Gnomish Drop Bear. Contraption.
This is one of the Dirigible Gnome’s earliest fast-attack planes. There are only a handful of these still in service. While able to quickly reach most targets when drop-launched from home base, the twin engines of these early models were famously underpowered. Damaged Drop Bears oftentimes had difficulty obtaining enough altitude to reach home, even after ditching their payload. This is why most of these planes carry rapid-deploying, quick-escape balloons, making them sitting targets for enemy aircraft and flak.
That information is not going to do you any good when you’re sitting there on the ground watching this thing barrel at you like a robin descending upon a glistening, fat worm.
Don’t worry, these guys don’t drop bombs. Their standard payload is something much more entertaining.
The twin objects hanging under the plane sure as hell looked like bombs, but my explosives handling skill didn’t activate. That did not make me feel better.
The plane leveled out about thirty feet off the ground, lining up for a bomb run. We only had seconds.
“Fuck,” I said, seeing how perfectly the plane was lined up with our position. They could either sense us through the smoke, or they’d guessed we’d backtrack. I pointed at the ridge to the right of us, back where we’d encountered the Thorny Devil, now a good 300 feet away. “Donut.”
“That’s a little too close, Carl.”
“Do it,” I said. “We’ll jump behind the hill after. Katia. Make a shield.”
“On it,” she said, already starting to change shape. She formed into a half-shell, something she’d been working on. She faced herself 90 degrees away from the plane. I pulled a fused hob-lobber and prepared to light it. I also turned to the left.
The plane’s twin, rotary engines sounded like chainsaws cutting through metal, all grinding gears and pistons. They could clearly see our position, despite the smoke. We’d discussed this possibility of being attacked by a plane and had a contingency, but we hadn’t planned on the smoke bombs not working. That was going to be a problem. If we fucked this up, we wouldn’t have an escape.
“It’s cast,” Donut said. “Three, two, one.”
Thwum.
We teleported away just before the plane dropped one of its two objects right on top of us. We appeared atop the small hill. I lit and tossed the hob-lobber, trying to lead the plane best I could.
The dropped object clanged loudly into the ground and bounced once. Nothing else happened.
The full-strength hob-lobber detonated in mid-air, much too low and behind the fast-moving airplane, though it was enough to knock me and Donut back. It sounded like I’d blasted a shotgun right by my ear. Katia didn’t budge. The biplane shuddered in the air. The engine whined even louder, and smoke started to trail from one of the two engines. The drop bear banked away and started to climb. It was fleeing the fight.
Jesus, I thought, pulling myself up. My bombs were getting stronger.
“Carl, that hurt Mongo’s ears,” Donut said. Mongo croaked in agreement.
“Did you hit it?” Katia asked as she watched the plane go.
“I don’t think so,” I said, brushing myself off. I kept my eyes on the spot where the object had landed. The metallic egg was the size of a garbage can. Nothing was happening. Nothing moved.
“Look, it’s turning into a balloon,” Katia said, still watching the plane. “They just dropped the second bomb way over there. It didn’t go off either.”
“Their engine went out. They’re deploying their escape balloon,” I said.
“Donut,” I said after a few more seconds of nothing happening. “Do me a favor and create some more clockwork Mongos and send them over to that bomb thing.”
She complied. A moment later, the two Mongos ranged forward, coming up to the dented bomb as we backed away, putting even more distance between us. The metallic egg sat on its side. There was a clear line through it, like it was one of those eggs they used to store candy at Easter. If it was supposed to pop open, it hadn’t. The two clockwork dinosaurs banged on the side of the object while we continued to flee even further. After a minute of this, nothing still happened. They continued to jump and attack at it.
The duplicates only lasted ten minutes. After eight minutes passed, there was still no indication that the egg actually did anything.
“Wait,” Katia said a moment later. She’d returned to her she-hulk form, but she kept the crossbow out. “I see something on the map now. I think they cracked it.” She let out a stream of breath. “It’s a dead boss. I think there’s a neighborhood map there.”
