Part 2: Too idealistic to be at peace.
Interlude: Beneath the weight of doubt.
My recovery took time. About a year and a moon, to be precise. Time enough for me to realize that I had nearly forgotten how to put pen to paper. Normally, I would be scouting locations to set up camp around sunset.
Instead, I sat. Alone. In a rather plush, and tastefully decorated room, staring at an empty piece of drafting paper.
Hard as I tried, I could not will my hand to scrawl the equation for calculating the necessary tensile strength for a series of support struts.
My mind raced, and strained, and eventually gave up. Had I so fully become a murderous vagabond? I found myself looking again and again at my arms and armor. Still in a state of ruin and discord. I would have been appalled at such a sight. I should still harbor disgust, looking upon it. Upon my negligence. But there was nothing. Not even despair at the very portrait of how far I had fallen.
"Perhaps if I set my hands to something more tangible", I thought. "Perhaps that would clear my mind." I took what materials I had. That blackened meteoric iron that had saved my life over and over. My traveling coat, that I had worked, sweat, and bled through enough for many lifetimes. My ruined axe. I packed them as well as I could, and half-drug the lot of it to the forge.
There were no familiar faces there, save the owners. We had never spoken much, and I don't believe they knew who I was. I was unlikely to be able to answer if they deigned to ask. All the same, I stripped the metal available to me of it's fittings. There was not enough here to simply mend my armor. Not enough in my pockets to buy what I needed to re-forge it. Not enough time to go chasing shooting stars, or hunting for pieces of Dalamud. Ah, but what armor that might make. The very material that caged a being capable of ruining a world.
I began smelting the metal none the less. Working the billows was comforting in it's tiring repetition. In, count two, then out. Repeat ten times. Then reduce to count one. Repeat as deemed necessary. If no one's told you yet, meteor iron is incredibly hard to work with. It contains a great deal of nickel, which resists forming. This is a metal that takes patience, and a kind of obsession with perfection in circumstance and shaping that is almost entirely unheard of within the ranks of these workmen.
Funny. I could easily recall my metallurgy, but I couldn't find the numbers. But still, I had a task that I could accomplish before me. As the lumps turned to liquid, what I might do with it took shape in my mind. I scrounged about, one hand still working the billows, for my traveling coat. Poor, dull thing. Never designed for the things I put it through. No, it was more for parades. For speeches. For regimented marching drills. But it had proven that it could be more than what it was meant for. The apathetic numbness of before had finally yielded to something.
Pain.
Misplaced, but real none the less. It had proven it could be something other than what it was made for, but it was something far worse. Far uglier. It wasn't until I felt a cold wind that I noticed I'd been lost with this thought long enough for the fire to die down. As quickly as I could, it built it back up, checking and re-checking my precious bit of workable metal to be sure I hadn't already ruined it. Nickel attracts sulfur, you know. Spoils the whole thing, makes it brittle.
By now, it was time to add the steel. It would have to have a high carbon content. Something preferably 1.5% by weight. I left the billows in the care of a bored workman, and handed him a fistful of gil for his trouble. My questioning lead me nowhere, and so I resolved to simply make some myself. Iron was in high supply, as were lumps of coal, and dark matter. No one would notice a few ingots and lumps missing here or there. And so I returned to the smeltery, and began the process of creating high-carbon steel. The reasoning for this, of course, is to add hardness to the thing you're making. Otherwise, meteor iron, even the high quality sort, doesn't hold shape, much less an edge.
For my purposes, I would go lightly with it's addition. Too much, and it would become impossible to shape. Too little, and the meteor iron would stick to it's tendency to fracture. Well into the night, I worked my metal. Plotting my application. I would have just enough to form a series of small, rectangular plates. Plates to lay upon my old coat, and fix to it's surface. It would not simply languish, broken and battered. I refused to pack it away, and never look on it again. It would not be discarded. I would make it into something not entirely divorced from what it was, but infinitely more fit for what it could be.
I would need rivets, rear plates that I could fashion from steel, a few yards of leather, and padding. Now, I had reached a fever pitch. A possessed man's pace. With the glow of my fire serving as my only light, I flit from station to station, taking what I could get my ash-blackened fingers on. I would answer for these missing materials later, if ever. Carefully, I poured the metal into the forms. Four ilms by two ilms. With a borrowed doming hammer, I made use of my years of combat. Each swing brought me to a time when I could barely shape copper. When a boy's hands trembled with fatigue after making his first bronze pipe. When those same hands clasped over a nearly lost eye after snapping his first piece of wrought iron.
