Since it hadn't been very clear so far how exactly this 'steam punk' technology fit into Weyward, I decided to attempt to illustrate it via a story rather than trying to say things plainly. Hopefully this will be somewhat clearer, more interesting, and inspire a bit more creativity along these lines. Enjoy.
Termil shot a quick glance at Anu, sitting a few feet away back turned to him. Her jet black hair pulled back tight in a thin high pony tail that fell to just between her shoulder blades nearly disappeared into that garish pinstripe vest worn over a simple white blouse with loose sleeves that billowed slightly around her wrists, not that he could see those from where he crouched over a section of copper piping in the hole in the wall. She jerked around suddenly to return him an impatient look, as if wondering why he was not working faster and Termil gave a start, hitting his head on some overhead pipes. Hastily he turned back to his work, massaging a lump forming on the back of his head. Did all women have eyes on the back of their heads after all?
He might have thought Anu was pretty, perhaps if she did not wear that constant glower, making it clear that she did not want to be there, having to help Termil with his repairs. He was not even sure if he would need her help either, but the guild had sent her anyway, just in case. Glaring at the pipes as if it were their fault his head hurt, he resumed his inspection. The two of them were only there, off in a hallway in the corner of the Anemos’ Grand Academy because one of the Apostle’s seers foresaw a failure in one of the pipes there. If there were any weakening in the pipes in front of him, his own Academy trained steam technician eyes would have seen it. If it was a hidden flaw in the metal of the piping…. the guild should have sent a Venus adept instead of Anu, a Mars.
Directing his own frown at the myriad of pipes in front of him, copper tubes crisscrossing each other perpendicularly all over the open panel in the wall from about two feet down to the floor, Termil gently levered a lens from its idle position connected to his goggles to rest in front of the goggle lens of his right eye. At first look through the magicked lens he saw nothing different. With some resignation, he blinked rapidly, alternating between his left and right eye, attempting to enhance the contrast of normal to spelled vision. There. Behind a few pipes at one particular intersection his spelled lens picked up a faint sign of weakened copper. Termil sighed to himself; he would owe Uran another 5 coins after this.
“Would you hurry up?” Anu was gazing icily over her shoulder at him again. “I hope to meet someone this afternoon, not this evening.” Termil merely sighed again and set about carefully laying on his stomach where he would be better able to reach the faulty pipe. He squirmed, poking his head into the opening in the wall while reaching into his tool kit for a pipepatch and some epoxy and…
“...changes everything!” A woman’s voice, though barely audible, exclaimed from somewhere beyond the dark labyrinth of pipe work. A faint mumble suggested that whomever spoke continued in a more subdued tone. Curiously, perhaps fatally so as he may think later, Termil crawled further into the wall and stopped moving once he found he could hear the mysterious speaker more clearly.
“…not be hasty, no one else must know yet, and it still needs some refining but yes. With this the world will break away from this reliance on steam, this reliance on both Mercury and Mars. With only the power of Jupiter and this… why, we could crush those… pitiful Aerinin and reclaim the Aerius peninsula and Hestteka would be whole once more!” A man this time. What was this… this they were talking about? How would it break away from steam tech? There were too many questions to think about, but the man had not finished yet. “Aerius would be the proving grounds. If lightning tech works half as well as I expect it to, why, no power could refuse the will of Anemos. Berun would crumple in less than 10 years, all of the rest like dotstones falling in line, each one to fall drags the other down with it. With the right people convinced surely even the Apostle would not oppose the idea. She, just as much as any of us, would just love to have Aerius back within the theocracy.”
“We could rule all of Weyward.” The woman spoke quietly with awe and more than a little ambition, but Termil thought that was what she said. And Anu apparently thought so as well because she gasped softly, causing Termil to jump. Even softly, she lay prone right next to him, crawled into the hole in the wall to her shoulders, the right of which was pushed up to Termil’s own left and he had not even noticed he had been listening so carefully. In his startlement he dropped the wrench he had not even realized he had pulled from his tool kit.
Every resonating rebound of the wrench as it collided with pipes on its four-floor journey to ground level sounded like a gong. Or an alarm, Termil thought as panic set in. …no one must know yet,… was what the man had said, yet Termil knew… or he thought knew enough at least. Squirming frantically, he tried to squeeze out of the hole though, while Anu was attempting the same, neither got very far. After a few minutes of frantic scraping and maneuvering, the two managed to extract themselves from the hole, and shared nervous looks. The discussion they had just overheard was quite distinctly treasonous. In recent years, the Apostle and her high council, especially after the debacle that was the Aerius Rebellion just a generation ago, adamantly avoided conflicts, especially with other nations and if they admitted that Aerius was it’s own nation which it had declared it was, they did so very grudgingly and usually changed the subject hastily thereafter. The mystery man and woman talking below had suggested not only a political upheaval but an entire shift to an militaristic or imperial approach.
