“Actually, that reminds me. One sec!” I turned and leapt over the Mage’s limp corpse and ran over to stand beneath the questgiver sign. The tails I’d taken from the Cleric were still hanging from my belt, and I tossed them in the empty barrel by the wall.
Quest Completed!
Experience Gained (after being split amongst Crew members) = 500
I grabbed a Lesser Dagger of Moderate Value and went back to the ogre. “Sorry about that. Carry on.”
He took a deep breath, clearly thinking about smacking me but eventually continuing where he’d left off. “You are infuriating. As I was saying though, for years I gainfully employed the slowest, worst-tempered, most inefficient questgiver Hallow’s ever had. Did you know that you’re singlehandedly responsible for more than a quarter of the Heroes who started ‘Vermin Sermon’ abandoning it in frustration? That’s extraordinary, considering how easy it is to complete. Even better, the ones that quit couldn’t receive ‘Steel Yourself’ or ‘Westward, a Ho!’ or ‘Cow Level?’. Your orneriness sent ripples across the entire town. Like it or not, you’re already the best asset the resistance’s got.”
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t know if I believed him, but it didn’t matter. “Thanks for the memories, I guess.”
“You can thank her yourself. Let’s go. The Dregs will keep the arcade safe for a little, and the Silvertongue too. The thing you’ve begun doesn’t have brakes, and we don’t have much time.”
I was confused. “Is that a good thing?”
“It’s an inevitable thing. Did this ‘Bingo’ of yours tell you any part of the truth, yet?”
I scoffed at him. “Did you talk to him? I wouldn’t trust anything that came out of that burnt-out mouth. He’s been sucking coolant and living under the mountain for decades. What happened to the arcade games, anyway? All my high scores will be gone …”
“True, but the games themselves are fine. You and I were only sort of borrowing them, anyway. If you want to check on the Silvertongue before we go, now’s the time.”
“I suppose I should. Patch’ll kill me if something happens to him.”
The trapdoor to the wine cellar was in the back, and I hauled it up and climbed down the ladder. If Bingo was still legless when he woke up, it’d be hard to get him up this thing. I saw him propped up in the corner, sawing logs and surrounded by empty bottles.
“Bingo,” I said, just to see how close to consciousness he was. “I’m off to get some exposition. Stay here, okay?”
I put my hand out to shake him. If he woke up now, we could bring him. As soon as I touched his shoulder, a bolt of insight went up my injured arm and exploded behind my eyes.
Level 6 Engine’r
Vital Statistics
Cunning: 8/10
Ability Check Modifier: +2
Power - 8/10
Ability Check Modifier: +2
Friskiness - 3/10
Ability Check Modifier: -1
Tenacity - 8/10
Ability Check Modifier: +2
Allure - 1/10
Ability Check Modifier: -3
Poise - 3/10
Ability Check Modifier: -1
Hit Point Total: (Tenacity X 3) + 10 per level = 84
Current Hit Points: 78
Acquired Knacks
Accidental Alchemy: 25% chance that alchemical processes that should fail won’t and ones that should work don’t.
Cannibalize: 25% chance to remove an individual component from salvage intact. 25% chance that the consumption of humanoid flesh heals for 1d10.
Percussive Maintenance: 33% chance of temporarily fixing broken equipment through the judicial use of a bludgeoning attack. Every attempt after the first adds a cumulative 10% chance to break the object as opposed to repairing it.
Scrapper: +100% damage when a melee attack hits a vital organ, 100% chance to grade, class and categorize loot in your possession, as well as scavenge the resulting rewards.
Archetype-Specific Features
Brute Force: +1d4 damage to melee attacks, Salvaging material is 20% faster.
Go Ballistic: 35% chance to use a Bug as a Coping Mechanism when under stress. Ammunition crafted 35% faster.
Piss Up: Once per day, the Engine’r can use their urine as fuel. Requires the Drink! Bug.