This metal that, in my first attempt to shape, gave me no quarter and endless frustration now bent to me as if it were clay.
The fires of excitement, of...not anger, but a kind of gripping, furious exhilaration had all but burnt away the pity and pain. As I set the plates to cool, I realized I still had iron. And carbon. With a touch of chromium for the weather, I gave my garment back the sleeves I had torn from it in the shape of manica. Thicker than would be advised, but flexible enough to allow a range of movement that was indistinguishable from full to me.
The sun rose as the meteor iron plates were finally cool enough to touch. I set them carefully, domed outward to fit more comfortably around my chest and waist. I fixed them with rivets to their rear plating. I lined my coat with leather and linen padding. It was a heavy thing, to be certain. And the fittings for my manica needed to be adjusted several times before I was content.
But I was content.
As I moved, testing the fit of my creation, I tried to think on what had driven me to make it at all. My contribution to reconstruction...
And here I had spent an entire night doing this, rather than simply penning out:
Tensile Strength =F/A (N/mm2), and asking for a survey of the ground this was to be built upon.
Chapter 1: Play with matches (if you think you need to play with matches).
Were the reconstruction efforts worth recording day by day, this log would span the seas, end to end. Happily, most days were uneventful. We would wake early, refine resources, submit plans and suggestions, so on and so forth.
Things like decentralization of standing structures were common foci of the various discussions. So common, in fact, that I felt little need to add my voice. I kept myself busy in the off-hours by volunteering my time to the forge and shipyards. An agreed upon method for me to pay my debt to the Lominsan people, after injuring members of the Maelstrom, and stealing materials.
Unfortunately, not much of the local social climate had changed. So long as no one was looking, and you were certain you would be able to get away with whatever you were doing, not much was considered to be taboo. These were not the first drunken brawls, stabbings or robberies I had witnessed, but given the state of the city two years into it's recovery, these habits just seemed...inappropriate.
Now, I had never harbored any contempt for the law, nor did I have any particular need to rail against it. Such notions are carried by stupid young men and women who have been dealt a sour hand, or by equally stunted older individuals who believe that their time spent in this world exempts them from following it's rules. However, one does tend to adapt to, and eventually accept an environment when fully immersed.
As a point of fact: I firmly believe that there was no crew more fully immersed in the Lominsan "culture" than the Misericorde. We lied, we cheated, we stole. On occasion? We killed. All with the blessings of the Thalassocracy, provided we exclusively targeted other crews that were inconvenient to them.
None the less, I found myself chafed, having to witness these events occur time and again as I made my way back to my quarters. More often than not at the hands of the Bloody Executioners, with whom I had sailed for a short time, and the League of Lost Bastards. But I had never been the heroic sort. Instead of taking any real action, I busied myself with another project. My axe was truly ruined, and so would be scrapped and salvaged to reforge my sword.
This was a project that I had embarked upon shortly after my travels began. I bore witness to a great many feats performed by the wandering swordsmen that used to dot the landscape, cutting down rabbits and beetles with weapons that burned and crackled with their channeled Aetheric might. Being entirely magically inept, I could never hope to reproduce those dazzling displays on my own, and so I had hoped to match them with technology.
The initial attempts were bulky and inefficient. Modified Garlean magitek harnesses, and I'll admit that I had little idea as to how their power sources worked. The whole of the machine I'd lashed to myself was used to power the functions of the blade. A blade which was prone to breaking and malfunctioning, and burning my hand.
Pulling the weapon apart, I found myself confused by my past attempts. I had used iron wiring, rather than copper. More than likely due to the cost of materials.
Perhaps due to the oxidization and corrosion that copper tends to exhibit when exposed to less-than-ideal environments. This was the first thing I would have to fix. A silver alloy would solve the oxidizing issue. It would cost a touch more, but I was not above melting down a few coins. I wouldn't need much, after all.
The rest of the materials were easy to repurpose. The focussing arrays that would sit along the guard were still the best I would be able to do without considerable time for further research and development. Re-wiring was simple enough. The blade itself was easy to form, though I did lament the loss of a great deal of the metal from my axe. Simply no good to reforge. There is, contrary to popular belief, such a thing as "too pure" when it comes to metal.
