It seems like we’ll have eight subgroups, or cliques at this meeting. There’s me and Te, there’s the Triple L Squad, Kinzul is a group unto herself, Revvy and Greggy are here, our Dark and our Quick. Huh, their acronym is the DQ. Odd that that sends me into a minor brain BSOD. What was I—? Oh, right, that’s four of the subgroups. We’ve also got most of the Dormir, then most of the Vivant, then of course the strategists-eight themselves, and strangely enough, Shiz has shown up with Shaylon. I suppose they’ve been bonding while Boetah and Atter are busy with each other.
Hm, I think I’ve just thought up something that I want to make a prototype of for tonight. Since I’m going to be making scrying sensors, and a security station, I think I’d also like to create basically a heads-up display, or live-action cam, for those closest to me. If I create an adamantite goggle frame, and leave several convex, ultra-polished nubs, I can enchant those individual nubs to be sending-sensors. Essentially they’d be fish-eye lenses, giving a wide-angle shot of whatever the wearer is looking at. I could have them set to send to a translucent lens on other pairs of goggles, so that we could look in on each other. We could even pass notes by writing them out, and holding them in front of our goggles.
Crap on a cracker Reggie, you’re trying to invent a go-pro with magic. A what? Nevermind. Unbreakable goggles with a permanent occular enchantment linking them? You definitely have to prioritize that one. Te has been hurting so much as she tries to struggle through her tumultuous emotions over the recent events. It sucks that we can’t be there for her as much as we’d like, that we don’t have accelerated thinkspace, but being able to see the other’s field of vision is—. It’s going to be incredibly reassuring for us. If the proof-of-concept works, I’ll link more pairs together, for the triple L squad, Kinzul, the various subgroups and cliques, and so on.
The nice thing is, other than the crafting time, working with a legendary metal that I’ve never worked with before, there’s no real cost to making these. There isn’t even an S P cost as long as I don’t try to quicken the runic empowerments. If I’m placing those runic empowerments in myconid form, they’ll be applied incredibly swiftly with the like, what, nearly two dozen vine-tendril limbs. Hm, what? Oh, pay attention to the world around you Reggie. Right, right.
There are some subtle, breathy chuckles as the gathered attempt to hide their laughter as they read my inner narrative. Blushing, I scratch the back of my head and request, “Sorry, please come again? I’d gotten rather mentally sidetracked.”
Quipping and gesturing flamboyantly, Elshon responds, “We were saying, oh illustrious entertainer of enlightenment, that this meeting may end up more a Schism setup synopsis than a strategy situational statement. But please, don’t let that stop you, we’re *all* fascinated to see where your thoughts guide you. Truly.”
When Elshon winks at me, I find myself unsure if he’s implying anything in an entendre sense, but I don’t have the spare brainpower to make considerations towards that line of thought at the moment. Despite wanting to only make proof of concept, I think I actually should go ahead and make an entire security center tonight. The strategists-eight would be the *perfect* people to run the security center. It could operate like a phone-switching station, only it’d be video instead of audio. Well, technically audio can come through too, but I don’t know how to adjust volume or anything, and having dozens of mirrors broadcasting the sound from dozens of locations at once would just, erm, not be all that beneficial.
Still, if instead of personal goggle to goggle scrying sensors, I rather set up all the goggles to peer back to the security center, then any time one of us wrote a message for one of the others, whomever is attending the security center could copy down that note and pass it along to the intended recipient. The outer nubs on the goggles will send back to particular mirrors set up in an array at, well, perhaps this room. The lenses will have a translucent display of this room, from sending-mirrors set up on the opposite wall, that face the security center, so that we can get a bit of a look at what’s going on for everyone, all at once, and any particular messages can be passed on to us individually.
