1        Soul Bound

1.3      Making a Splash

1.3.2    An Allotropic Realignment

1.3.2.19 Etaoin

Wellington thought for a moment, and then produced a shiny sheet of metal from his stash which he placed flat upon a bench before drawing his Athame from its sheath.

Wellington: “I shall create for you a sign. If you hang it at your entrance, beside the anchor and dolphin coin, every adventurer passing will know you have a cause that stands in need of aid.”

His athame was originally a reward from Lord Landi, a tool for rune mages that could cut any non-living material, and which incidentally protected his thoughts from being spied upon. It was the former functionality he now called upon, using careful precise strokes to etch deeply into the metal a swirling three-sided design: the triskellion the Wombles had chosen as the symbol for the Adventurers Guild. Not as polished an item as Alderney might have produced, but good enough.

She felt Alderney’s absence. Alderney was her BFF but even she hadn’t realised quite how central her vivacity and skills were to the way their group functioned until Alderney wasn’t with them. She’d make her a special cake, next time she had a chance to cook. You can never go wrong with showing someone that you appreciate them.

Cardano: “Thank you. Thank you more than I can say. If you’ll excuse me for a few minutes, I’ll go hang it up straight away, and then you can call upon any deities who’ll listen.”

He strode out, cuddling the metal plate in his arms.

Tomsk: {What’s a faction? Is it just a group you can gain reputation with?}

Bungo: {Factions only get created when there are wars or other long term conflicts, and supporting one side has the effect of reducing the chances the other sides have of winning. In this case, the opposing faction would be people who support the existing system of guilds retaining strong control over who can learn skills and earn a living in regulated professions. People like Lord Pantalone.}

Kafana: {Sounds similar to the Hexoikos hoarding access to reliable information in arlife.}

Tomsk: {What about companies that research and build new types of weapon as fast as they can, with thought only for their profits rather than the long term impact upon species survival? Do we really want to say “no more secrets”? Information may want to be free, in the same way that water ‘wants’ to run down a hill, but if you suddenly demolish all the dams then you are the one responsible for the death of every person drowned by the unanticipated flood of water that results.}

Kafana: {Um, I don’t know? Which side should we be on?}

Bulgaria: {Some of the things the current guild system does, such as certifying levels of expertise and representing the interests of their members, is of general benefit. Other things are neutral or worse, such as aiding this city at the expense of other cities and the risk of knowledge being lost. Or increasing the prices their members can charge by limiting the number of apprentices they accept each year. Cardano isn’t advocating abolishing all guilds, just reforming one aspect of the current system - the partisan way they demand control over who may share the knowledge needed to craft items of quality - items that are beautiful and well made, items that help farmers and factory workers carry out their work safely and more effectively, items that shelter people and bring them joy, items that people can’t live without.}

Kafana: {So don’t publish a guide for assassins on the best way to poison every well in Torello, or promote a method of turning corpses into bombs that only Vampires can use? But if such knowledge is an implication of a general article about chemistry or necromancy, that can also have beneficial uses, then gamble on the good guys out numbering the bad guys, or having the coordination needed to achieve greater good using the knowledge, than any devastation the bad guys are likely to manage given the same book?}

Bungo: {I get the impression that Grand Master level mages can destroy an entire city just as thoroughly as if a nuclear weapon had been dropped on it. But a random person couldn’t do the same, even if told exactly how to do it. They’d need high stats, levels and elemental attunements. They’d need skills developed through experience using them.}

Bulgaria: {The same goes for a low level thief who tried visiting every well in the city after learning the recipe for an ultimate poison. Not only would they need to brew it correctly; they’d need to sneak around without being detected by wards, alerting the danger sense of guards, or being discovered by high level seers, mind mages and divinely inspired priests. And that same poison might be just what’s needed to save a different city from an invasion of giant moles. You can’t always tell in advance how useful or dangerous a piece of information will be, because the context changes. You have to have faith.}

Wellington: {Or, as Cardano might put it, take an educated risk upon the value of education.}

Kafana: {Ok, I’m sold. I’ve seen too many examples today, just here in the Ghetto, of prejudice and ingrained disadvantage being perpetuated by illiteracy and uneven access to the means of improving yourself. Did anyone else get the impression that most of the apprentices Beadle Ermo was accustomed to lording it over, were unable to read his safety booklets and the employment contract they signed?}

Bungo glanced around, but not even Tomsk had any more reservations.

Bungo: {That’s unanimous then. Or nearly. Alderney! Oh, she’s muted us. Hang on, I’ll buzz her.}

Kafana wandered over to the wall where completed galleys were arranged, and amused herself by looking at the densely labelled woodcut illustrations for the Encyclopedia, trying to guess which profession each device came from before allowing herself to look at the title. A few moments later, Alderney’s voice joined them in the group’s private chat channel.

