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Save Point: Vermilion Dragon

Veritask Trade City

Some of the people, presumably the wealthier fraction, have had mods installed, either before the tech embargo kicked in or perhaps by getting around it somehow, so whilst the clusters near the docks are mostly human, it's only mostly. This is one of the more remote areas that are still part of the Azatlani outlying territories, which is why he picked it - it's the ideal incursion point to get in, without any awkward questions being asked, after which he can move around freely. The people here barely miss the technologies they once theoretically had access to, because they never really had much access to them anyway.

Trade still has to occur of course, even in an outlying region, and this is to his advantage. They've pared down the methods being used to a minimum, but you can still get a lot done, even with the same technologies available to their rival power, the Rama Empire. He sees various multi-purpose 'jackal engines' in use, although they're probably called something else here, simple combustion-powered rotary generators that can be connected to anything else by a continuous strap, to push and pull or simply to provide energy. The remnants of a partial electrification of the town can be seen in the form of a network of wiring, now badly spliced and neglected, crawling like a creeping vine around the more essential industrial buildings just off from the docks.

Veritask is the least of the seven officially recognized trade cities, but acts as a hub for everything going on a much wider region, for which it's the primary access to trade routes and the sea. Small but high value cargoes of all sorts trickle in, sometimes having being carried great distances over remote terrain, and then get stacked together in a ships hold and sent off to the other cities, or to the central administrative province, the inner region with its unrestricted technologies.

A surprisingly large part of what gets sent is either luxury biologicals (scents, spices, extracts and oils) or rare minerals of one kind or another. The inner province has active nanotech, assemblers that can build any item from raw materials, and this skews the deliveries toward things which are very complicated and difficult to exactly duplicate, or minerals rich in obscure elements for which you'd need to disassemble, say, city blocks worth of raw stone to get a few grams. There's also the question of speed, because the nanotech can only build things so fast, and is more expensive than basic industrial techniques. The nearer trade cities supply large quantities of foodstuffs, because it's still quickest and cheapest just to grow bulk biomass that doesn't need much processing, but if something is to make a profit coming from Veritask, it needs to solve complex equations of weight versus allowed technologies. Gemstones are worthless, because they're so easy to make; platinum group metals, on the other hand, are worth their weight. Whether a material is economical or not may depend on whether it can disassemble into clean feedstock that is useful for other purposes, or will be a pain to get rid of except with much further processing.

~*~

At the quay, two local toughs are having at one another on the docks in a fistfight, cheered on by the crew of moored ships nearby as they try to throw each other down. It's not completely clear whether they're sailors from rival crews or maybe former Azatlani soldiers, because both of them have an exaggerated level of muscle definition that could come from hauling at cargo with a basic block and tackle rig, or just as a clumsy side-effect of one of the earlier versions of augmentation issued within the Azatlani military. It could even be a little of both, or one of each.

Everyone is enjoying the free entertainment precisely up until one of the opponents gets not so much hurled as dragged into a stumbling run and crashes through a stack of flimsy packing crates and barrels, smashing them to flinders. This is not as impressive as it sounds because a standard cargo crate of the sort used to transport Azatlani goods to low-tech areas is a sort of light-weight balsa-wood box of fixed size, mostly lent strength by its own contents, and since these are empty and battered after too many runs, they break easy. Proper steel shipping containers are reserved, these days, for internal trade within the central area of the technological embargo.

Once things that are potentially worth money, even if very little, start to get broken it's no longer fun and games, and a nearby ships bo'sun is on them in a second, dragging them off each other as they try to re-engage. Well-organized wharf security, which seems to be an extension of the towns guard, appears shortly to take the combatants to their separate corners and give them some time to calm down. It's instructional to watch, because it shows how humans really fight (different to in their games and movies, less clean and more struggling, lots of cheap kicking) and also gives an idea of how fast the guards are likely to respond if he accidentally breaks some sort of law (quite alarmingly fast; there must be existing issues with odd distractions being staged to steal goods, or something else like that - they're really onto it).

The fighter in red somehow manages to persuade his guards that he's not especially dangerous, through a gift of gab or plain good looks or something, and they straighten him up a bit and dust off his shoulders, loosening their grip enough to let him lean back, half-seated, against a barrel and ignite a cigarette with a silvery lighter from somewhere inside his robe. He makes a dramatic gesture out of it, bursting a flame up directly in front of his face with a swirl of hands, as though he'd conjured it himself, then inhales the smoke with satisfaction.

