Delvers LLC: Welcome to Ludus

by Blaise Corvin

  "No, it's something different. Never mind. Anyway, the point is we have no idea what we're going to be up against. What if we meet someone who has light magic and shoots lasers? What if someone chucks other people at us? What if someone can summon nightmare creatures? Plus, just because steel is scarce doesn't mean that guns don't exist. There are a lot of really scary possibilities.

  "So yeah, I need to work on defense, and I think you need to work on ranged attacks. You should probably also start thinking about what you'd do if you fought someone who is as strong and fast as you. We probably need to start thinking about conventional weapons too."

  "Yeah, about that... Let's go look at the armory and see what we can use." Jason nodded, and they headed across the huge Jaguar Clan house to look at weapons.

  When they got to the armory, Yanno-ibbi was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, carving an intricate pattern into the handle of a bronze pick-looking weapon. He gave a short bow from the floor. "Please excuse me if I don't get up. I try to get most of my work done early in the morning. I'd also like time to look in on Bezzi-ibbi today, so I'm trying to hurry."

  Henry asked, "How is he doing?" The concern in his voice was obvious to Jason. It was amazing how Bezzi-ibbi had grown on them in such a short amount of time. It was an understatement to say the kid had already been through a lot, but he still kept smiling. He also seemed to legitimately care about Jason and Henry, and Jason could somehow just sense he was sincere.

  The wild jaguar boy must have had nerves to steel to be so unaffected by the slaughter in the warehouse, much less do what he did with the ring.

  Yanno-ibbi's face fell. "There has been no change, Henry-ibbi. But grieving for the living is disrespectful. Let us be about our business."

  Jason thought he understood the sentiment. They shouldn't doubt Bezzi-ibbi as long as he kept fighting. "Okay, we are going to look around. We can take whatever we want, right?"

  Yanno-ibbi answered, "Yes, but you will have to return or pay for what you take after your mission is complete."

  Henry made a face. "That doesn't make a lot of sense. If we die, you don't get anything back. If we succeed, the Clan won't have any more money problems, right?"

  "Henry-ibbi, please, the walls listen!" Yanno-ibbi looked pained. "If you keep this up, you will be named Truth-Hisser in truth and most will avoid you."

  "Huh?"

  Jason rolled his eyes. "Just let it drop. I think they have their reasons, and it's not like we're not getting anything out of this. We have to start somewhere."

  Henry grumbled and walked over to inspect the room full of weapons and armor. Jason followed suit.

  One of the first things Jason noticed was all the weapons were relatively short. He remembered that Bronze Age weapons on Earth tended to be relatively short too, and he was disappointed. Jason's preferred weapon over the last two years of practicing HEMA was the longsword; it suited his lanky body style well.

  Still, now that he thought about it, a longer, slower weapon might not be optimal if he continued to use teleporting surprise strikes. He kept browsing his choices. At least there was a lot of variety in the room--too bad most of it wasn't all that impressive. He saw a few stone weapons and remembered bronze was expensive. His impression of the room rose when he realized how much wealth surrounded him.

  Jason eventually picked out a whole slew of possible weapon options and saw Henry doing the same. They both took simple armor too. The breast plates they chose were bronze and attached with straps. The helms were made of thick leather with bone sewn on, possibly tusks. They were piling all of their choices onto a handy rug to carry out when Uluula swept in. She wore a purple tunic, her bare legs sporting sandals laced to her knees.

  The men in the room all paused to watch her walk slowly in a circuit, examining the weapons on display. She had that kind of effect. She stopped about halfway around the room, choosing a spear with a thick bronze blade and a long, thin bronze knife, almost a stiletto.

  She turned a challenging look at Henry and Jason. "I would like to take these if you will allow me to join your company. Perhaps some armor too."

  Jason's brain didn't seem to be working right. He wanted to say something, but his mouth wouldn't move from its slightly open position. Henry rolled his eyes at him and challenged, "Why do you wanna join us?"