As Termil started gathering up his things and replacing them in his tool kit, Anu dropped down to put an ear into the hole once more. When she straightened, Termil was slinging his reassembled pack over his shoulder. “They stopped talking. You don’t think…” She shot a nervous glance down the empty hallway where they stood. The pair started when suddenly the sound of footsteps echoing off the stone stairs came into hearing. With out any further discussion, the two ran in the opposite direction.
Termil and Anu blazed through the Academy halls dodging students and visitors alike and did not stop until they were outside and a block away, the Academy’s proud edifices hidden from view behind another tall establishment. Panting, the pair slumped to the ground or leaned against the buildings in the small alley, neither one able to speak between catching their breath. Anu was the first to find her tongue.
“They don’t seem to be following us…” Termil only nodded doggedly though his breathing was finally starting to relax. “What do we do now? What can we do now? Surely… surely we have to tell someone about that? What did he call it… something ‘tech’.. um… ‘lightning tech?’” Termil nodded again but this time he had recovered enough to respond as well.
“We don’t even know who they were… how would we report that? ‘Oh, we overheard some people talking about treasonous stuff but we don’t know who they were. Maybe if I lead you to the room we heard them in, they’ll still be there.’ Anu, they’d laugh us right out of the police barracks. If they didn’t beat us out for trying to instigate unrest without proof” Termil did not like it, but that was how it was. Anu gave him a considering look, frowning again, but still considering.
The great city of Anemos surrounded them, filled with towers and more tall buildings than small ones. The invention of rockpaper used in conjunction with cements allowed builders to construct buildings taller than any before, and the Anemos building committee had jumped onboard, leveling old buildings and building new ones higher than before. In recent years, many said that Anemosians were building up, reaching to the gods they prayed to daily, though some accused them of hoping to rise above those gods. In the early afternoon, the streets were bustling with activity, people on errands, shop assistants loudly inviting people to look at their wares or their services. Every now and then a cart with horses would pass or a horseless carriage people were calling “autocarriages” or “autocars” for short would rumble through the streets, as often as not spooking any horses or other animals that might be around.
One such autocar passed just as Termil tried speak up again, forcing him to hold his tongue till the dull roar of its engine passed. “Do you suppose they went back into the room they were in before? They probably wouldn’t suspect we would return so soon if at all, maybe we could hear more, or find out who it was.”
“I… hadn’t thought of that.” Anu’s frown vanished but the considering look still remained in her dark eyes.
Termil rubbed his arms absently. Late winter was still winter, and with the heat of their escape quickly fading, it was too cold yet to be out without a coat or jacket. He noticed ruefully that Anu showed no signs of being cold, despite being as lightly dressed as he was in that vest and blouse with just breeches and thin boots. He at least had a decently heavy apron and gloves. “I never repaired that pipe in any event, did I.” the steam technician mumbled to himself. Pulling himself off the ground, he glanced out of the alley down both ways along the road, though he had little notion of what he might have been looking for. Termil wound his way slowly back through the throng towards the academy in silence, though Anu was never more than a step behind him. She looked uncertain about returning but she continued to follow him so he continued as well.
Next thing he knew, Termil was glancing cautiously around the hallway one floor below where he and Anu had fled before. No one roamed the halls as was common just one floor below, and Termil waved to Anu that the coast was clear. Anxiously, they tiptoed into the hall and Termil had to remind himself that flattening himself up against the wall would not help anything. Nor would removing his boots, no matter how loud the sound of their hard soles on the tile floors seemed to sound to his ears. Carefully, they approached each door in the hall, but neither careful listening at the crack between the door and floor, nor an ear against the door itself revealed any activity behind any of the doors. Termil shrugged when Anu gave him a “what now?” glance.
“Might as well go back and see what I can do about that pipe I suppose,” he spoke quietly, even though he knew there was no one else about. Anu only nodded grimly.
Inspecting the hall the same way he had the floor below, and finding the same result, Termil and Anu returned to the hole in the wall where they had left it and set about the repairs. Anu never said anything else, but she handed him tools as he asked for them and otherwise kept a close watch on the hall. In one corner of his mind that was not racing over everything that had happened in the last few minutes, he was just glad that Anu’s hostility towards him had all but been forgotten.