Redline: Reach Berserker Rage 20% faster. Ignore the first 20 seconds of engine damage if it’s a result of overuse.
Sabotage: 10% chance to destroy technology whilst concealing the destruction until the object is called into use.
Swagger: When crewing a vehicle, forward speed may be increased for 20 seconds at the cost of an inability to reverse for 20 seconds.
Universal Solve-n’t: A thousand and one uses. Drink it, rub it in your wounds, style your hair with it, use it as a deodorizer, a mouthwash, a fire starter, bug repellent, etc. 15% chance that ANYTHING can be fixed by the application of a liberal enough dose of the hard stuff. Each application takes 10 seconds. Subsequent applications within a 24-hour period require a more expensive brand of liquor and take twice as long.
Vices
Drink!
Mysterious Origin
Traumatic Past
Illgott’s big head filled the space at the top of the ladder. “Yes, he’s a Hero too. Surprise. Now leave him alone and let’s go. I’d rather the boss doesn’t have to wait any longer than she already has.”
“Okay. Hey, the person you’re taking me to meet isn’t Patch, is it? I don’t think I’m ready for that sort of reveal.”
“No,” he said, laughing. “But that would be funny.”
Chapter 21
Illgott refused to answer anything I asked along the way, and eventually even my own sense of self-preservation shut me up. The streets weren’t safe, and he’d already bailed me out once. The least I could do was not bring a squad of VC down on our heads with my blabbing.
We probably weren’t going very far anyway, since Hallow wasn’t that big. Despite the brevity of the trip, we still saw the mangled bodies of Vigilance Committee members on three different occasions.
The smoke was thick in the air, and the sounds of individual skirmishes echoed back at us from once docile alleys and laneways.
Our clandestine trip ended two blocks south, in the oldest part of the city. Even though the sun had risen, there were deep shadows here that never went away.
The magic of the streetlamps was spotty in this part of town, with entire stretches where none of them had been brave enough to grow. People’d been calling this neighborhood ‘Welldark’ for as long as I had been alive as a way of getting around the use of the most-censored word of all.
Darkwell.
This had been the heart of what Hallow had replaced, and Illgott led me to a house so old and badly constructed that the entirety of it was surrounded by wooden props. Without their assistance, it would’ve fallen over long ago.
I knew this place. I’d scaled those supports and fallen through that thatched roof more than once.
My nostalgia made me almost miss a shape in one of the lower windows. It vanished as soon as I realized it was a face, and a moment later the front door swung open on well-oiled hinges.
“Hurry,” Illgott whispered, prodding me with the bugout bag he’d been carrying. “Lingering in the street’s liable to get us killed.”
I stepped through the doorway. The hovel was dark and dingy, but it was worlds above and entire rungs of the social ladder higher than anything I’d been able to achieve since I’d left it behind. Even if I hadn’t thrown my wages away at the arcade, no amount of scrimping and saving would’ve afforded me this level of luxury.
My digs in ‘Neath were made up of little more than a tarp stretched across three unstable walls, and even that I only rented.
“Look Mother, if this is about the unicorns, they were like that when I found them.”
I looked around for Illgott, hoping that he’d be willing to fib a little and back me up. All I got from him was a look that said ‘you’r
e on your own’ as he headed into the back room. As usual, the ogre knew when the heat was coming and how to make himself scarce before it did.
There was a hint of movement in the overstuffed chair across the room. I stared hard, only just making out a silhouette that was the proper size and shape, small even for a Gearblin and broomstick thin.
Mother Mayeye’s voice was as desiccated and comforting as a Butterfinger that’d fallen behind the cushions. “How would you like the woman that raised you to react to your recent labors?”
“With pride?”
“Anything else?”
“I’d like to lock my answer in. Pride.”
