tushanshu_logs | EVENT | LANDFALL | KITHIKA

EVENT | LANDFALL | KITHIKA | DRAGON

Characters: ALL!
Date: February 12th - 28th
Location: Keeliai
Situation: The discovery of an artifact from the first war against Malicant reveals the land of Kithika within a dimension of the Death Plane... and just happens to be contained inside a bottle.
Warnings/Rating: Please indicate content warnings in subject headers as applicable.

OOC INFORMATION ♦ CITY OF KEELIAI ♦ INSIDE THE BOTTLE ♦ THE WORLD EATER
For nearly two days the brave quest takers have been sequestered at the sullied Temple and its grounds, the thick jungle and swamp preventing them from leaving. There are faint tremors that run through the ground and in the middle of the third night, the ground gives a great heave, jostling everyone from their rested states. In one of the Temple rooms, a sinkhole has appeared to reveal not spongy ground beneath, but a dark tunnel leading down into the earth. It doesn't take much to widen the entrance and follow the gentle downward slope that leads out to the north, and a walk of about two hours (which surely would feel like longer to those who don't enjoy being trapped in low, dank places) leads them under the swamp itself. By the time the tunnel slopes upward, the muddy ground has turned hard and packed with small chips of rock and sand; the terrain above is changing and as they emerge upward through a fissure in the ground...

---

OOC NOTE: The Aftermath comment will be unfrozen and its direction posted on February 23rd, based on the outcome of the other threads.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Armin thinks nothing of it, since it's fairly common knowledge around here that people are simply returned to their home worlds when their time here is up. He figures the same thing would happen to Kurt, even if he was a dimension traveler.

"I would hope that I would be able to bring back some memory of this place, although everyone tells me that's not how it works," he says, offering Kurt a wary smile in return and sitting down in front of the neat pile of parts he had made to put his engine back together again, "people in my world would definitely think I'm crazy, but... People already think everyone in the Scouting Legion is insane anyways. It's not much of a leap."

Edited 2014-02-26 20:29 (UTC)

"The trick is being useful-crazy," Kurt suggests, leaning down a little to watch him work. "That's a real efficient little machine, there. I'd like to meet the engineer behind it." Usually there were trade-offs, sacrificing power or size or weight or a dozen other problems one for another, but from what Armin had told him about Titans, he could see why there was no room for any leeway. "...Has to be a real fuel-hog, though." Or it wouldn't work at all. Hmm.

"It's the pride of the military. It was originally developed decades ago, not long after the walls were built... or so I'm told," Armin says with pride as he begins to re-assemble the engine with a quick and practiced hand, "but you're right. The cable mechanism works with a fairly small amount of gas, but only the best of the best can get around without having to use the jets as well, to correct their trajectory. Careless use can drain your fuel reserves very quickly."

"When we last made landfall, I bought a large amount of natural gas, so I do have a supply. But I still can't practice as often as I would like. You never know when a disaster will happen, and I may need it all at once."

"You'd need something powerful, but if you could get a battery running it would probably be a smoother operator." A small fusion reactor would be perfect, but he doubted he could get that going in a hurry here. Maybe one of those Stark arc reactors? He'd never worked with one personally, but... "You might even be able to get it to charge the battery itself if you could make sure the generator didn't get in the way of the functionality of the cables." He knows all about surprise disasters, after all.

Woah, wait, one new word at a time please.

"...What's a battery? And a... a generator?"

"Um..." He'll never learn, apparently. "Well, your engine here would count as a generator. That just means a thing that makes power. I'm just thinking of a kind that works by agitating a certain metal alongside a magnet." Is magnet okay? He's pretty sure magnetism is naturally occurring, but Armin doesn't even know about shellfish, so if his very limited experience didn't happen to overlap any sources of particular iron ores. "Nevermind. It makes power, the same as burning fuel. There are just... better ways to do that. Including some batteries, which are just any object that you can extract power from, usually from a chemical or radioactive reaction. Just... a different power source. Something lighter and longer lasting, and less polluting." He's from a world of all-green energy. That people fighting Titans wouldn't really care about a bit of smoke in the air doesn't occur to him.

"So it's... um..."

Armin lets that all rattle around in his head for a bit. He still didn't know exactly how the electricity in his suite worked, just that you plug the thing in and flip the switch and you get what you want. These things must be the same kind of technological magic. It confuses him, from living in a world of very bleak absolutes, but he's not adverse to embracing it at all. Whatever works best!

"So you're saying that if my gear was run using a 'battery' to power it, I could use it for a longer period of time before having to fill the battery up again?"