Termil shot a quick glance at Anu, sitting a few feet away back turned to him. Her jet black hair pulled back tight in a thin high pony tail that fell to just between her shoulder blades nearly disappeared into that garish pinstripe vest worn over a simple white blouse with loose sleeves that billowed slightly around her wrists, not that he could see those from where he crouched over a section of copper piping in the hole in the wall. She jerked around suddenly to return him an impatient look, as if wondering why he was not working faster and Termil gave a start, hitting his head on some overhead pipes. Hastily he turned back to his work, massaging a lump forming on the back of his head. Did all women have eyes on the back of their heads after all?
He might have thought Anu was pretty, perhaps if she did not wear that constant glower, making it clear that she did not want to be there, having to help Termil with his repairs. He was not even sure if he would need her help either, but the guild had sent her anyway, just in case. Glaring at the pipes as if it were their fault his head hurt, he resumed his inspection. The two of them were only there, off in a hallway in the corner of the Anemos’ Grand Academy because one of the Apostle’s seers foresaw a failure in one of the pipes there. If there were any weakening in the pipes in front of him, his own Academy trained steam technician eyes would have seen it. If it was a hidden flaw in the metal of the piping…. the guild should have sent a Venus adept instead of Anu, a Mars.
Directing his own frown at the myriad of pipes in front of him, copper tubes crisscrossing each other perpendicularly all over the open panel in the wall from about two feet down to the floor, Termil gently levered a lens from its idle position connected to his goggles to rest in front of the goggle lens of his right eye. At first look through the magicked lens he saw nothing different. With some resignation, he blinked rapidly, alternating between his left and right eye, attempting to enhance the contrast of normal to spelled vision. There. Behind a few pipes at one particular intersection his spelled lens picked up a faint sign of weakened copper. Termil sighed to himself; he would owe Uran another 5 coins after this.
“Would you hurry up?” Anu was gazing icily over her shoulder at him again. “I hope to meet someone this afternoon, not this evening.” Termil merely sighed again and set about carefully laying on his stomach where he would be better able to reach the faulty pipe. He squirmed, poking his head into the opening in the wall while reaching into his tool kit for a pipepatch and some epoxy and…
“...changes everything!” A woman’s voice, though barely audible, exclaimed from somewhere beyond the dark labyrinth of pipe work. A faint mumble suggested that whomever spoke continued in a more subdued tone. Curiously, perhaps fatally so as he may think later, Termil crawled further into the wall and stopped moving once he found he could hear the mysterious speaker more clearly.
“…not be hasty, no one else must know yet, and it still needs some refining but yes. With this the world will break away from this reliance on steam, this reliance on both Mercury and Mars. With only the power of Jupiter and this… why, we could crush those… pitiful Aerinin and reclaim the Aerius peninsula and Hestteka would be whole once more!” A man this time. What was this… this they were talking about? How would it break away from steam tech? There were too many questions to think about, but the man had not finished yet. “Aerius would be the proving grounds. If lightning tech works half as well as I expect it to, why, no power could refuse the will of Anemos. Berun would crumple in less than 10 years, all of the rest like dotstones falling in line, each one to fall drags the other down with it. With the right people convinced surely even the Apostle would not oppose the idea. She, just as much as any of us, would just love to have Aerius back within the theocracy.”
“We could rule all of Weyward.” The woman spoke quietly with awe and more than a little ambition, but Termil thought that was what she said. And Anu apparently thought so as well because she gasped softly, causing Termil to jump. Even softly, she lay prone right next to him, crawled into the hole in the wall to her shoulders, the right of which was pushed up to Termil’s own left and he had not even noticed he had been listening so carefully. In his startlement he dropped the wrench he had not even realized he had pulled from his tool kit.
Every resonating rebound of the wrench as it collided with pipes on its four-floor journey to ground level sounded like a gong. Or an alarm, Termil thought as panic set in. …no one must know yet,… was what the man had said, yet Termil knew… or he thought knew enough at least. Squirming frantically, he tried to squeeze out of the hole though, while Anu was attempting the same, neither got very far. After a few minutes of frantic scraping and maneuvering, the two managed to extract themselves from the hole, and shared nervous looks. The discussion they had just overheard was quite distinctly treasonous. In recent years, the Apostle and her high council, especially after the debacle that was the Aerius Rebellion just a generation ago, adamantly avoided conflicts, especially with other nations and if they admitted that Aerius was it’s own nation which it had declared it was, they did so very grudgingly and usually changed the subject hastily thereafter. The mystery man and woman talking below had suggested not only a political upheaval but an entire shift to an militaristic or imperial approach.