I tossed my weapon and it's reinforced housing panels in the cooling pool while I set to work on a prototype defensive system I had been meaning to test. Nothing that would be terribly pretty. A few emitters crudely fixed to the outside of a scutum that had been tossed in the scrap pile, exposed wiring leading from the bundle I'd spooled around the shield's grips so that my harness, trimmed down as it was, could make contact and power them. In theory, they should have produced an aetheric eddy that would catch, redirect, and potentially neutralize incoming kinetic forces. Extend the life of the shields used, and provide some kind of easily accessible defense against the arcane for your average soldier or guard.
With that assembled, my blade cooled and at the very least, slightly improved upon, I wrapped, sheathed, hung, and otherwise obscured my personal projects. I suppose the fear of being branded a traitor to the land had never truly left me. I decided to detour down to the lower levels of the city, across the nearly complete bridges, minding the gaps of course. There was just enough coin left for a about a fortnight's worth of food from the Bismarck.
I hadn't left the islands, but I had managed to find a crowd, and fade into it. Of course, it helped that there wasn't someone parading about, playing songs, and telling stories of how I was a ten-fulm tall immortal made of Darksteel. On the other hand, it did bring a kind of excitement to life than this more average existence I had chosen provided. Watching Mr. Allard attempt to subdue fifteen members of the Kraken Arms at once was always a thrill. Being called upon to "negotiate" cessations of hostilities as my crew's Captain was also a highlight I found myself missing.
As I waited in line, wondering once more if the choices I had made were anywhere near the heading of "correct", a voice rang out.
"Mr. Jacobi!"
Naturally, when someone addresses you, you turn to face them. I recognized this scarred visage staring back at me. Another midlander. Burnt over the right side of his face, remnants of a tattoo poking over the scar. Broad. Fit. He was one of the guards we had found in the early days after Dalamud's descent.
"I don't mean to be curt, but would you mind stating your business? Rather tired, and looking forward to getting home, you see."
Even my most practiced smile wasn't quite enough to stir this man. He gripped something tightly in his right hand. A cylinder. Brushed metal. Indentation on the top.
"Sir, it is not just my business I am here to address. It is the shared business of the realm."
By now, he had the crowd's attention. They began to move away from me, anticipating an arrest, no doubt. Their shadows obscured what he was holding from further examination. That's the trouble with these hung, gas lanterns at these arbitrary angles. Poor clarity with objects in motion. I waited for him to continue.
"You, and your heretical ilk have brought nothing but ruin upon us!"
He threw something at my feet. One of my old harnesses. Taken from our disused holds, now that our period of desperation had long since passed.
"These things you've made. That you've taken from Garlemald's monsters. They profane the very order of nature, and you would think yourself wise enough to employ them? To what end, "Captain"?"
He spat the word from his mouth. Behind him were two others. Not guards. Hired hands, more like. He was not acting with the official sanction of the city-state. They'd likely taken a look at this hunk of metal, and deemed it junk. I'd never been thankful for ignorance before, but the world has ways of surprising. But this man, he knew just enough to condemn.
"And what of your secret fortifications? Hm? Have you breathed a word of them to anyone yet? As you promised us you would!?"
He was waiting for a reaction. That much was clear. I had made no such promise, but his rhetoric was winning support. He held the cylinder high. It was one of my explosives. White phosphorus, above a powdered mixture of sulfur, coal, and saltpeter. The catalyst was a crystal shard toward the top, just under the indentation. One needed only to depress the top, and slide their thumb to grind the crystal against a layer of coarse stone. The friction causes the crystal to react, which exposes the white phosphorus to heat. The pyrophoric properties of the white phosphorus would set off the powder, which would then hurl shards of metal, and burning, caustic powder over a rather large area.
"Tell them. Tell them now, or I will show them. Tell them what this machine is. Tell them what you held in secret."
I raised a hand, and attempted to assuage his temper.
"I'll ask that you put that canister down. For your sake, and for your men's. I don't think you fully gra-"
He tightened his grip.
"Do you take me for a fool? I am not some drunken, lost waif you pirate scum are so fond of chasing."
His demeanor deadened. What I wouldn't give for a more silvered tongue.
"Very well. A demonstration is in order."
With raised arms, he addressed his people.
"All of you, stand back! No one need be harmed, save for this serpent in our midst."
I had already begun running as he spoke. In a panic, he hurled his appropriated weapon after me. The people screamed, and scattered. The grocers joined their chorus as I hurled myself over their counter. Following my example, they ducked low. The blast rocked our surroundings and hurled it's contents, along with a great deal of food stores, in every direction.