Stroking my chin, I nod along with myself, which must seem horribly conceited, but I can’t spare it any thought at the moment. To be able to have instant relay of tactical information, and ongoing battle, to the entire rest of the order would be a massive boon. There’d be no more surprises of people coming home injured and us not being prepared to treat them properly. Well, at least for the non-shapeshifters. I don’t know yet how to perfectly create a size-changing enchantment. I have the spell, but I don’t understand how Can’Z’aasian equipment applies it in a way that lets items change shape and size at the wielder’s whims.
If I could get in touch with Errissa, we’d have all of her spying and scouting information before she even had to send word back through her scout network. Regardless, I definitely want one on Miraina. Despite having provided her with ample sorceress powers in the recent mind-link, she’s still an incredibly valuable asset, and vulnerable individual. She’s tiny, and squishy as far as combat is concerned. If the strategists-eight had constant access to her visual stream, we’d always be able to get to her at a moment’s notice if she stumbled across something too tough for her to handle by herself. I’m going to want more of Mount Solace labeled though. We’ll need to paint some numbers in various hallways, simply so that when someone is zooming around Mount Solace, if something happens to them, we can get a read on where they last were at a glance. I’m fairly positive I can set up the scrying sensors to be able to roll back up to an hour of viewing.
Let’s see, let’s start a list.
1. Create spare Can’Z’aasian System Shops.
2. Create prototype adamantite goggles.
3. Enchant goggles with incoming scry on lenses, and outgoing scry on the exterior surfaces.
4. Enchant paired mirrors for a security center in Solace, and additional mirrors as needed.
5. Label more of Mount Solace.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
6. Set up a security center, including several mirrors at key stationary points in Solace.
7. Gather volunteers to helm the security center.
8. Disseminate goggles, instructions, and the like.
Was I going to be doing anything else this eve? This will keep me incredibly busy, even with the advantage of the myconid form. It’ll take me several hours of iterating on a headset, or goggles, or circlet, and so-on. Once I’ve done that, making several more could take a couple more hours, depending on possible available help. Enchanting them, if I’ve still got myconid-form time available, should only take a few minutes per, but then I’ll also be enchanting two mirrors per set, as well as several additional mirror pairs for around Solace itself. Perhaps I shouldn’t engage myconid-form until after I’ve got the prototype made. I’m not as smart without it though, I’d need someone more mechanically minded, one that can see how pieces fit together and—. Nala. I need Nala.
Hm. How many mirrors am I going to need to have enchanted? How many goggles? I think I should perhaps make a set for every prominent order member, though I’ll likely hold off on the full suite of enchantments on them for the dragons, until after I figure out size-changing permanency enchantments. Considering those of us who don’t frequently change our size to large degrees, there’s Lu, Te, me, Ahliyui, Ahliyuri, Errissa, the strategists-eight, Miraina, and Nala. That’s sixteen there. Then let’s see, for dragons, we’ve got Lady Kinzul, the Dormir, the Vivant, Kagired, Gresog, Revinth, Shaylon, Boetah, the Queens, Atter, Shiz, Ixey, Zayzi, Lil. I know tactically Ixey and Zayzi might seem unimportant to the strategists and others around the room, but they’re friends, and their safety is important to me. Twenty or twenty-one more when counting the dragons. Jeeze. Thirty-six or thirty-seven sets of goggles, seventy-two to seventy-four sets of mirrors before the paired pairs of mirrors I want to have done for Solace itself.
Let’s see, the myconid form can do a single mirror in about forty-eight to ninety-six seconds, with some lag time for making sure I’ve got the materials prepped and on hand. Say about a hundred seconds per. Seventy-two hundred seconds is, hm about two hours, just for the mirrors alone. I can actually multitask several of them at once, but we’re just doing a baseline amount of work-power hours needed to complete the tasks. The goggles however will each take two enchantments, and require much more fine motor precision control, requiring the micro-tool-tendril-tips to etch and enchant the miniature scrying sensors. Say about four times the length of time for the external outgoing enchantment, so about four hundred seconds per goggle on the external, though the internal should only take about ninety six to a hundred seconds per. So say five hundred seconds per goggle, at thirty six or so goggles, about eighteen-thousand seconds. That’s around five hours or so. Seven hours between all of the things, not counting additional mirrors for Mount Solace itself.