Alderney: {What’s up? Ingto is going to demonstrate his device, but he’s still calibrating the relative intensity of the red and green lanterns. I think he needs more boric acid, so I’ve a minute or two.}

Wellington: {We’ve picked up a faction quest. People in favour of letting Guilds exert control over who crafting techniques are shared with, versus people supporting the publishing of all scientific and crafting knowledge, regardless of Guild opinion. Which side do you favour?}

Alderney: {Publish and be damned. Censors should be burned.}

Bungo: {Ok, thanks. I rather thought you’d be on that side, but I wanted to check before we took an official stand. It’s unanimous. The Wombles are in favour of the Encyclopedia Project.}

Bulgaria: {Will that hamper our creating the Adventurer’s Guild? We did promise Pantalone that we’d work within the framework of the existing guild system, and use the Adventurer’s guild to exert control over adventurers releasing new ideas willy-nilly, without thought to the consequences for Torello’s stability.}

Wellington took Bulgaria aside and the two of them discussed the problem, leaving Tomsk to join Kafana looking at illustrations and Bungo to indulge his curiosity. Kafana half listened in.

Bungo: {What’s Ingto’s device do?}

Alderney: {It’s great. Mazoni asked him to create a way of applying a layer of clay to an item before quenching, that’s thicker over the parts that need slow cooling, and thinner elsewhere. Normally the clay would be brushed on by a skilled smith who could alter it to suit the shape and metal of each item, but Mazoni is fixed upon making lots of identical items. She demanded that precisely the same spread of clay be applied each time, and that it be done in such a way that the thickness profile can be specified once by her, then carried out by a worker with lower skill levels.}

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Bungo: {Ingto managed it?}

Alderney: {He’s an alchemist. He created a semi-transparent clay, and bounces red light off the item covered in it, to form an image on a membrane. The green light shines through a glass template that records the ideal version - the pattern produced by the original sample Mazoni coated. When both images are projected onto the same membrane then, if the coating is perfect, they overlap to produce a uniform yellow. If the coat is too thick or thin at one point, the red light passing through that bit of clay is weaker or stronger than expected, highlighting the problem by changing the colour of that part of the membrane.}

Bungo: {So an entirely non-magical solution?}

Alderney: {It has to be. Every time magic gets used directly by a human, the strength depends upon the person’s will, visualisation and mana. It’s impossible to replicate in a consistent way and prevents you spotting patterns in the variations. It would be like carrying out an experiment to test gravity by dropping 10 apples to see which way they fall, and discovering that 3 of them float upwards because that’s what a nearby child expects will happen on Tuesdays.}

Bungo: {It’s that bad?}

Alderney: {It’s worse than that. It is self reinforcing. You remember Giare mentioning a failure when crafting panchellium had produced tungsten? I wondered if some sort of radioactive decay was taking place, so I asked about elements created during failed attempts with other magic metals.}

Bungo: {Was there a pattern?}

Alderney: {Sort of. Fails with hepatizon sometimes produce enormous amounts of lead. Astarium might be associated with iron, or maybe osmium - their alchemy isn’t that accurate and the quantities were minute. I actually got to see the crystals left over by the explosion of a nearly-completed ghost sword, that killed a hermit smith when she was interrupted by rampaging ice wyrms 5 months into a winter-long solo forging ritual that only permitted light from the aurora borealis. Mazoni has an amazing collection, and she knows the ghoulish details of every death.}

Bungo: {Does she warm up, once she gets to know you?}

Alderney: {Nope, she’s still as cold as an ice wyrm. And I’m still clueless. The crystals were zirconium I think, though I’d like confirmation from your harvesting skill. However even if they were, and if every manaccium fail produces the same thing, is that because that’s what smiths now expect to happen? I’ll send you the raw data, in case the deities send you an answer in a dream, but it has me baffled.}

Bungo: {Do you still think radioactive decay is a possible explanation?}

Alderney: {It would need to be a magic version of radioactivity that doesn’t poison everyone. And mass would need to be conserved, which I can’t disprove because the amount of magic metal varies between alloys and isn’t recorded in the stories, and because tektine can alter how much weight a mass produces. Possible? Sure. Likely? I’m leaning against it - you’d be talking isotopes with crazy numbers of neutrons, if you want to conserve both mass and the number of protons.}

Bungo: {So no leads yet?}

Alderney: {Nope. It’s fascinating, but my current best guess is that the combat balance guys told the world building team what effects they wanted too late to make it flow naturally from the fundamental rules of the sim, leaving the only underlying explanation as ‘magic happens’. Got to go!}

By the time Cardano returned, Kafana had decided what she could get away with in terms of long term reinforcement magic, without risking a permanent loss to herself that would be the price required for creating a permanent blessing.