She chuckled dryly and pushed herself to her feet. “Hero or not, you haven’t changed a bit, Raze.” Her hands quivered more than I remembered, and I could hear her lungs working hard, like tired, leaking bellows. “I’ve missed you. Come here and give me a hug, you rascal.”
I thought I was too grown up for that.
It turns out I wasn’t.
Despite her age, Mother’s bearhug embrace still knocked the air out of me. I felt like I was back to being the little Gearblin she’d salvaged from the streets and carefully reared. By the time I let go of her I was crying, though I blamed it on my weepy black eyes.
I swallowed hard, wiping at my face. “You already know about the Hero thing, huh?”
“Let’s get some food into you and have a chat, shall we?” Mother Mayeye said, her tread light on the floorboards as her joints ground and popped.
I was starving, and I eagerly followed along in her wake. As soon as we were in the kitchen I was surrounded by aromas and fragrances that reminded me of times when I wasn’t tall enough to reach the top of the counter and yet had still managed to get my hands burnt.
“Careful, now,” she said, nodding toward where fires burned and cauldrons bubbled.
“You remember that?”
“I remember everything, Raze. It’s one of my Knacks, but it’s a jumble-headed curse when you’re as old as I am. Let’s hope it dies with me.”
“Can that happen? I’d always thought they simply got recycled.”
“There used to be a lot of us, and we all had Knacks. At the very least, maybe this one will sit on the shelf a while when I’m through with it.”
My mouth was watering as the savory dance of fillet of snake, eye of newt, and toe of frog swirled everywhere.
Mother dropped bat wool into the stew and stirred it a few times before perching on a stool by the window. “Sit down,” she told me, patting the empty one beside her. “You’re much taller than you used to be, and you’ll be even more of a pain in my neck than usual if I have to look up at you the whole time.”
I did as she asked and flashed her a reassuring grin when she glanced over at me. “Whatever you say, Mother.”
“Don’t you dare humor me,” she said, though there wasn’t any venom in the words. “The frame the God’s gave you is no excuse for being a small person inside. Now, about this Hero stuff. Of course I know about it. I’d be damnable worthless too you if I didn’t. My money was always on Patch starting the ball rolling again, and I don’t mind being right about her.”
“She is something else. A bit annoying, though…”
Mother shrugged. “What do you expect? She was a dreamer long before her dreams began, head in the clouds and heart on her sleeve. We were lucky when her people finally agreed to let her come to Darkwell.”
The old word for the place had always pissed me off. The Dregs needed to move on, and clinging to that sort of thing made us weak. “Darkwell’s dead and gone, Mother.”
“We thought that about the mountain, but now you’ve convinced the doors to open.”
“That was Patch too, technically. She’s still in there. We found an AI who’s borderline willing to help. The two of them are hopefully fixing things up as we speak.”
That didn’t look like it surprised Mother at all. “The mountain was the Rule of Cool’s base of operations. It kept the people you insist on calling Dregs safe, and your promises of its return have sparked a rebellion. The old guard are too few, and if we hide for much longer we’d all waste away. They know that our only chance lies in embracing what you’ve begun.”
She cleared her throat. “‘Thus returns the Rule of Cool’. Someone tagged the temple wall with that, and I’m told that there is a street currently screaming something similar. Your handiwork?”
“None other.”
She nodded to herself. “And the unicorns, of course.”
I’d been watching her closely, hoping for even the smallest sign of approval. That’s how I caught the glimmer in her eyes as the ghost of a smile drifted across her face. “Sorry?”
“Don’t be. That last one was my favorite.”
I was about to brag about my exploits when a roar of flames interrupted me by tossing new light, shadows and noise around a couple of blocks over. “Molotov,” I said wistfully under my breath.
“Effective,” she said. “For now.” She smoothed her coarse spun dress on her spindly legs. “Would you like some advice that a little Gearblin once gave me?”
“Probably not.”
“Well, you’re getting it anyway.” She reached over and patted me on the knee. “Hang in there.”