The cloud would not be far behind. That was the way it was designed.
Fragmentation of the canister and concussive force would neutralize the immediate targets. The cloud would kill anyone who survived the initial blast. This was never meant to be used on living people. This was a weapon I had employed against the undead, swarming insectoids, and voidsent. I tugged a rag over my mouth and nose, and told the grocers hiding with me to do the same. However, this would not save us unless the cloud passed quickly.
Another explosion shook the room. How many did he have? Did he not know what he held, or was he simply that intent on snuffing me out? Questions aside, the second detonation would insure that the air would remain unclear for quite some time if no one acted on it.
It was once again time to take stock of what was near. Chopped vegetables, cuts of meat, knives, cleavers, and a few Wind clusters. Not terribly promising, but the clusters did provide an opportunity. Quickly as I could, I broke the clusters up, and attempted to jam them into the empty fuel cell receiver of my harness. Make no mistake, I had no real idea if this would work. The Garlean Magitech ran on Ceruleum. Which this was not. It took an enormous amount of power to make these machines run. I had never unlocked the secret to refining the substance, merely scavenged what I could, but rumor had it that it came from some manner of aether processing that left the crystals devoid of charge.
With what I had hoped would suffice as a power source for a singular surge crudely fixed in place, I brought my shield about, held it sideways, braced against the lip of the counter, and turned my switch. The machinery, to my surprise, immediately began to hum. Then to whirr. Then to shake. It had never shaken before, and my expression must've communicated as much, as the grocers moved to flee. With a kind of thump, the emitters projected their force to a greater effect than I had dared dream. The counter itself was uprooted, and the butcher's-block style construct, my shield, the cloud, and myself, were all forcibly hurled out of the main building of the Bismarck.
When I was able to discern which direction was "up", I pulled myself toward it. Another few fulms, and I would have been cast to the sea. Happily, the cloud of white phosphorus hung harmlessly outside of our collective reach, sinking slowly toward open water. Still coughing on dust, and picking bits of goat steak from my manica, I staggered back toward the main building. A few unconscious bodies here and there, but no blood. No obvious sores or burns. I did, however, hear the sound of people scrambling on the piers below, shouting about pulling others out of the water.
A firearm cocked behind me. Instinctively, I groped about for my shield, forgetting for a moment that I had dropped it upon being catapulted through the air. The burned guard stood before me, new lesions on his skin. That answered the question of whether or not he knew what he held.
I raised my hands. I tried to think of something to say to this man, with so much pain in his expression. But my words failed me a second time.
"Do you see? Do you see now!?" His hands shook as he approached.
"These...things! These weapons, these tools, these...damnable abominations only make monsters. Out of all of us."
He stumbled over someone, but quickly set himself straight as he could. He stopped just short of my reach. Too close to miss. Too far to reach.
"I can't let you make more of them. And you will. You, and every bleedin' last bastard like you."
His teeth were clenched. His voice strained. He would pull the trigger, even if he didn't intend to. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and triggered my harness again.
With the blast this time localized to my hands, I was once again thrown. I watched as my would-be killer suffered the same fate, each of us colliding against opposing walls. My impact came quickly. I was not far from the side entrance. His took just a few fractions of a second longer, and that would have to be enough. I scrambled back to my feet as quickly as I could, and charged him. He'd held on to his weapon. He aimed as well as his shaken mind would allow, and fired, missing me narrowly. I made a wide step to my left, and took another off the entranceway near his landing. This, I had hoped, would place me behind him. And it did, however his finger was already depressing the hammer on his second barrel. My fist moved to preempt him, landing firmly on the ruined flesh of his face. My free arm locked around his, and relieved him of his weapon as he tumbled.
Much obliged for the object lesson in disarming opponents, Mr. Allard. Wherever you might be.
I emptied the shot into the distance, and tossed his gun to the ground. The missing ingots, leather, and linen were one thing. A ruined grocery was quite another. This would take explaining. Witnesses. Perhaps a few days in the gaol. Apologies to families of bystanders. Better to start now, rather than later. I helped the people immediately near. I found one of the grocers. Conscious, if a bit banged up. I asked him if he was alright, and he responded with little more than a nod.
"D'you mind if I make a pruchase?" I asked.
He studied me carefully. No doubt bewildered by the timing of my request.
"Mate, take what you need, and I'll tell 'em it was lost in the blast. Saved my life, you did."