  Uluula shrugged. "I originally came to this city to find work in the first place. You saved me. You are starting a company. I owe you a debt, and I still need work. It seems this is a mutually beneficial arrangement. I can fight, and I have a lot more experience than either of you at combat and logistics."

  Henry bristled and said, "I used to be a soldier, lady."

  Uluula looked at him with no expression at all. "Oh, did you now? Perhaps we can discuss that later. So about me joining, what say you?"

  Henry smacked Jason on the shoulder, snapping him out of his daze. Jason thought Uluula's explanation sounded logical, and the truth was they could use some help. In fact, given the sensitive nature of the mission, they couldn't exactly find help outside of the Clan. He doubted many Clan members would go with them. The Clan would probably need every member they had if he and Henry failed. Plus it could be against the nature of the test or something.

  Jason was still learning about Jaguar Clan culture, but he got the vibe that this mission had some sort of ritual significance. Of course, the fact they would be cleaning up a huge problem for the Clan was probably just icing on the cake.

  "Yes, you may join our company." Jason just hoped Uluula and Henry would get along. He already sensed some conflict.

  Uluula inclined her head and gestured to Yanno-ibbi. "I may take these weapons now, yes?"

  "Since you are with them now you can. It still counts as their loan, though. Some leather armor is fine too."

  Uluula nodded her understanding. She gathered up her choices and prepared to leave. On the way out the door, she stopped in front of Jason. "I have given it some thought. I am not opposed to you pursuing my attention, possibly leading to courting. Areva where I am from are very methodical about these things. I still think you may be a bit young for me, but it will not matter in another 100 years, much less 200. Plus, I think you're silly and strangely cute. Do you agree to this?"

  Jason's brain was barely functioning, stuttering along like a desk fan submerged in honey. He hadn't felt this awkward around a female since he was a teen. How did she do this? "Ye-yes?" he stammered. Stupid, stupid Jason! He was getting ready to internally curse himself further when she shocked him by reaching up to gently touch his cheek.

  "Good, that is settled. You now have my permission to shorten my name if you'd like." Uluula smiled, somehow letting him know she was teasing him but still serious. Her entire face lit up, her eyes twinkled, and Jason forgot where he was for a moment. He stared after her in a daze even when she was no longer in sight.

  He came back to himself when he realized Henry was snickering. Yanno-ibbi just stared at him and slowly shook his head. "Trying to court an Areva aristocrat? Terrans truly do exceed Mo'hali in both bravery and stupidity. I'd rather try on a Hero ring."

  Jason ignored them both and dragged his carpet out the door. They could laugh all they wanted. That woman was amazing. And as for the noble part... she said she was in the military. That meant she couldn't be a noble, right? Either way, it probably didn't matter since they were both on Ludus, but Jason did idly wonder what he was getting himself into.

  Deep down, he knew he'd already made his decision, so the circumstances didn't really matter anymore. It just wasn't fair that he'd seen her naked before they'd even started-- what? Thinking about dating? They were, like, pre-pre-relationship? And people thought Terrans were crazy! He shook his head and kept dragging his pile of weapons outside.

  Metal vs Stone

  Henry sat on the ground outside, examining his new weapons. Jason was sitting on a bench on the other side of the Jaguar Clan house yard pretty much doing the same thing. He doubted his friend
was concentrating very hard, though; Jason had Uluula on the brain. Henry thanked God he didn't have any female distractions or girls with plans for him. Maybe he'd consider dating again after they did their first job and he could actually afford to get a house or ye olde apartment. It could definitely wait, though.

  These days, Henry liked blades much more than girls. He patted his scarred leg, lost in thought. Girls stabbed you in the back; blades didn't... at least not on their own. Henry realized his train of thought wasn't making a whole lot of sense, so he focused on the task at hand.

  He was holding a khopesh. From his HEMA history studies, Henry knew it was a sword of Egyptian design that was made of bronze on Earth before the Egyptians transitioned to better metals. The weapon itself was sort of like a cross between and axe and a sword. He'd chosen it because it was one of the more substantial swords in the Jaguar Clan armory and he liked the feel of it. The khopesh had weight and presence but wasn't awkward feeling to Henry like an axe would have been.