As Termil started gathering up his things and replacing them in his tool kit, Anu dropped down to put an ear into the hole once more. When she straightened, Termil was slinging his reassembled pack over his shoulder. “They stopped talking. You don’t think…” She shot a nervous glance down the empty hallway where they stood. The pair started when suddenly the sound of footsteps echoing off the stone stairs came into hearing. With out any further discussion, the two ran in the opposite direction.
Termil and Anu blazed through the Academy halls dodging students and visitors alike and did not stop until they were outside and a block away, the Academy’s proud edifices hidden from view behind another tall establishment. Panting, the pair slumped to the ground or leaned against the buildings in the small alley, neither one able to speak between catching their breath. Anu was the first to find her tongue.
“They don’t seem to be following us…” Termil only nodded doggedly though his breathing was finally starting to relax. “What do we do now? What can we do now? Surely… surely we have to tell someone about that? What did he call it… something ‘tech’.. um… ‘lightning tech?’” Termil nodded again but this time he had recovered enough to respond as well.
“We don’t even know who they were… how would we report that? ‘Oh, we overheard some people talking about treasonous stuff but we don’t know who they were. Maybe if I lead you to the room we heard them in, they’ll still be there.’ Anu, they’d laugh us right out of the police barracks. If they didn’t beat us out for trying to instigate unrest without proof” Termil did not like it, but that was how it was. Anu gave him a considering look, frowning again, but still considering.
The great city of Anemos surrounded them, filled with towers and more tall buildings than small ones. The invention of rockpaper used in conjunction with cements allowed builders to construct buildings taller than any before, and the Anemos building committee had jumped onboard, leveling old buildings and building new ones higher than before. In recent years, many said that Anemosians were building up, reaching to the gods they prayed to daily, though some accused them of hoping to rise above those gods. In the early afternoon, the streets were bustling with activity, people on errands, shop assistants loudly inviting people to look at their wares or their services. Every now and then a cart with horses would pass or a horseless carriage people were calling “autocarriages” or “autocars” for short would rumble through the streets, as often as not spooking any horses or other animals that might be around.
One such autocar passed just as Termil tried speak up again, forcing him to hold his tongue till the dull roar of its engine passed. “Do you suppose they went back into the room they were in before? They probably wouldn’t suspect we would return so soon if at all, maybe we could hear more, or find out who it was.”
“I… hadn’t thought of that.” Anu’s frown vanished but the considering look still remained in her dark eyes.
Termil rubbed his arms absently. Late winter was still winter, and with the heat of their escape quickly fading, it was too cold yet to be out without a coat or jacket. He noticed ruefully that Anu showed no signs of being cold, despite being as lightly dressed as he was in that vest and blouse with just breeches and thin boots. He at least had a decently heavy apron and gloves. “I never repaired that pipe in any event, did I.” the steam technician mumbled to himself. Pulling himself off the ground, he glanced out of the alley down both ways along the road, though he had little notion of what he might have been looking for. Termil wound his way slowly back through the throng towards the academy in silence, though Anu was never more than a step behind him. She looked uncertain about returning but she continued to follow him so he continued as well.
Next thing he knew, Termil was glancing cautiously around the hallway one floor below where he and Anu had fled before. No one roamed the halls as was common just one floor below, and Termil waved to Anu that the coast was clear. Anxiously, they tiptoed into the hall and Termil had to remind himself that flattening himself up against the wall would not help anything. Nor would removing his boots, no matter how loud the sound of their hard soles on the tile floors seemed to sound to his ears. Carefully, they approached each door in the hall, but neither careful listening at the crack between the door and floor, nor an ear against the door itself revealed any activity behind any of the doors. Termil shrugged when Anu gave him a “what now?” glance.
“Might as well go back and see what I can do about that pipe I suppose,” he spoke quietly, even though he knew there was no one else about. Anu only nodded grimly.
Inspecting the hall the same way he had the floor below, and finding the same result, Termil and Anu returned to the hole in the wall where they had left it and set about the repairs. Anu never said anything else, but she handed him tools as he asked for them and otherwise kept a close watch on the hall. In one corner of his mind that was not racing over everything that had happened in the last few minutes, he was just glad that Anu’s hostility towards him had all but been forgotten.