Pleasant surprise, that.
Interlude: Beneath the weight of doubt.
My recovery took time. About a year and a moon, to be precise. Time enough for me to realize that I had nearly forgotten how to put pen to paper. Normally, I would be scouting locations to set up camp around sunset.
Instead, I sat. Alone. In a rather plush, and tastefully decorated room, staring at an empty piece of drafting paper.
Hard as I tried, I could not will my hand to scrawl the equation for calculating the necessary tensile strength for a series of support struts.
My mind raced, and strained, and eventually gave up. Had I so fully become a murderous vagabond? I found myself looking again and again at my arms and armor. Still in a state of ruin and discord. I would have been appalled at such a sight. I should still harbor disgust, looking upon it. Upon my negligence. But there was nothing. Not even despair at the very portrait of how far I had fallen.
"Perhaps if I set my hands to something more tangible", I thought. "Perhaps that would clear my mind." I took what materials I had. That blackened meteoric iron that had saved my life over and over. My traveling coat, that I had worked, sweat, and bled through enough for many lifetimes. My ruined axe. I packed them as well as I could, and half-drug the lot of it to the forge.
There were no familiar faces there, save the owners. We had never spoken much, and I don't believe they knew who I was. I was unlikely to be able to answer if they deigned to ask. All the same, I stripped the metal available to me of it's fittings. There was not enough here to simply mend my armor. Not enough in my pockets to buy what I needed to re-forge it. Not enough time to go chasing shooting stars, or hunting for pieces of Dalamud. Ah, but what armor that might make. The very material that caged a being capable of ruining a world.
I began smelting the metal none the less. Working the billows was comforting in it's tiring repetition. In, count two, then out. Repeat ten times. Then reduce to count one. Repeat as deemed necessary. If no one's told you yet, meteor iron is incredibly hard to work with. It contains a great deal of nickel, which resists forming. This is a metal that takes patience, and a kind of obsession with perfection in circumstance and shaping that is almost entirely unheard of within the ranks of these workmen.
Funny. I could easily recall my metallurgy, but I couldn't find the numbers. But still, I had a task that I could accomplish before me. As the lumps turned to liquid, what I might do with it took shape in my mind. I scrounged about, one hand still working the billows, for my traveling coat. Poor, dull thing. Never designed for the things I put it through. No, it was more for parades. For speeches. For regimented marching drills. But it had proven that it could be more than what it was meant for. The apathetic numbness of before had finally yielded to something.
Pain.
Misplaced, but real none the less. It had proven it could be something other than what it was made for, but it was something far worse. Far uglier. It wasn't until I felt a cold wind that I noticed I'd been lost with this thought long enough for the fire to die down. As quickly as I could, it built it back up, checking and re-checking my precious bit of workable metal to be sure I hadn't already ruined it. Nickel attracts sulfur, you know. Spoils the whole thing, makes it brittle.
By now, it was time to add the steel. It would have to have a high carbon content. Something preferably 1.5% by weight. I left the billows in the care of a bored workman, and handed him a fistful of gil for his trouble. My questioning lead me nowhere, and so I resolved to simply make some myself. Iron was in high supply, as were lumps of coal, and dark matter. No one would notice a few ingots and lumps missing here or there. And so I returned to the smeltery, and began the process of creating high-carbon steel. The reasoning for this, of course, is to add hardness to the thing you're making. Otherwise, meteor iron, even the high quality sort, doesn't hold shape, much less an edge.
For my purposes, I would go lightly with it's addition. Too much, and it would become impossible to shape. Too little, and the meteor iron would stick to it's tendency to fracture. Well into the night, I worked my metal. Plotting my application. I would have just enough to form a series of small, rectangular plates. Plates to lay upon my old coat, and fix to it's surface. It would not simply languish, broken and battered. I refused to pack it away, and never look on it again. It would not be discarded. I would make it into something not entirely divorced from what it was, but infinitely more fit for what it could be.
I would need rivets, rear plates that I could fashion from steel, a few yards of leather, and padding. Now, I had reached a fever pitch. A possessed man's pace. With the glow of my fire serving as my only light, I flit from station to station, taking what I could get my ash-blackened fingers on. I would answer for these missing materials later, if ever. Carefully, I poured the metal into the forms. Four ilms by two ilms. With a borrowed doming hammer, I made use of my years of combat. Each swing brought me to a time when I could barely shape copper. When a boy's hands trembled with fatigue after making his first bronze pipe. When those same hands clasped over a nearly lost eye after snapping his first piece of wrought iron.