It doesn't seem to have been a malicious fight, more a demonstration of strength and resilience.

The other fighter, dressed similarly but in white, is still arguing with his captors but not putting up any sort of specific fight as they escort him steadily further away down the length of the docks, trying to get some distance between the two, maybe take him back to his own ship. He'll be back again at some point eventually, just probably not today.

~*~

"We're technically a windjammer, although only of moderate size," explains Mariel. "That means we're cargo optimized, rather than for pure speed. We're still a hell of a lot quicker than just about all everything else in the nearby ocean, because the hull is better designed and has a layer of steel inside it, although the decking and fittings are still all made of wood. It's entirely a product of the reversal of policy designed to deny Azatlani technology to non-trusted surrounding nations."

Sethkill has heard a little about this, but manages to look interested at the right places, and so she continues. "We are, or were, a trading empire of course," she elaborates. "A thalassocracy. Started with small purely wooden-hulled ships, trading things back and forth with anyone we could get a good deal with. Thalassocracies never dominate interiors, is the conventional wisdom, but if you look at the shape of the landmasses around us, that's not a problem. Our core nation was never all that big, but it gradually spread outward by controlling a series of client states, threatening them with navies and rewarding them with ample supplies of food and trade goods. As we went further the ships got better in design and material. More efficient long-thread Peruvian cotton sails, iron scantlings, copper hull-plating from Michigan, stuff like that.

"After we went fully industrial they built steam and internal combustion ships, culminating in the final nuclear corsair class which was supposed to give us regional dominance. But that started to fall apart when they got all overly ambitious and dispatched them as a fleet, with some misguided idea of essentially franchising out the empire and setting up a second branch in the Middle Sea, so we could spread our glorious way of life to the poor benighted locals. It wasn't a completely awful idea, since the ratio of coast to ocean was about the same, but it went down about as well as you'd expect and yeah, I'll admit it, we lost to a bunch of primitive Achean barbarians. They wanted us gone and were more than willing to kill themselves and everyone else to see the back of us. It was an embarrassing reversal and bought in the current general era of techno-conservatism, in which our glorious leaders have decided that the primary strategy should be to deny everyone else any usefully reproducible technologies. While advancing our own and keeping them at home, until we have an advantage so great that they can't possibly stop us the next time they try. They make lots of noises about creating a better world, by conquering it - one of these days, just not yet."

Sethkill tries to get her back on track from these political musings by asking, "But why Vermilion Dragon? And not, like, Indigo Dragon or something?"

"Real vermilion is ludicrously expensive," Mariel explains. "It's red stuff made from cinnabar and stunningly toxic. But you can synthesize azo dyes in a whole range of similar shades using organic chemistry, that cost almost nothing. So by painting up the bow and dying the sails, I intimidate the fuck out of any random piratically inclined idiots looking to prey on sea traffic to the seven trade cities. We don't have mounted heavy weapons, but thanks to the tech embargo, neither do they."

"Well, I suppose it has its upside," points out Sethkill. "You probably save an enormous amount on fuel by using sails instead of a full engine, and run almost as fast."

"Oh, there's plenty of technology aboard," points out Mariel, "just nothing especially useful to our enemies. The rigging is all steel cables handled by motorized electric winches, for example, with manual winding as an option if they fail. We have fish finders, lights, a small wet hold which keeps a cargo of fish or oysters alive in seawater, and so on. That's how we're able to run with such very small crews - in a conventional sailing ship, most of them are there to pull line and perform other manual tasks. Recommended for a windjammer like this is only thirty, and you can still run about twenty if you're willing to cut a few corners and leave maintenance for later. That's why we have enough spare capacity to take the occasional passenger back and forth, such as your good self."

~*~

Later, a squall comes over the city, producing a most peculiar effect at the docks, half of which at one end are bathed in the low golden light of the approaching sunset, while the other is under the shadow of the clouds and light rain falls, creating a crisp point of demarcation where droplets fall into the fine dust on the dry boards on only one side of an invisible line.

At the warmly lit end, a couple of local non-professional would be fisherman keep casting off the edge of the docks, hoping that the rain will trick the fish but refrain from drifting their way. It's not as if there's much likelihood they'll catch anything anyway in the inevitably somewhat dirtied waters of the port, but they keep trying, even as those more closely adjacent to the shower hasten to prepare various protective gear, umbrellas and awnings, raincoats and oilcloth. The wind picks up a little and sails ripple slightly at the edges, whilst more calculated trailers improvised from far longer and thinner pieces of cloth, tied to bowspirits and the edges of crossbeams to monitor the current of the air with their frayed edges, thrash about in the breeze.