I felt relief. I was expecting something awful, like acid gas or a swarm of bees or a magical blast. “Okay, let’s go check it out.”
We returned to the spot, keeping a wary eye on the distant location of the second bomb. The two mongos stood proudly over the egg, which had popped upon. They timed out and exploded as we approached.
A single corpse lay dead inside of the egg. It looked like it had been run over by a truck.
It was a goose. A Canada Goose with the distinctive brown body and black head with the white stripe.
Lootable Corpse. Feral Goose. Level 45 Neighborhood Boss. Killed by getting splattered against the ground.
You are goddamn lucky this thing is dead.
I kicked at the egg, which was labeled as an Altitude-Based Deployment Device – This Item is Broken. “The egg thing didn’t work. Look how rusty it is. It didn’t open, and it killed it.”
“I think you’re right,” Katia said, looking over her shoulder at the distant hills. “I’m pretty sure the other one didn’t open either. It bounced a few times.”
Carl: Hey, Mordecai. Do you know what a feral goose is?
Mordecai: Not specifically, but anything with feral in the name is usually bad news.
I reached down and looted the neighborhood map. Several red dots appeared in the area. They were all Thorny Devils. None were moving in our direction. I didn’t see the other boss, living or dead.
I couldn’t help but feel as if we were on rails. There was a storyline here, and we were being forced along the path of the narrative. Them dropping a boss on us, only for the boss to be dead didn’t seem so much an accident as a clue. We were being forced along a scripted path. I did not like that one bit. We needed to break away as quickly as possible.
“Yeah, let’s leave that other egg alone,” I said. “No use tempting fate.” I picked up the corpse of the dead goose and stuck it in my inventory.
“That’s really gross, Carl,” Donut said.
I now had a tab in my inventory called Mob Morgue. The monsters’ bodies were all worthless, but one never knew when something might be useful.
Even though the egg was broken, the mechanism that popped it open looked interesting. There was a dial apparatus that I wanted to look at. I tried picking up the entire shell, and while it had some heft to it, I lifted it easily. I pulled the whole thing into my inventory.
“Okay, let’s keep moving,” I said.
Donut was looking up at the sky. “There are more airplanes up there all of a sudden. I think we made them mad.”
“Oh, hell. We need to get our hands on some of those camel rocket launchers,” I said.
“I count eight of them,” Katia said, shading her eyes. “They’re being more cautious than the last one.”
These were different planes than the last. This was an eclectic mix of vehicles, though they were too far up there to examine properly. They were circling down, almost casually, like a flock of birds. At this rate it’d take them several minutes to get here. We would never get to the Bactrian town now. We had to run.
“Change of plans. Back to Hump Town,” I said. “Go, go.”
Donut and Mongo took off, heading back to the city as we followed and started to run.
I looked up over my shoulder as we ran. I caught sight of the drop bear, which was continuing to rise into the sky. A separate airship deployed from the Wasteland, o
n its way to intercept.
“Katia, you still have those engine parts in your inventory? From that interdiction cart we disassembled on the last floor?”
“I do,” she said, huffing as we ran. We’d taken apart one of the smaller rail carts from the previous floor. I had most of the cart’s body in my inventory. Katia had taken the mechanical parts. Her Earth Hobby potion gave her an enormous wealth of knowledge regarding engines.
“Good,” I said. “We need to build ourselves a dune buggy. And fast. We don’t have time for this shit. They’re making it so we can’t get to the other town while the weather is good. They want us out here while it’s super-hot, dark, or during the storm. I don’t want to do any of those.”
The walls of Hump Town loomed. The swooping airships stopped their descent, though they kept a holding pattern a thousand feet up.
“We’ll need defenses,” I added. “You work on the engine, and I’ll come up with an anti-aircraft system.”