Oof, I’d be pushing the myconid form pretty hard again, after already abusing it through the artifact. I should really only engage it for about five hours tonight, at most. I also want to make certain I get the shop stalls done, and I’d like anywhere from four to eight of them, but it’ll take me about an hour apiece. I can -technically- do the carpentry without the myconid form. It doesn’t add that much to my construction capabilities. Hell, I can even subcontract that out completely if we’ve got woodworkers and carpenters available. I’m not sure I’m ready to entrust the Can’Z’aasian Carpentry Kit to someone else just yet, but we might need to. Though, to do that, we’d need the myconid-form to spend about an hour creating blueprints for other carpenters to act on. Still, that saves us up to eight to ten hours if we let someone else build all the shops.
I suppose if I prioritize only one set of goggles per group or clique as far as the dragons are concerned, that saves quite a large number that can be done at a later date, since I can’t fully commit to them right yet anyway. That’d only be about eight goggles for the dragons of Mount Solace, in addition to the sixteen for the Draconiacs, or the SAP, twenty four goggles, and forty eight mirrors. A bit over three hours for the goggles, and an hour and twenty minutes for the mirrors. About four hours and forty minutes, leaving me enough time to create a few more paired mirrors for Mount Solace. Nice!
I forgot to include Lucky in the dragons and slash or shapechangers, but I’m also assuming that he’ll either be safe in Solace, or with Lu at all times. It’s eleven AM still? Good. Then in eight hours, I can utilize the myconid-form for five hours, and be wrapped up by midnight to be able to get a good sleep before the assault on Vorzog’s Keep. Hm, there’s still advantages I should look for, during the rest of the day, but—. Oh, right. Pay attention Reggie. I facepalm, realizing that I completely sidetracked myself from the strategy meeting, even if it has only been a couple of minutes of thought.
To my chagrin, I hear, “Astounding,” and “Marvelous,” and “Simply stupendous,” and “Wow,” from several of the strategists-eight who’d ridden my whirlwind of thoughts as I set up plans to create whole new systems of advantages for Solace. I technically am bringing us into the information-age, with magic. Still, I feel like an ass for not paying more attention to what’s going on around me. I understand why the residents of Solace think I look sleepy and lost all the time, when my brain is like this, trying to math out new tactics, advantages, abilities, utilities, powers, items, systems, and so-on and so-forth.
Gulping and blushing, I ask, “Would any of you be willing to volunteer to operate the security center in shifts, so that you had instant access to all information from all combata—.”
Every last strategist-eight member beams at me as they clamor over one another to accept the responsibility. I suppose that makes sense. It’s likely every strategist’s dream to have field-accurate information down to the individual unit level. With all eight of them taking shifts in pairs, no one needs to operate for too great a length of time, or overwork themselves. They might even be able to delegate some of the micro-responsibilities of the task to friends or family as well. They can probably swing shifts of which one of them stays up overnight if any of them want to, since we likely won’t conduct too many offensives that go past midnight. Though, I would like to start taking advantage of travel time to start taking down more lieutenants and lords amongst Terrorzin’s forces as we begin to range farther and farther.
Back to Solace though. I think we can label the tunnels with something along the lines of three digits, the first digit being the approximate floor or elevation number, hm, four digits. The first two would be the approximate floor or elevation number, while the last two digits could be the approximate location on a clock’s facing, if counting north to be twelve. There could even be a decimal for something like 0112.5 if there’s a 0112, and a 0101, and a tunnel between them.
Another bonus is, if we start getting some more security set up around Mount Solace, with scrying mirrors available in various locations, any general populace member that has need of an order member can hold a note up in front of a scrying sensor to get our attention at any time.