"Are we still good to embark? Or disembark? Or whatever the verb form is for that?" Sethkill asks Mariel. He doesn't want to have to have to stay overnight in Veritask, to make arrangements, leave any more traces than are necessary. Finding a ship sailing today had seemed like a stroke of luck, but the weather seems to be worsening a little and he hadn't realized the changing of the tide was also going to be so late in the evening.

"No, this is good," corrects Mariel crisply, swift flicks of her pupils noting the behaviours of all the sheets stacked densely along a multitude of masts across the deck. They're not unfurled yet, but if they were, they'd catch almost every bit of the available motion. "This is desirable in fact. We'll be ready to go shortly, the weather is lining up quite well with the tides. We should be able to make a decent time back to Azatlan, it'll be a pretty straight shot if the winds hold up. Still take a few days mind you, but they picked the trade cities for a reason. Even if this is the most remote one, and it's hardly a popular destination anymore."

Orders are issued and ship-related things happen, mostly to do with making sure that all needed crew have been rounded up, all cargo items purchased and laden, and the cable-winding systems which automate the sail functions are all greased and spinning freely. There's lots of judgment call in it, which Mariel seems to be good at, somehow summing up enormous numbers of data points on a vast number of unrelated variables to work out the best moment to leave. Sails and line creak in mysterious ways under the weights of wind and movement, in a way that seems to make sense to her. It's quietly impressive how much she gets done by doing what looks like so little.

After final warnings have been shouted and they've pushed away from the dock with just a single sheet deployed, on the way out of the bay at an initially sedate speed, Sethkill finally gets a look at the prow of the competition, the ship the other sailor in the fight was from. It's called the 'Carrion Crow' which is not exactly a name he'd pick for a ship. It sounds like a threat or a provocation, or maybe even a veiled boast of some criminality, although it could also be the honest description of some trading strategy, designed to reliably pick up scraps from the big boys. Cultures, Keselt once told him, vary wildly in their naming conventions for ships and any other constructs large enough to need their own identity, and that's just on their world, not this one.

It's either not leaving today, though, or its ship-master has applied a different calculus of gain and loss, to leave at a later hour. All its sheets are still furled and it rocks peacefully at anchor, perhaps more a sleeping hyena that will prance in and snatch up whatever contracts the Vermilion Dragon hasn't had occasion to pick up and carry off, just as soon as they're out of sight. It would be unjust to read too much into the name - it's probably just a another trader, just like Mariel's own ship.

Once he gets bored with waves slipping past, and the ever-increasing amount of sail being laden on to constantly try and optimize their speed, which almost entirely blocks his view of about half the horizon, he heads back down to the tiny but entirely secure cabin she's assigned him. It has its own sliding bolt lock on the inside, and seems to be the same sort of space the crew get, perhaps is in fact a vacant berth from some maximum crew number which is never quite met. At least he's not stuck in some sort of awkward double-bunked or multiply-hammocked arrangement. The fact that he can lock himself in with a simple mechanical device that is not susceptible to being hacked in any way, shape or form, does wonders for his confidence.

~Are You Sure You Wish to Travel To: Azatlan City Main Sea-Gate?~

Yes <> No

~World Event: Something Stupid~

"What do you think you're doing?" demands Mariel over the bellow of the gale.

"Something stupid!" Sethkill shouts unhelpfully back.

"Well, yes, but what sort of stupid, exactly? I can't let you do anything that might endanger either the ship, the crew, or yourself. I'm supposed to firmly order you back inside!"

"I'm trying to cast a spell of storm-quelling! But I only ever saw it once in a book!"

"That really is very stupid! Do you think it will work?"

"I have no idea, I've never had a storm trying to kill me before!"

Mariel, despite herself, is intriugued. She knows an amazing range of sea-going superstitions and utterly mad ideas, mostly designed to attract good luck and steady winds or avert misfortune, but the drawing he's executing on the boards of the forecastle, using one extended claw-tip, no less, to somehow make the wood fibers contract on themselves around the point, is something she never saw before. Since sail has been significantly reduced to minimum handling levels, and she has the first mate currently at the wheel, she decides she'll let him try it, mainly because if it all suddenly blows up in his face, the nearest canvas is far away and covered in water.