I expected her wisdom to amount to a lot more than that, but when she fell silent and looked at me expectantly I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at her. “Seriously?”
Mother Mayeye reached up to open a cabinet above her head so fast that I flinched, since she’d never been shy about batting one of her charges about the ears when it was required.
Instead, she tapped her finger against the inside of the cabinet door. Taped to the wood was a faded poster with an orange kitten desperately clutching a tree branch. “Do you remember giving me this for Father’s Day? You scoured the meme farms for weeks, and looked between the cushions for coins so often I started to leave a few there for you to find. I’ll deny it if you tell the rest of my brood, but this poster is one of my most prized possessions.”
I did remember. I’d been far too young to be out beneath the Rift, which had meant that bigger Dregs had routinely chased me off or beat me up for the high crime of not backing down when I entered their territory.
There was one detail that’d gotten misplaced in the intervening years, though. “Why Father’s Day? Was I really that dumb?”
She laughed. “No, dearie. All of you call me ‘Mother’, but you said that I was a father to you too, so you didn’t want me to feel left out. You spoke about pride earlier. I felt it that day.”
“I was a useless kid.”
She whacked the wooden spoon across the back of my hand and scowled. “Of course you were! All kids are useless. That’s their job, same as it’s my job to give you time to be useless. The world has enough tasks and errands and quests to fill the rest of your days. Children don’t need that sort of pressure.”
I swallowed hard. “I’m still useless.”
“If it makes you feel better, I use you as a bad example every day. My littles idolize you, so my stories of your misspent youth and wild ways captivate them.”
I squinted at her, but instead of being offended I could only admire her for not missing a trick. She was practical as opposed to needlessly cruel. “You should take the littles down to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint and wait for all of this to bl-”
“Hush your mouth. Sanguine has Konami Rock, same as her predecessors did. That little piece of magic bought them the last Smash, though the rock had different branding on it. The Winchester’s not as safe as you think, and we’ve got a town’s worth of littles and olds and gentles to protect.” She sniffed the broth and glanced at me out of the side of her eye.
“So,” I said, trying to build the analogy, “Bingo’s Willy Wonka, the mountain is the Chocolate Factory and…” I paused. “And Patch is my golden ticket?”
Mother smiled wistfully to herself. “Roald Dahl. You always were a scholar of the c
lassics!”
I blushed fiercely. It was hard to tell if she was poking fun at me or not, but I defended myself anyway. “It was a good book!”
“No,” she said. “It was a fantastic book, and so was the movie. It’s too bad they talked that Depp creature into mucking about in a second one.”
I sat there in silence, remembering all of the times she and I’d sat on the couch and eaten stolen popcorn as we watched old movies. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t trade to get back to that and forget all of this new stuff.
The ground beneath us shifted, and everything lurched a couple of inches to the right. It wasn’t enough to knock me from my seat, and Mother caught herself before she fell.
“That can’t be good,” I said.
Mother let out the low whistle that’d inspired me to spend four months teaching myself to do the same thing, way back when. “Still a master of the understatement, I see. Sanguine’s no fool. Now that both sides know the Rule of Cool’s back in play, she’s set them digging.”
“Who?”
“All of the prisoners she’s been stockpiling.”
I frowned. I hadn’t given much thought to trying to defend the mountain at all, and the news that the Heroes had a tunneling operation underway already was a knife-twist in the side.
As literally earthshattering as the news was, something else caught my attention. “You keep saying ‘the’ Rule of Cool, but the AI in the mountain just calls it ‘Rule of Cool’. Why?”
“Because they named their corporation after the Gearblin Knack.”
“What’s it do?”
“It lets anything we build have a chance of functioning. Anything. The more insane, bizarre and absurd the better. If we can be convinced to pour our obsessive attention to detail into a contraption, not even the sky’s the limit.”
Here comes the important question… “How do I find it?”
Know Your Roll Page 20