This metal that, in my first attempt to shape, gave me no quarter and endless frustration now bent to me as if it were clay.
The fires of excitement, of...not anger, but a kind of gripping, furious exhilaration had all but burnt away the pity and pain. As I set the plates to cool, I realized I still had iron. And carbon. With a touch of chromium for the weather, I gave my garment back the sleeves I had torn from it in the shape of manica. Thicker than would be advised, but flexible enough to allow a range of movement that was indistinguishable from full to me.
The sun rose as the meteor iron plates were finally cool enough to touch. I set them carefully, domed outward to fit more comfortably around my chest and waist. I fixed them with rivets to their rear plating. I lined my coat with leather and linen padding. It was a heavy thing, to be certain. And the fittings for my manica needed to be adjusted several times before I was content.
But I was content.
As I moved, testing the fit of my creation, I tried to think on what had driven me to make it at all. My contribution to reconstruction...
And here I had spent an entire night doing this, rather than simply penning out:
Tensile Strength =F/A (N/mm2), and asking for a survey of the ground this was to be built upon.
Chapter 1: Play with matches (if you think you need to play with matches).
Were the reconstruction efforts worth recording day by day, this log would span the seas, end to end. Happily, most days were uneventful. We would wake early, refine resources, submit plans and suggestions, so on and so forth.
Things like decentralization of standing structures were common foci of the various discussions. So common, in fact, that I felt little need to add my voice. I kept myself busy in the off-hours by volunteering my time to the forge and shipyards. An agreed upon method for me to pay my debt to the Lominsan people, after injuring members of the Maelstrom, and stealing materials.
Unfortunately, not much of the local social climate had changed. So long as no one was looking, and you were certain you would be able to get away with whatever you were doing, not much was considered to be taboo. These were not the first drunken brawls, stabbings or robberies I had witnessed, but given the state of the city two years into it's recovery, these habits just seemed...inappropriate.
Now, I had never harbored any contempt for the law, nor did I have any particular need to rail against it. Such notions are carried by stupid young men and women who have been dealt a sour hand, or by equally stunted older individuals who believe that their time spent in this world exempts them from following it's rules. However, one does tend to adapt to, and eventually accept an environment when fully immersed.
As a point of fact: I firmly believe that there was no crew more fully immersed in the Lominsan "culture" than the Misericorde. We lied, we cheated, we stole. On occasion? We killed. All with the blessings of the Thalassocracy, provided we exclusively targeted other crews that were inconvenient to them.
None the less, I found myself chafed, having to witness these events occur time and again as I made my way back to my quarters. More often than not at the hands of the Bloody Executioners, with whom I had sailed for a short time, and the League of Lost Bastards. But I had never been the heroic sort. Instead of taking any real action, I busied myself with another project. My axe was truly ruined, and so would be scrapped and salvaged to reforge my sword.
This was a project that I had embarked upon shortly after my travels began. I bore witness to a great many feats performed by the wandering swordsmen that used to dot the landscape, cutting down rabbits and beetles with weapons that burned and crackled with their channeled Aetheric might. Being entirely magically inept, I could never hope to reproduce those dazzling displays on my own, and so I had hoped to match them with technology.
The initial attempts were bulky and inefficient. Modified Garlean magitek harnesses, and I'll admit that I had little idea as to how their power sources worked. The whole of the machine I'd lashed to myself was used to power the functions of the blade. A blade which was prone to breaking and malfunctioning, and burning my hand.
Pulling the weapon apart, I found myself confused by my past attempts. I had used iron wiring, rather than copper. More than likely due to the cost of materials.
Perhaps due to the oxidization and corrosion that copper tends to exhibit when exposed to less-than-ideal environments. This was the first thing I would have to fix. A silver alloy would solve the oxidizing issue. It would cost a touch more, but I was not above melting down a few coins. I wouldn't need much, after all.
The rest of the materials were easy to repurpose. The focussing arrays that would sit along the guard were still the best I would be able to do without considerable time for further research and development. Re-wiring was simple enough. The blade itself was easy to form, though I did lament the loss of a great deal of the metal from my axe. Simply no good to reforge. There is, contrary to popular belief, such a thing as "too pure" when it comes to metal.