The fact that he's basically doing wood-carving with his bare fingertip, and that the letters or the symbols or whatever it is he's drawing form even under seawater as it sluices past intermittently, may or may not indicate that this is a good idea. Yes, it definitely proves that he can do something, but it may also mean that having everything wet won't necessarily help if it goes wrong.

"So how does this work, anyway?"

"A storm is a chaotic system, obviously. I mean, you probably grasp that better than most people! The whole storm has too much energy in it to stop, but it contains attractors and singularities, the points at which it's most or least dangerous! What I'm trying to do is nudge it a little bit, so it just conveniently happens to have most or all the safest bits near us!"

An especially large wave goes at them sideways, and Sethkill has to grab something and hang on especially tightly for a moment as the spray of it splash damages its way past them.

"...that sounds a bit dodgy!" Mariel manages to reply on the second attempt, spitting out brine. "A lot of margin there for taking the credit and dodging the blame!"

"I know! I'm extremely curious to see whether it'll work! What you do is draw the glyphs, which are supposed to attune you to all the movements of the water, the air, and the storm itself, ideally whilst out in the storm if at all possible so you can feel it. Then these ones here, in-between them, they represent the nodes and anti-nodes, whatever you want to call them, formed by the systems as they interact. Finally you place something with lots of free energy in the middle, like a burning brazier or something, the more energy the better, and impose your will on the system, using that energy to give it a gentle nudge in the right direction!"

Some of the word's he's using are in a language Mariel doesn't recognize, presumably because he doesn't know the right equivalent in Azatlani, but there's enough in there for her to guess most of it and, more importantly, to recognize 'burning' and 'brazier' or their synonyms.

"No way am I letting you ignite something on fire on a wooden ship!" she growls, swaying from a line. "You get back in here right now, dammit!"

"I have something a lot better, and much safer!" Sethkill shouts back. 'The only thing in danger if I get it wrong is the open sky. It's the storm that will sink your ship and kill all of us!"

She looks out on the swirling sky, and feels a sudden hatred for it. It's not like there's a swirling eye handily out overhead nearby to glare at, and if there was they'd probably already be in far too serious a level of danger to even go out on deck, but the storm is gradually overtaking them and she hasn't been able to slip it using the backup electric engines and as much sail as she still dares. A truly wooden ship would have gone under by now, but the steel underpinnings of the hull keep it in one piece, even in conditions that would have terrified early sailors.

She can however see at least three or four mini-tornadoes, waterspouts, out there roaming about within the limits of visibility. If one of those happens to spawn nearby, or right on top of them, it'll be game over regardless of their ability to weather the main storm.

"Fine, do it!" she shouts on impulse. "But only because I want to see what happens! If you damage my boat I'll make you sand out the dents! Even if it's underwater!"

Sethkill flicks her a hand gesture she doesn't recognize, which seems to indicate the affirmative, and finishes the drawing, makes a few minor corrections, then grasps as firmly as he can with one hand, closes his eyes and begins chanting in that same language she doesn't recognize. This must be the attunement stage of the proceedings. The shanty is a strange recursive thing which iterates through itself in several cycles of various lengths, like waves overlapping, and doesn't seem to end properly at any specific point but just keeps going. It makes her think about myths regarding how the seventh or ninth wave is the biggest or most unstoppable one, even though there's never any real indication as to how or when you should start counting. The diagram has seven points, if you count the center, but the song has three groups of three iterations which would be nine. Or maybe it doesn't really matter, and it's all in the head of whoever is doing the spell, and they just need to convince themselves most of all.

One the chant has stabilized and become strangely in sync with everything going on around it, in the snarl of the wind and the dashing of waves, Sethkill reaches with his spare hand for the staff which is strapped to his back, grasps it firmly, wiping off his palm so it can't slip away and escape, and flicks a small hidden switch built into the grip. There is a distinct whining sound of something starting to power up, and a glow begins to radiate in a small sphere around the decorative crystal at the tip, above the red enamel-and-gold decoration that wraps the grip. The moisture content of the air blurs it into a diffraction halo, always facing the viewer like a streetlight in the fog, though she can't escape the thought that normal light shouldn't look quite like that.