4
It didn’t take long to build the rickety, compartmental vehicle. Thanks to the engineering and metalworking benches, I could fabricate anything I needed in minutes. The second-level engineering table was great for complicated designs that required multiple objects put together, like the front suspension system and drive shaft. The level two metalworking table allowed me to view the tensile strength and load limits, and the interface had more shaping options. Mordecai said once we got that table up to level three, we would be able to melt down some of the less valuable items we came across and reforge them into stronger, more dense alloys, which would allow me to make precise explosive spheres instead of relying on expensive hob-lobbers.
Katia and I worked on the first part of the design while Donut and Mordecai went shopping. But before they left, Donut took one look at the vehicle-in-progress and said, “I’ve decided to name it the Royal Chariot.” She flipped her tail and exited the room astride Mongo, following Mordecai.
“What the hell, man,” I said as the tooltip popped up over the unfinished vehicle. It didn’t yet have a description, but the system suddenly labeled it The Royal Chariot - Contraption.
The “chariot” was nothing more than a glorified, oversized ATV with an optional wagon. With the back cart attached, the contraption reminded me of the MOAB design we had fashioned to fight the rage elemental, but big enough to carry all of us. The most difficult part of the chariot was the tire design. We had some random rubber that I could shape into tires at the engineering table using my tools, but not nearly enough for four. I also had several black discs the goblins used for wheels on their copper choppers, but they had no real tread on them and weren’t very wide. We had to be able to traverse the sand dunes and deal with the hills. We really needed actual, bouncy tires. Mordecai could make the materials at his alchemy table, but it would take time. Time we didn’t have.
So instead, our first attempt was with metal tires. I made them as lightweight as possible, but after some experimentation, we realized they simply weren’t feasible. They were still too heavy, making the suspension system useless. The single-gear, magical train cart engine was pretty darn powerful, but I soon realized the design would still end up with us bogged helplessly down in the sand, even if we tried to avoid the bigger dunes. The whole purpose of this was to have something to travel around the bowl as quickly and efficiently as possible.
We solved this by using the engineering table to fashion a wide, treadmill track, like on the back of a snowmobile. The dromedarians used something similar. They had several tracked carts zipping around town. We still utilized two, steerable wheels in the front, which I was able to make out of rubber. The belt mechanism required multiple, toothed wheels of specific sizes, plus the tracks themselves. We’d eventually coat the treads with rubber, too, if this worked. Katia sketched it all out as we stood side-by-side at the engineering table. It only took about two hours to put together a working vehicle once we had the design. It was crude, and it was still heavier than I wanted. Plus I worried about the vehicle’s ability to handle deep sand.
But the goddamned thing worked.
The whole contraption without the cart was pretty small, maybe about twice the size of the long-lost copper chopper. The vehicle sat low and was just wide and strong enough for hulk-version Katia to sit up front with me right behind her in a second seat, raised. She looked a little ridiculous astride the thing, like an adult sitting on a kid’s sized ATV.
We most definitely could have made it larger and safer, but this design allowed me to lift it and stick it into my inventory. Sort of. We had to break it apart into two pieces. But we successfully built a vehicle that was both portable and big enough to handle the three of us. Katia wouldn’t be able to hold as much mass as I liked, but this thing was mostly built for speed. It was not a tank. It wasn’t for protection.
For now.
Katia and I discussed using the chariot’s body as a chassis for a much-larger, more flexible vehicle. One where she was the vehicle’s body. But she wasn’t fully onboard with the idea. Not yet. Plus, I made the mistake of suggesting we start calling her “Katia Prime,” and she didn’t find it nearly as amusing as I did.
After another half-hour tweaking the design of the chariot, we were ready for a quick field test.
“If we weren’t worried about storing it, I think two treads and no wheels at all might work better,” Katia said, admiring our work.
I grunted in agreement. “You’re not wrong. But we’re already going overboard here, and we’ve already wasted too much time. Anyway, you’re really good at this. I think you missed your calling.”