I tossed my weapon and it's reinforced housing panels in the cooling pool while I set to work on a prototype defensive system I had been meaning to test. Nothing that would be terribly pretty. A few emitters crudely fixed to the outside of a scutum that had been tossed in the scrap pile, exposed wiring leading from the bundle I'd spooled around the shield's grips so that my harness, trimmed down as it was, could make contact and power them. In theory, they should have produced an aetheric eddy that would catch, redirect, and potentially neutralize incoming kinetic forces. Extend the life of the shields used, and provide some kind of easily accessible defense against the arcane for your average soldier or guard.
With that assembled, my blade cooled and at the very least, slightly improved upon, I wrapped, sheathed, hung, and otherwise obscured my personal projects. I suppose the fear of being branded a traitor to the land had never truly left me. I decided to detour down to the lower levels of the city, across the nearly complete bridges, minding the gaps of course. There was just enough coin left for a about a fortnight's worth of food from the Bismarck.
I hadn't left the islands, but I had managed to find a crowd, and fade into it. Of course, it helped that there wasn't someone parading about, playing songs, and telling stories of how I was a ten-fulm tall immortal made of Darksteel. On the other hand, it did bring a kind of excitement to life than this more average existence I had chosen provided. Watching Mr. Allard attempt to subdue fifteen members of the Kraken Arms at once was always a thrill. Being called upon to "negotiate" cessations of hostilities as my crew's Captain was also a highlight I found myself missing.
As I waited in line, wondering once more if the choices I had made were anywhere near the heading of "correct", a voice rang out.
"Mr. Jacobi!"
Naturally, when someone addresses you, you turn to face them. I recognized this scarred visage staring back at me. Another midlander. Burnt over the right side of his face, remnants of a tattoo poking over the scar. Broad. Fit. He was one of the guards we had found in the early days after Dalamud's descent.
"I don't mean to be curt, but would you mind stating your business? Rather tired, and looking forward to getting home, you see."
Even my most practiced smile wasn't quite enough to stir this man. He gripped something tightly in his right hand. A cylinder. Brushed metal. Indentation on the top.
"Sir, it is not just my business I am here to address. It is the shared business of the realm."
By now, he had the crowd's attention. They began to move away from me, anticipating an arrest, no doubt. Their shadows obscured what he was holding from further examination. That's the trouble with these hung, gas lanterns at these arbitrary angles. Poor clarity with objects in motion. I waited for him to continue.
"You, and your heretical ilk have brought nothing but ruin upon us!"
He threw something at my feet. One of my old harnesses. Taken from our disused holds, now that our period of desperation had long since passed.
"These things you've made. That you've taken from Garlemald's monsters. They profane the very order of nature, and you would think yourself wise enough to employ them? To what end, "Captain"?"
He spat the word from his mouth. Behind him were two others. Not guards. Hired hands, more like. He was not acting with the official sanction of the city-state. They'd likely taken a look at this hunk of metal, and deemed it junk. I'd never been thankful for ignorance before, but the world has ways of surprising. But this man, he knew just enough to condemn.
"And what of your secret fortifications? Hm? Have you breathed a word of them to anyone yet? As you promised us you would!?"
He was waiting for a reaction. That much was clear. I had made no such promise, but his rhetoric was winning support. He held the cylinder high. It was one of my explosives. White phosphorus, above a powdered mixture of sulfur, coal, and saltpeter. The catalyst was a crystal shard toward the top, just under the indentation. One needed only to depress the top, and slide their thumb to grind the crystal against a layer of coarse stone. The friction causes the crystal to react, which exposes the white phosphorus to heat. The pyrophoric properties of the white phosphorus would set off the powder, which would then hurl shards of metal, and burning, caustic powder over a rather large area.
"Tell them. Tell them now, or I will show them. Tell them what this machine is. Tell them what you held in secret."
I raised a hand, and attempted to assuage his temper.
"I'll ask that you put that canister down. For your sake, and for your men's. I don't think you fully gra-"
He tightened his grip.
"Do you take me for a fool? I am not some drunken, lost waif you pirate scum are so fond of chasing."
His demeanor deadened. What I wouldn't give for a more silvered tongue.
"Very well. A demonstration is in order."
With raised arms, he addressed his people.
"All of you, stand back! No one need be harmed, save for this serpent in our midst."
I had already begun running as he spoke. In a panic, he hurled his appropriated weapon after me. The people screamed, and scattered. The grocers joined their chorus as I hurled myself over their counter. Following my example, they ducked low. The blast rocked our surroundings and hurled it's contents, along with a great deal of food stores, in every direction.