  Normally Henry wasn't a fan of bronze weapons in general. They were inferior to steel weapons in almost every way, one of the worst being edge retention. Ancient smiths on Earth and apparently modern smiths on Ludas hammered the edges of bronze weapons to increase strength and durability, but so far Henry had found that bronze weapons dulled fast and were hard to sharpen.

  Luckily for him, he had metal magic mojo.

  He ran a finger along the blade of the khopesh, giving the sword a razor sharp edge. Normally someone would have had to worry about rolling or chipping the blade of a sword if it was too sharp, but Henry could easily repair it so it wasn't a big deal.

  He put the sword down as he got an idea. If he could move around metal in blades, maybe he could shape metal more directly. He picked up a small knife and concentrated while he released a slow trickle of power. "Oh, hell yes!" he whispered. He could mold the bronze like clay. This could come in handy...

  Henry spent the next hour playing with his new ability. He eventually realized he could help guide the shape of whatever he was forming with his imagination. He still had to use his hands, and there was definitely skill involved, but by the time he was done with shaping a new dagger, it actually looked like someone had crafted it. He didn't ending up with shapeless blobs of material which was what his creations would have looked like if he'd been playing with clay back on Earth.

  He glanced over at Jason. His friend had put his weapons off to the side and was sitting in his familiar meditating pose. Henry still thought Jason's approach to learning magic was dumb, but it got undeniable results. Henry would always be more of a hands-on person.

  Speaking of which... he concentrated and... success! He changed the top of just his index finger into bronze. Then he focused, changing the metal to steel. The materials he had easy magic access to really did seem somehow linked to the metals around him. He still thought he could probably manifest metals that weren't nearby, but it'd take a lot more mojo. Maybe all he had.

  His big breakthrough came while he was picking up more materials to break apart and sculpt into bronze stick figures. As he picked up a handful of bronze spikes, one attached to the steel on his index finger. What the... When he dropped the rest of the spikes, the one stuck to his finger remained and was solidly attached. Well I'll be... With a thought, he made the spike fall from his finger.

  After a bit more experimentation, he realized he'd picked up the spike with the end of his finger when he was trying to grab as much material as he could, unwittingly using his magic to help. The fact he was able to join ferrous and nonferrous metals was interesting indeed. Even magnets couldn't do what he was doing. He thought about his arm spikes and got an idea.

  Henry turned the top of one forearm to steel, grabbed a bronze dagger, and tried to attach it. Success! It not only worked, it was easy to do and took almost no magic mojo either. He thought about ways he could use this new ability for over several minutes. Blades weren't all that useful; he could already make those when he needed to, and anything he wanted to attach to himself he'd have to carry. Sure, if he stayed pumped up on earth 'roids, he could carry all kinds of crap, but that took a lot of energy to maintain and wasn't very practical.

  He did have a possible solution for his magic earth-strength problems, but he wanted to try it later. Plus, even if he could carry lots of blades around to attach to himself, they'd be bulky and conspicuous.

  Then he remembered what Jason had said, how Henry needed ranged abilities. His friend was right. Henry had lots of power, but chucking rocks around was inefficient. More importantly, he couldn't hit shit. It was frustrating how he couldn't throw for beans but he was an expert marksman. If only he had guns... His eyes widened. No way, it couldn't be that simple.

  Henry got to work, his new theory rolling around his mind like a washing machine. What he wanted to try would definitely require some trial and error to get right if it even worked at all.

  What he eventually created was a handful of bronze balls made by rolling the metal between two palms, similar to what he'd done with mud as a child. He also made a bronze tube slightly shorter than his forearm with an inner diameter the same size as the bronze balls. The balls themselves were about the size of .50 caliber musket balls on Earth.

  He put a ball in the end of the tube and shook it around to make sure it wouldn't fall out. Then he attached the tube to his steel forearm with magic. Yes, by canting his arm a little bit, he could look right down the top of the tube as if he was sighting down a gun barrel. He felt it was time for a test fire.