As the sound reaches its maximum and begins to fade, he spins the staff around single-handed, to slam it down into the glyph at the center, still with his eyes closed but with perfect accuracy. This triggers the concealed firing pin, normally always depressed and locked to prevent damage, and a spear of light bursts into the heavens, burning away the cloud cover where it hits and illuminating the storm from the inside out. Mariel shades her eyes to avert the flash.

The weapon-disguised-as-a-tool is supposed to have a decent number of shots in it, admittedly as heavily upgraded from a prop, producing a range of special effects, to the real deal. Nonetheless it seems to have something wrong with it, as sparks flow like contained lightning up and down the length of the bar, creating a faint coronal discharge around the edges and even more so at the top, where its point of emission resembles a rising corposant, casting additional pale light sideways to illuminate Sethkill's closed eyes. Perhaps storm or seawater has gotten inside the casing, creating some subtle short. He doesn't seem to be able to let go, fingers maybe seized firmly closed by the steadily increasing discharge, until suddenly it burns out abruptly and the dark of storm returns, extending outward in all directions. Then he curses, grabs at it with both hands so he won't drop it, and hastily dashes back away from the forecastle toward the main deck before another risen or fallen wave can sweep him away.

Mariel helps him, in a familiar reflex, by grabbing his weakened right arm and drawing him to her so they both have a firmer grip, then helps them both back to the nearest deck hatch and safety.

"Well, that was something to see!" she shouts jovially at him, as she hauls him back inside, where he has a little trouble descending the ladder first, using his left arm for the staff as well, with the elbow of his right hooked over the rungs for an additional point of stability. Above him, she preps the hatch to slam it closed behind her, leaving them in a ringing silence compared to the storm he was trying to internalize just a minute or two before. "I'm guessing it went wrong?"

"Maybe," Sethkill concedes, leaning back sort of half-seated to brace himself against a bulkhead to avoid being thrown around, and shaking his hand up and down furiously to get the feeling back as one is prone to do after getting zapped by an electrical appliance. "I mean it definitely did use up all of the available power. I just can't tell whether it was because it worked, or because I left a gap in the sealant somewhere, and it shorted out. It's probably for the best that I never tried to wade through a river with it or something, that could have gotten a bit shocking."

"It was still awesome!" Mariel compliments him. "That was one of the cooler moments of my life. Like something out of an old movie, all gods and sorcerors. I won't report your concealed weapon, if you don't mention my egregious breach of company safety guidelines."

"Deal," agrees Sethkill, wincing slightly when she makes a point of shaking his zapped hand.

"Did you know that there's a legend about ball lightning, when you see it on the mast at sea? They call it corposanti, meaning 'sacred body', and if it rises, like your one did, it means there'll be fine weather coming. If it sinks and falls to the deck, it means the reverse. But if the light from it shines on you, that's always unlucky, and portends misfortune on the voyage."

"If we don't break up and go under, I can take a little misfortune," calculates Sethkill. "At least it'll mean I do get there eventually."

"Well said. I have to get back to the wheel. Please try to make it back to quarters without tripping, falling, or zapping anything else. I'm going to try getting us out of this by hard work and skill."

~*~

Whether Sethkills ritual has worked or not, something new has broken after she gets back to the wheel-house, and she keeps finding more and more pathways between wind and waves, gradually gaining a bit at a time instead of losing ground, devising inspired arrangements of the little sail in play that they can safely deploy. Ever so slowly, they pull free of the storm and it runs past them.

The first mate reports an amazing display of lightning up-front earlier, but doesn't seem to have connected it to their errant passenger, assuming that she must have gotten him inside just before it happened, rather than being the cause. Of course, he was a little busy try to keep them all afloat at the time, so it can hardly be considered a failure of attention.

The sky still looks bruised in the distance, but the sea is stable and built of regular swells, by the time they get fully back on course for Azatlan. The headings have to be recalculated slightly, but it hasn't caused any significant delay, and there's no really serious structural damage, just a point or two where it might be desirable to add an additional weld or patch.

The wooden outers have fared better, by and large, than the rigid inner frame, as they have more flex to them. She can drop off their cargo, and troublesome passenger, then head to a drydock and repair facility outside the city proper, further down the coast, and get the whole thing assessed in the next couple of days, just to make sure no tolerances were exceeded. Without the cargo weight on board, it's about as safe as one could hope for under the circumstances, the notorious sudden weather changes of the triangle non-withstanding.

After all, what are the odds of lightning striking twice?