The cloud would not be far behind. That was the way it was designed.
Fragmentation of the canister and concussive force would neutralize the immediate targets. The cloud would kill anyone who survived the initial blast. This was never meant to be used on living people. This was a weapon I had employed against the undead, swarming insectoids, and voidsent. I tugged a rag over my mouth and nose, and told the grocers hiding with me to do the same. However, this would not save us unless the cloud passed quickly.
Another explosion shook the room. How many did he have? Did he not know what he held, or was he simply that intent on snuffing me out? Questions aside, the second detonation would insure that the air would remain unclear for quite some time if no one acted on it.
It was once again time to take stock of what was near. Chopped vegetables, cuts of meat, knives, cleavers, and a few Wind clusters. Not terribly promising, but the clusters did provide an opportunity. Quickly as I could, I broke the clusters up, and attempted to jam them into the empty fuel cell receiver of my harness. Make no mistake, I had no real idea if this would work. The Garlean Magitech ran on Ceruleum. Which this was not. It took an enormous amount of power to make these machines run. I had never unlocked the secret to refining the substance, merely scavenged what I could, but rumor had it that it came from some manner of aether processing that left the crystals devoid of charge.
With what I had hoped would suffice as a power source for a singular surge crudely fixed in place, I brought my shield about, held it sideways, braced against the lip of the counter, and turned my switch. The machinery, to my surprise, immediately began to hum. Then to whirr. Then to shake. It had never shaken before, and my expression must've communicated as much, as the grocers moved to flee. With a kind of thump, the emitters projected their force to a greater effect than I had dared dream. The counter itself was uprooted, and the butcher's-block style construct, my shield, the cloud, and myself, were all forcibly hurled out of the main building of the Bismarck.
When I was able to discern which direction was "up", I pulled myself toward it. Another few fulms, and I would have been cast to the sea. Happily, the cloud of white phosphorus hung harmlessly outside of our collective reach, sinking slowly toward open water. Still coughing on dust, and picking bits of goat steak from my manica, I staggered back toward the main building. A few unconscious bodies here and there, but no blood. No obvious sores or burns. I did, however, hear the sound of people scrambling on the piers below, shouting about pulling others out of the water.
A firearm cocked behind me. Instinctively, I groped about for my shield, forgetting for a moment that I had dropped it upon being catapulted through the air. The burned guard stood before me, new lesions on his skin. That answered the question of whether or not he knew what he held.
I raised my hands. I tried to think of something to say to this man, with so much pain in his expression. But my words failed me a second time.
"Do you see? Do you see now!?" His hands shook as he approached.
"These...things! These weapons, these tools, these...damnable abominations only make monsters. Out of all of us."
He stumbled over someone, but quickly set himself straight as he could. He stopped just short of my reach. Too close to miss. Too far to reach.
"I can't let you make more of them. And you will. You, and every bleedin' last bastard like you."
His teeth were clenched. His voice strained. He would pull the trigger, even if he didn't intend to. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and triggered my harness again.
With the blast this time localized to my hands, I was once again thrown. I watched as my would-be killer suffered the same fate, each of us colliding against opposing walls. My impact came quickly. I was not far from the side entrance. His took just a few fractions of a second longer, and that would have to be enough. I scrambled back to my feet as quickly as I could, and charged him. He'd held on to his weapon. He aimed as well as his shaken mind would allow, and fired, missing me narrowly. I made a wide step to my left, and took another off the entranceway near his landing. This, I had hoped, would place me behind him. And it did, however his finger was already depressing the hammer on his second barrel. My fist moved to preempt him, landing firmly on the ruined flesh of his face. My free arm locked around his, and relieved him of his weapon as he tumbled.
Much obliged for the object lesson in disarming opponents, Mr. Allard. Wherever you might be.
I emptied the shot into the distance, and tossed his gun to the ground. The missing ingots, leather, and linen were one thing. A ruined grocery was quite another. This would take explaining. Witnesses. Perhaps a few days in the gaol. Apologies to families of bystanders. Better to start now, rather than later. I helped the people immediately near. I found one of the grocers. Conscious, if a bit banged up. I asked him if he was alright, and he responded with little more than a nod.
"D'you mind if I make a pruchase?" I asked.
He studied me carefully. No doubt bewildered by the timing of my request.
"Mate, take what you need, and I'll tell 'em it was lost in the blast. Saved my life, you did."
Pleasant surprise, that.
