, Urz. It’s always nice to make the acquaintance of a fellow craftsman.”
Urz’s eyes shot back to Juniper and he squinted at the girl, suspiciously.
“Good…to meet you too?” he said, shooting a wary glance back at me as he responded. I nodded slightly.
“Good Master Rockland here was just telling me that you’re the area’s construction chief.”
“I am. I…I am sorry, what is happening, here?”
I chuckled and filled Urz in on the gag. Honestly, I just wanted to see the look on his face when Juniper started talking in someone else’s voice. If I had to deal with it, then someone else should have to too.
“I brought you over here, because I wanted to talk to you about the shower factory.”
“Shower factory?” the two men asked in unison.
“This place has the weirdest echo. Yes, the shower factory. Urz, you know how Jasmine suggested that we might be able to market my plumbing and shower plans to the orcs? Well, I’m thinking we should really start to get to work on that.”
“Matriarch Jasmine should really be here for this conversation,” Urz said, nervously.
“It’s fine. Or it’ll be fine. Probably. Look, let me fill you in on the plan and we can run it by Jasmine later. For now, I want to solidify what I have in my head with the two of you to see if it’s even feasible. Fair enough?”
After a brief hesitation, Urz nodded his head.
“If all we’re doing is conceptualizing, I guess it can’t hurt.”
“That’s the spirit! How about you, Therin?”
“What’s a shower?”
“That’s exactly the energy I need right now. Thank you, Therin.”
I spent the next half hour detailing my concept. We would build a factory on the outskirts of town, where we would make the pipes, shower heads, and all the various parts we would need. The parts would then be shipped over to a connected building for runework and enchantment. We could staff the whole operation with Eidolon and Orcs who had nothing better to do and give the remaining grunt work over to automatons. Therin knew how to build them and could talk Urz through the process – starting with his own body.
“It seems workable,” Therin said. “To be completely honest, Master Rockland, I’m a bit excited about the idea. There’s a lot of fun engineering and smithing work to be done to get the factory up and running. That’s exactly the sort of project I’d hoped ye’d have for me when ye promised me work back in the dungeon. But what about the weapon?”
“Weapon?” Urz asked.
“They’re connected, I promise,” I assured them both. “Once the factory is open, you can use that as your workspace to create the weapon, couldn’t you? How long would it take with an entire automaton workforce at your disposal?”
Therin considered that for a moment.
“A week. Maybe less. The hardest part would be creating the tiny dies for these specific parts,” he said, gesturing to a page in the blueprint. “But, the automatons themselves require small clockwork parts as well, so it’s doable. Especially once I have the automatons to help in the process. Their precision is on par with my own so we could certainly synchronize the labor.”
“I think we could afford to shut down operations for a week in a factory that makes a product that nobody’s even heard of yet, don’t you? The best part is that the factory gives us the perfect cover for making the weapon without raising any suspicions about what we’re up to.”
“It does seem logical,” he admitted. “What’s this weapon you’re talking about, anyway?”
Urz was every bit as intrigued by the weapon plans as Therin had been. Every bit as confused by them, as well. I couldn’t blame the guys. If I’d brought these plans to someone on Earth, they’d probably be able to replicate the design in no time. Here, most projects relied more on magic than on technology, so the idea was almost completely foreign to them. The problem back on Earth would have been the same as the problem here, though: finding a power source for the damn thing.
“What about a dungeon core?” Urz asked, after some conversation on potential batteries for the weapon. “They power entire dungeons…they should be able to put out strong bursts of energy, right?”
“Maybe,” Therin said. “They are small enough that we could retrofit the energy capsule, and use runes to draw the energy out from the core when the trigger is pulled. It would have to be a level 50 dungeon at the very least. Can you handle one of that level, Master Rockland?”
“I think my party’s likely strong enough to put up a good fight,” I said. “I don’t really know, though. We kind of breezed through your dungeon – no offense – so I don’t see why the four of us couldn’t handle level fifty. That’s if I can get Juniper and the others to tag along with me again, of course.”
Scorch popped her head out of my jacket suddenly.
“I’m in! Dungeons are so much fun. We should go right now. Let’s do a dungeon.”
“Scorch,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose, “have you been stealing my coffee beans again?”
“No. Probably not. Yes. It’s none of your business and I’ll thank you to stay out of my personal affairs,” the words spilled out of her like someone had bumped her fast-forward button. Her eyes were nearly bulging out of her tiny little head. She popped back down into my jacket pocket and I just sighed. I really needed to remember to put the java back into my inventory when I was done with it. The poor weasel was going to give herself a heart attack one of these days. Urz and Therin were both looking at me with amused expressions until Therin seemed to fade for a moment, his features softening.
“I’m in too,” Juniper’s familiar voice announced. “I’m almost done with everything I needed to accomplish here in town. Give me a little more time to wrap it up and I’ll be happy to come along.”
Then, she receded and allowed Therin to resume control.
“It sounds like you know what the plan is, Master Rockland. Assuming you can get this fourth member to agree to accompany you, as well.”
“I’ll have a talk with him after we finish up here. So, here’s the plan as I see it: Urz and Therin will get to work on building Therin’s body and building the factory. I’ll talk to Shrek and see if I can’t talk him into risking his life again in another dungeon with me. Then, it’s all about resource acquisition – the ore, the core, and whatever else we need. I’ll bring those back with me, and we’ll get this thing built. Then we’ll decide what to do about setting the factory up for actual production of the showers.”
“Which is where the Matriarch should be consulted, at the very latest,” Urz interjected. “Actually, you may want to speak with your wife sooner than that, Master Rockland. I believe she may be able to provide some assistance in getting the ore we’ll need.”
“Right,” I said. “I’ll talk to Shrek first and then I’ll have dinner with Jasmine. I want to make sure I have all my ducks in a row before I lay out the whole plan for her.”
“You have ducks?” Juniper was back in control again, apparently.
“No, June…it’s a figure of speech.”
“Aw. You got me all excited for a line of ducks,” she said with genuine disappointment.
We concluded the meeting and everyone went their separate ways. It felt good, knowing that we had at least hatched a bit of a scheme to get things moving in the right direction. Nobody knew when or where Brakk would make his next appearance, and I needed to hoard every advantage I could muster before that happened. He literally stomped me the last time we met and I wasn’t confident in surviving a round two at my current strength.
I poked at the stoat in my pocket, just to make sure she was still alive. She squirmed a bit and slowly peeked out of my duster again.
“Rocky, I have a headache. A really bad one.”
“I bet. You probably ate your weight in caffeine,” I said, taking her out of my pocket and setting her down on the table. “Why don’t you stay here, for a while? I’m going to go do some training with Shrek and I’m sure that would make your headache that much worse.”
“Yeah,” she said, curling up into a little ball on the tabletop. “You two are really loud when you play your little dominance games.”
“It’s called training.”
“Whatever. I’ll be here when you get back. Unless I’m hunting. In which case…wait longer.”
“Got it,” I said, stroking the fur on her back lightly. “I’ll see you later tonight. Or possibly morning.”
“It’ll be morning.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“You’re going to see Jasmine.”
I couldn’t even argue her logic. I just smiled, scratched her back one more time and headed out in search of Shrek.