  He slowly exerted power on the ball, increasing it in small increments. Nothing happened at first, but when the ball finally overcame the friction of the tube and accelerated, it traveled the entire length and shot out with a pop. Since he'd intentionally dialed down the power, the ball exited at about standard throwing speed, and Henry was able to get up and retrieve the ball.

  The friction in the tube was obviously slowing the ball down and making it harder to fire, but more importantly, his idea had worked! Henry began experimenting some more. It helped that he could keep reusing the same material over again. It took him longer to create larger items, but molding the metal wasn't really requiring much magic. It was a surprisingly efficient ability.

  Henry played around with a few basic variations to his idea. He concentrated on smoothing the "barrel" of the tube right past the point where the ball was retained. That seemed to help a lot with firing. He tried adding rifling to the inside of the tube, but that was a disaster. He didn't seem to have the control or refinement for it yet.

  For better aiming, he eventually created a platform of sorts, a wedge on the bottom of the tube that kept the barrel aligned straight with his eyes while he aimed. It added some weight, but he knew it would make the entire contraption far more accurate. He made a bunch of balls; Henry figured he could carry a lot of those. He created a total of four identical barrels to match the balls he'd produced.

  Reloading the barrel on his arm with a ball from his pocket was pretty fast. He could take a barrel off of his arm and replace it with another loaded barrel even faster. One barrel's weight on his arm he barely even noticed, but if he attached all 4, it started getting heavy and aiming became awkward. Overall, Henry was satisfied with the potential functionality and flexibility of the weapon system.

  However, he wanted to try a few more things before full-power practical testing. He made one large, special barrel--roughly three times the size of his standard barrels. This didn't take him too long since it was just a larger version of what he'd already made several copies of. Then he started experimenting with the ammo.

  The balls he created for the bigger barrel were massive and heavy. In fact, he thought they'd be seriously overkill for most of the monsters he'd seen so far. The thing was, he wanted to be prepared in case some big dragon motherfucker popped up out of nowhere. For overkill, a bigger version of his standard ammo was not enough.

  The smaller balls in his smaller tubes would prob
ably work fine out to at least 50 yards, but he wanted his larger projectiles to be more accurate than balls fired out of smooth bore barrels. Since Henry's tubes weren't rifled, he needed some way to stabilize the larger projectile.

  After pondering the problem for a while, he got his inspiration from tank-fired sabot rounds. He'd seen a video or two about them in the past and remembered they had fins. He also thought about how arrows worked, how an arrow's fletching imparted spin.

  What he came up with looked sort of like a miniature elongated football with a tail and fins. He canted the fins so passing air would make it spin and stabilize the thing. The projectile was huge and heavy, almost as long as its barrel. Its obvious drawback--if it worked--was that it was made of bronze, a relatively soft metal. What he really wanted to do was change it into steel but as soon as he stopped feeding magic into it, it'd start decaying. What if I can make it tougher and denser?

  Henry tried adding small bits of bronze to his finished projectile. First he stuck them to the outside of the object and concentrated to absorb them into the weapon. He focused most at the tip and fins for added penetration and durability. It definitely worked, but the damn thing just kept getting heavier. It was probably several times the weight of the largest rock he'd thrown during the fight with the demon wolves.

  Despite the weight, he thought it should be okay. All he'd tried accelerating before was rocks, but his actual magic school was Metal, not Earth. He had a feeling throwing bronze around was going to be a great deal easier than rocks.

  Henry had one more thing to do before he could call his project complete. First, he went back into the house and asked the first maid he saw for some spare cloth. While he was waiting for that, he constructed a retaining system for his barrels using bronze and leather. When he added the whole thing to his belt, each barrel snapped into place into the C retainers he'd created.

  Forward of the barrels as a small tube he fashioned with a bit larger diameter than his standard-size projectile balls. He made a small spring-loaded door for the bottom of the tube to keep the balls from falling out that could be opened to grab one at a time. The result was a convenient ammo tube he could operate with one hand. It held a total of ten balls.