She waved at the track mechanism underneath the vehicle. “This is all thanks to that earth hobby potion,” she said. “Like I was sitting here, wondering how the heck we were going to put this thing together, and suddenly it was there. Do you think the aliens, you know, the ones not in the dungeon, can just teach themselves stuff like this on demand? Like in that Matrix movie? Like one guy out there can just take a few potions, and he’s suddenly a super genius in kung fu and piloting helicopters?”
“I don’t see why not,” I said. I bent down and unfastened two bolts. I strained, picking up the back half of the chariot. It disappeared into my inventory. “We don’t really know enough about the outside universe.”
“That seems like it would have such a huge impact on society. If anybody can be an expert in anything, what does that even mean? It doesn’t make sense to me how there’s such… I don’t know, cruelty.”
“It’s probably crazy expensive,” I said, moving to the front half of the Chariot. I pulled it into my inventory. “So only the ultra-rich can use it. Maybe it’s like plastic surgery. Only some people can afford it, and there are probably limits. Like if you do it too much, bad stuff happens.”
“Maybe,” she said. “I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s so… odd. I know how these engines and all the related mechanical parts work, but the knowledge is unnatural. I’m not sure how to explain it. It’s like I know it, but I don’t know, know it. Like maybe it’s getting downloaded into my brain on demand. Like I’m tapped directly into Wikipedia.”
“That is weird. My cesta punta skill translates pretty well into action, but it’s mostly muscle stuff. So maybe it’s different. We still don’t know what Donut’s earth hobby skill is. It’s something really strange. Scutelliphily. I’ve asked a hundred people, and nobody knows what the hell it is.”
We headed outside, passing multiple dromedarians as we exited the city. Mordecai and Donut were nearby, and they said they’d be done “negotiating” in a bit. We didn’t want to go far, so we set up the cart just outside the gate.
It took us about five minutes to assemble the vehicle, which was much too long. We’d have to work on it.
We stepped back and admired our work. A new description popped up.
Tracked All-Terrain Suicide Machine. The Royal Chariot – Contraption.
If a snowmobile got drunk on moonshine and had a sweaty, ill-
advised night with a hillbilly’s coon-hunting ATV, this oversized birth defect of a vehicle would be the result. Quickly traverses through both sand and snow. Don’t worry about the lack of roll cage or the grossly-misplaced center of gravity, or the fact this thing will do an impressive impersonation of a catapult the moment it hits a rock. The most important part is that it looks kind of badass.
“Whoa,” Katia said. “I just got an achievement for inventing something. That description is kind of worrying.”
“The system naming it means they think the design has at least some merit.”
I was making that up, but it sounded good. All I really wanted to do was get from point A to B quickly. I looked at the machine dubiously. “Let’s see how much of a deathtrap this really is.”
The dunes closer to the wall of the bowl were much more steep and were perfect for testing. The dromedarian waster patrol kept the town’s outskirts mob free, and the air was clear. I ran up the closest hill just to make sure I wouldn’t sink through like with snow.
I stood at the top and waved. Katia started the vehicle and moved, slowly easing the chariot up the dune. It quickly and quietly ascended. The engine was completely silent. Only the tracks themselves made any noise. You couldn’t even tell the thing was running until she eased the throttle forward. She pulled it next to me.
“It works,” she said. “I can tell it’ll go pretty fast. We have to be careful with turns. I’m worried about rolling it. Maybe we should build a cage.”
The cart’s passage kicked up a huge plume of dust even though she’d only driven it about a hundred feet. I looked nervously up into the air. The Wasteland was near the edge of the bowl’s lip on the opposite side. Mordecai and Donut had just spent some time talking with the locals, and they learned that the gnome fortress kept to a pretty specific schedule. It was usually directly over the bowl except during the daily sand storm, when it moved to the edge of the bubble, parking itself over the water. After the storms were done, it’d spend the next few hours moving back into position. By the time the two-hour “night” was over, the fortress would be back in place several thousand feet over the center of the bowl.
The Gate of the Feral Gods Page 6