Kafana: “Wellington, I’m thinking the best bet for a long term impact would be either crafting an item or establishing a ward, and I’d rather not try item creation without Alderney here.”

Wellington: “Our vessels have done a lot of practice together with basic Reality magic, shaping stone into foundations and constructing buildings from Vitruvian templates. We’ve not tried altering existing buildings, but I know how to go about it in theory. What effect do you want the ward to have, and what will power it?”

Kafana: “I’m thinking of a passive effect, limited to the space inside a circle that we mark around each press. Could we use power from the workers operating it, or the movement of the press itself?”

Wellington: “We’d be better off using a mana source with symbolism that fits the effect.”

He turned to Cardano.

Wellington: “Do you have any trees or sources of water? Any high windy spires or hot furnaces?”

Cardano: “There’s a drainage channel passing underneath Rustichello‘s building next door. I had a mage map the path for me, all the way from the stockyards to the sewers, when I was considering using a water wheel to power the press.”

Bungo: {I always knew newspapers ran on bullshit!}

Wellington: “Not perfect, but it might work. Reinforcement magic is Cov-Mor aligned. Water for Mor and order for Cov. I can inscribe an orderly geometric pattern to use as the ward’s boundary, so we have both sources.”

They went through to inspect the presses and were introduced to the journeymen who positioned the forme above the platen rail, the muscular inkers who turned the screws, the loaders who fed the big sheets of paper onto the platen before pushing it into place, and the dryman who retrieved the damp results and hung them in rows until certain they wouldn’t smudge.

Bungo brought one of the inkers to her attention, who’d been introduced as Etaoin. He was in his mid 20s and didn’t stand out particularly, having a prematurely receding hairline, looks that were average if trustworthy, and a smile that was wide but displayed slightly uneven teeth. The sort of person she wouldn’t look at twice or wonder about, when passing them in a street. Was he one of the apprentices Bungo had been chatting with outside the Do Mori tavern?

Bungo: “Keep an eye on this guy. He lectured us extensively about the traditions associated with Flonking: how to salute your driveller, when to settle for a mather in order to avoid being swadged, and when to flonk for a wanton. It wasn’t until after half of us had placed a girter pot upon our heads for our initiation as Dwile Knights, that a barmaid took pity upon us.”

Etaoin shook his head sadly: “A fool I am, to not have crossed her palm with silver.”

Bungo: “Turns out the pot the girter must quaff from normally resides under a chamber’s bed for emergency night time use, and that the ‘tradition’ started only last week when Etaoin invented the drinking game.”

Etaoin: “What of it? I never claimed it to be an ancient tradition, and all traditions must start somewhere. An honour it is for you, to be in at the start of a prank that brings but laughter to the lasses and an excuse to drink for the hard working. Would you deprive our lives of all levity? If you feel too foolish I have a sovereign remedy for you: spread this noble art; for if all stand equal in their folly, none shall name it so.”

Bungo started nodding in agreement and looked ready to follow Etaoin’s every command, despite Tomsk nudging him and whispering. Then Bulgaria spoke up.

Bulgaria: “Bungo, Bungo, if you don’t even notice when an Enthrall skill is being used upon you, you’re becoming way too reliant on the enchanted armour borrowed from the Sanctum. Carry on like that, and you’ll find yourself agreeing that rats are an endangered species and that you’re the logical choice to paint them with identity numbers.”

The rebuke was stinging, and Bulgaria put so much disdain and arrogance into his voice, that Kafana thought even the floorboards might melt. The charm broke.

The expression on Bungo’s face, as he faced Etaoin, changed from trusting to aggrieved.

Bungo: “Trying to fool me a second time? Have you no shame?”

Etaoin: “Says the fellow who has just asked us all to stand in a circle around a printing press and hold hands, while a blue haired lady sings at us? You’re sure a student named Marcello didn’t put you up to this?”

Kafana: “Peace. We mean you no harm, and have not been influenced by Marcello. In fact, if he’s the lad who was beaten in the volleyball tournament and who spent time playing cards when he was meant to be testing the attunements of new mages, I believe the closest I came to him was when I sent him diving behind cover in order to avoid me blowing his head off.”

Etaoin grinned, revealing a wolfish charisma lurking under the bland face he’d previously presented. “Well now, and that’s a tale I’d like to hear. Holding hands it is; and when you’re finished, I know a quiet place we can chat.”

Bungo sounded suspicious: “What about?”

Etaoin spread his hands, as if the answer should be obvious: “What else? The Greatest Game!”