"Ideally. If I could get a good internal generator going it might be able to recharge itself to a certain degree, too. I mean, I've mostly seen that done with flashlights that wear your hand out because you have to shake the generator yourself, but if I could get this coil system to do that for me... That and you can carry a lot more batteries than you can cans of gas. Just plug and play." The system itself, while he suspects it could probably be improved, is something he knows a lot less about. He's having enough fun now.

"You mean that the engine itself could make energy? Is that was a generator is?"

Having fit in the final piece of the mechanical puzzle, Armin lifts his engine and inspects it from all sides. That makes even less sense to him, how something that uses energy could make it too, but who is he to question it?

"You couldn't make it that efficient, but it'd be good for a burst of reserve power or just to extend battery life. But if we could rig it up with something like the Sternes-Banner fusion reactors I had at home... Probably wouldn't work too well, though. There's just not the infrastructure for stuff like that here. I did somehow end up working for Tony Stark, though, so I can ask around, make it a take-home project." He pauses. "...Better make a mockup of yours first. I don't wanna mess with the only one you got."

"You think you can make a duplicate? Really?"

Armin lets all the rest of that just wash over him, because damn, that's really impressive.

"Well, a mock-up for testing, and I'd have to make some kind of adapter. But I worked on an old-school internal combustion engine once, and it's do-able. There were people back home who converted classic cars to work on clean engines." So it's possible. "...Just the internal stuff, though. The blades are probably unnecessary at this point. Don't suppose you know anything about the makeup of the cables?" So he's showing off a little. He doesn't get a lot of chances.

Armin is now learning just to pick out the parts of Kurt's ramblings that sound important.

"I only know they're made of a highly tensile steel. The whole thing is made of steel."

Which is technically more information than he had, not that he knows much about metallurgy anyway. "I'll look at it. And I can look at it wherever works for you until I get a working mock-up to take home, since I'm guessing you don't want it sitting around at my place." He's already on an engineering high just thinking about it. "Is it okay if I ask around for outside opinions? More brains can't hurt, but I know there's some shady characters around." Armin's comments before had been understandably vague.

"You're can come to my suite any time you like," and he means that quite literally, "even at night is alright, I just. Sleep then."

"Well-- yes, actually, that's fine. Even if my... problems, overheard you, they're no more aware of technology than I am. They wouldn't be able to do anything with the information."

He is a little nocturnal, but he's also not the quietest worker, so he won't take Armin up on that one without a reason. It's impolite to wake people up by talking to your tools, and in pretty rude terms. "I was thinking more in terms of... element of surprise, but it should effect their everyday function too much, just fuel efficiency." He pauses. "Unless there is something you want improved? I mean, I know less about that, but I could ask around."

"If you improved it's function, I may not be able to use it anymore," he admits, smiling ruefully, "I can barely handle it as it is."

"Well, what's the problem you have with it? Can I fix that part?" He can't help it. His parents trained him very carefully to keep user interface in mind. And he might get to tinker more.

"It's just... powerful. You have to stay in condition-- you can see how it works, right? I'm not nearly strong enough to use it to its fullest. If I learned one thing in training, it's that being a weakling is just in my blood."

"Half the point of technology is making physical strength irrelevant," Kurt contends, but he doesn't press the point. He probably shouldn't mess with the actual function of an important weapon when he doesn't understand fully how it's supposed to function. "This is why the guys who'll stuff you in lockers at the savage stages of human development grow up to be janitors, or that's what I always told myself."

"You need both when you're fighting a Titan," and the ones at the savage stages of human development were the ones that graduated at the top of the class where he was from. Armin sighs, "but I still got through. That's more than a lot of people can say."

"Neither is all that useful some of the time, too." Armin knows more about what happened to Kurt's home world than anybody else on the turtle. It's just easier to talk to someone who's experienced something a little like, so he's glad that there aren't many people he'd feel comfortable letting on to. "So good job, under the circumstances."

"Survival is a laudable achievement," he agrees, and goes to check on his clothing. It's still a little damp, but... eh, whatever. Armin starts to get dressed again.

"Are you returning to Tu Vishan soon? I have to get back to my suite before I fall asleep on the ground somewhere inadvisable."

"Guess we better. I mean, this place is fun to hang out in, but there's not really anything left to do..." He actually sort of prefers total exhaustion for an impetus to sleep. Helps with the nightmares. Relaxing's not always a safe thing for him to do, mentally. "At least heading back to the giant turtle sounds pretty normal after this bottle adventure."

"It does, doesn't it? I've been in Konryu too long."

It takes a few minutes for him to get all the straps of his harness on, securely and comfortably. He has to; it would be too difficult just to carry all his gear in hand.

"All of that black, virulent stuff was obviously M's influence, though I'm still not sure what the nature of the dragon we saved is. It has to be some kind of good if he was trying to destroy it, but... What does it do here? Is it some kind of patron to the land? Everything sure cleared up quickly after we finished cleaning it off."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject