Athir of White Salt Flats's Story

The day was calm and bright with the dove grey threat of spring rains on the horizon. However, optimism drove the cleaning staff of the Academy in a bustle of activity with bedding being dragged out for wash, curtains pulled down for the same, and the floors denuded of their rugs which were destined for a proper beating. The hallways echoed with the domestic noises of spring even as the students of the Academy thought of nothing but winter. Not this last winter which gripped the world in an icy fist barely before autumn had ended and held on tenaciously well into the fourth month of the year. No, their minds went onto the next winter and the possibilities and promise, the threats that seemed as distant on this lovely day as they could be.

The war room was packed tightly with those working on the cannon project, gathered around a vast table littered with schematics, models, and example shells. Butter yellow sunshine poured through high windows stripped of their heavy drapery and voices echoed off the hard stone walls robbed of their weighty tapestries. A leather sign hung from a brass ring outside the door announced the room to be under the current ownership of the "The White Cannon Project".

Athir leaned over the immense table and set a dusky brown finger, smudged with charcoal now, onto a schematic and traced a strut along the flank of some low squat and vicious looking cannon.
"This worries me, look how thin it is." He scratched his thumbnail along the sketch and gave it the disapproving look one gives fallen souffles and torn shirt hems.
"The cannon will fire and place immense stresses upon these struts. If they break, we cannot aim. We cannot aim, we have a big cannon we hope the Ilth are generous enough to walk into." His voice was accented like those of the far south dry lands, the deep brown color of his skin giving further evidence that wheat blanketed lands such as Dulmur were not his home. He shook his head and pushed the sketch away.
"It must be redone." There was no other option in his voice and despite the groans around him, he stood resolute despite a worried glance shot left and right toward the negative reaction. A musical laugh off to his right caused him to furrow his brow in worry, turning to give the humored person an unhappy look. The one finding such joy was one who could find joy in a ten child funeral, the bright and airy Queensblood known as Limial.

"Oh Athir, you would not approve if the cannon was somehow able to go into the past and shook Arca on the eve of her creating the Ilth. " There was some laughter at her words and she grinned and wide and toothy grin as she lifted the schematic to hold before her chest. She was at her most brilliant in spring, hair transformed into stems flush with bright white blossoms, skin so green it ached the eye, and a scent of a garden fighting over the attention of bees. Spring made the Queensblood radiant but Althir could swear it also put them at their most immature and flighty. His only evidence was Limial, however.
"A vote then for who says we keep the cannon struts as they are and trust in my superior stoneworking...?"

Requin stared at the schematic that the queensblood held at her chest. Athir was right on one aspect, no matter how good the stone working was, the struts would not hold. However, Requin believed that another inch or two could easily solve the problem.

Pulling down his cloak's hood, as was traditional to him when he spoke. The head that was revealed had yellow eyes with slit pupils, two lines of black scales, which had a metallic sheen in the light, going up the side of his neck to the bottoms of each ear, and blonde looking short hair that seemed a part of his scalp. His face was as serious as Athir's with more of a calculating look to it.

Requin began "If I may have a few words. Athir, you are right, and wrong. Those struts will never hold, no matter the quality." He pointed to the struts as he continued to talk and drew on a copy of the schematics to show his idea. "The solution to that is far more simple than rebuilding the entire thing. All we would have to do is add an inch, or a few, onto the size of each strut." Requin then held up his version, who's only change was the thicker struts, in his black scaled hands.

When all the votes on ideas had been done, Requin took a step back from the table to put his hood back up before comeing back to the table.

Requin was just about to respond when the priest came into the room. While he felt no sympathy to the oppressing humans of the town that was destroyed, he worried about his kin in the larger cities. They only had their innate magic, but without a weapon strength and speed mean nothing. Then it hit him. A suggestion.

However, the question of his explosives weight still hung in the air. Once Requin deemed it to be appropriate to begin talking again, he stated "Depends on the variant. The lightest powder, firing a barrel every four shots, weighs only 10 pounds in a standard keg. The heavy powder, firing half as much at a higher power, weighs almost 80 pounds a keg. The range for the liquid ones, which are a middle ground, is about 30 to 60 pounds a keg, but they last significantly longer. May I also suggest a smaller, more mobile version be made for when things become rushed?"

Requin took a quick look over the plans, doing some calculations for a version that could be dropped on a mount. "If we reduce the size of the munitions to a quarter of its current diameter, we could easily make a reliable version that is only about 125 pounds that can be moved between mounts much more easily. However, we could expect a similar drop in power, and an increase in firing speed." Requin said as he showed his next set of plans, then added "Another draw back is that they would not be able to fire the heavy powder."

Requin noted the gesture to stay and went and sat in the chair that Athir had motioned to, making sure that his tail went out the side of the chair as not to be sat upon. Requin then looked at Athir and replied "First off, I am a city born. My time in the swamps was only about a year. I can also tell you that the swamp hides things far worse than ilth. Have you ever seen a plant eat a man whole, or a human suffer from swamp dots? I still wonder to this day whether the swamp was made so only the draekon could survive or the other way around." Requin then took a breath. "As to our origin..." He then raised his hand to show his scales. "My kind were made by the dragons. We have many champions who took part in our creation, but four who we know by name. Artiver, Soron, Hiwon, and Lupup are know as the main four or the 'Elemental Dragons.' That is why we all seem to want to go back to the swamp. It is believed that the dragons rest beneath its crust, and such draws us to guard them."

Requin took the offered piece of cake, looked it over, took a few small curiosity bites before taking normal sized bites. Requin then found a level of words to say. "No more blind then when the humans invaded the swamps, and those the swamps didn't kill brought enslaved draekons to nearly every human city. All that is truly needed to bring the fight to these ilth is to find their one weakness and exploit it."

"Watch the tail." Requin said calmly as he quickly flicked his tail to one of the front legs of the chair. He then waited through the conversation until she mentioned imaginary lines. This caused a thought inside of Requin's head that quickly led to him slowly raising his hand and taking a moment to look at his scales.

"Imaginary lines." Requin said, almost to himself without even thinking. He couldn't resist the sadness that he was reminded of his being a shadow scale. The most feared and hated of the draekon, thought down upon even by their own kin. They had no reason, but they had enough for everyone who knew their full power to turn the dark side of their heart to them.

Requin then snapped out of his trance the moment he heard "fire." "How easy is flint to turn into throw-able bottles or spheres? Fire is the easy part, lighting it is not."

"Never thought about that. I guess I would have the best chances, since ilth can't enslave what they can't catch." Requin said to himself before mentioning the a core fact of the draekons, "And my kind was created to defend." Requin had never given it any thought. His focus was providing the fuel that could make the cannons go boom, not what would happen when they were actually used.

"Oh, Limial. Does this project look like it is only humans? That might answer why." Adion replied, with a little bit of a smirk. Even if they got offended, at least they didn't notice his little loss of control. So many questions that would bring that the mages here have never had answered. That was for the better.

"If we do use the mini-cannons, we could load them with balls that explode and leave fire for a bit, which would easily make up for the lower powder requirement."

"The powder will fire so long as it is not wet. The liquids though, might need to be made sure that they don't freeze out there. The trip would be worth it in my opinion. And if you're right about fire, the cannon might not be enough. I would like to be able to make a few dozen fire bombs so we can hold them off until the mini-cannon is up." Requin replied, noting the human's displeasure of him pointing out the fact that his kind self enhance with magic.

"We might also want to take the time to explore bringing a few warriors of other species along with us. They could, at the very least, give us time to get everything set up." Requin stated after a brief moment of silence.

Requin noted the regret-ish sound in Athir's voice. He assumed it to be the fact that Athir seems to have no will to go to the ilth lands. Then Requin heard the question about fire bombs. "All fire bombs are is the same concoction that would go in a fire shell for the Spellcannon, but in a flask that makes a spark when it breaks. And no, I haven't shared it with anyone because none had asked for it. I have known how to make them since my first year." Requin spouted off, with a little bit of the 'duh' voice, forgetting for the moment that he was working with mages and not alchemists.

Requin then listened through Limial's speech on leaving early, to which he responded with "Leaving before we are prepared would be a bad idea. I would have to have one to three days to get the explosives made for testing, and another day to get the fire bombs made, after I have the flasks."

There was a buzzing in the air followed by a voice that seemed to vibrate in and of itself "Bombs are the weapons of assassins, guerrilla fighters, terrorists. Lowly servile types who fight out of desperation...". A tall red slim root-like creature in a professor's coat walked in making it's way towards the teacher's desk "I like that! The quality of pure brute force can never be overlooked in warfare". The creature resembled that of a large sweet potato or turnip and took the seat at the teacher's desk. Rooting through the drawers and pulling out some papers which it laid out across the table "Personally I'd rather use one of those new mortar all the generals are so hard over but that might just be preference".

"Those take too long. Hand thrown bombs are mearly to hold off the enemy until what we are going to test is set up, and in case of emergency. We are no generals and have no reason to bother with some weapon we aren't working on ourselves." Requin replied with a supisious glare. He could never tell whether or not he should bother with rarely dealt with species.

Requin's tail wrapped around the leg of the chair even tighter as the straudeku sat down. He always had this feeling around this being that it would try to take his blood, or try to pluck off his scales. Neither of these made Requin all that more excited to see it. Of course, Requin had been wrong before, but that usually ended in something exploding in his face.

"I do believe we're not talking about the same thing. The device I was referring to was this" The straudeku said pulling an odd looking flintlock from behind the desk "I mostly use it for sport but you're welcome to it so long as you don't damage it...or you know. tell anyone I carry such a crude thing. Reputations and image retention and all that garbage. Surely you know that dance well enough by now". The straudeku started sorting through the papers and writing in a notebook seeming to ignore the trio.

"I have always found swords and more direct explosives far more relable and less likely to take your hand off. Plus, I have to dilute my explosives to near non-existance for it to work for me. It also does not send out a large enough round for us to use it in our particular aplication. We need something that can be packed with fire." Requin replied, pushing the weapon back to the straudeku.

"Your dance is no different from anyone's in this college. Only difference is for how long we have been dance."

(Sorry, WOW cable decided to turn off our cable instead of the neighbor across the alley)


"You have three days." She said firmly, crossing bright green bare arms across her chest to give her words some finality. She was used to getting her way, it came with her heritage coupled with her personality. Athir had once queried aloud if perhaps she gave off a pollen that had some sort of affect on her classmates and for his rash words was ostracized by most of his fellow classmates for days. Whether this proved him correct or not depended on who was judging. Since then, if he had any misgivings about his classmate he kept them to himself.

At the appearance of the Straudeku, she went quiet and her expression grew faraway. That race was the closest relation hers had amongst the Champion races and familiarity frequently brings forth contempt. The way the other survived, via plantlike means, was similar to her own despite her own race considering themselves the more elegant of the two. They had also opted for an opposite route, integrating themselves and seeking to dominate human society rather than secluding themselves away. In fact, until quite recently when the human Church of the Ascended had gained so much power, Queensblood has occupied a lion's share of the rulership position in Cantherdron.

"Professor." She said with due formality and turned toward the two others. "I am going to ensure our preparations are in order." She left without another word, the air filled with a faint scent of violets in her absence. Athir breathed out and stood to bow his head respectfully.
"Professor." He resumed sitting then and listened to the other two compare weaponry, biting his knuckle as he considered and pondered. He waved away the talk of reputation with a click of his teeth.

"Results are everything, the weapon is intriguing Professor but I am leery of things we have to lift. The cannon and fire bombs are good ideas because the cannons are on the ground, we just need aim. The bombs are light. We do not have soldier's here, but other mage students. I am worried about the weight. Requin, can I help you get the fire bombs done in time for the ....journey..north." He said the word with some reluctance to his voice yet. He glanced toward the Professor.

'Did you hear sir? They must have taken Tolbrook over the winter, it was found empty. Limial wishes to go north, test our weapon in the local climate to ensure it will work next fall. I am against the idea for ...safety sake but she has a point about ensuring the materials can withstand the wet." When he spoke to the Professor, it was with respect in his tone. He was from a strongly hierarchical society, it came so natural.

"Making fire bombs is easy, excepting two parts. Not blowing yourself up, and getting the liquid, or powder, into the casing. If you really want to help with making them, see if you can't get flint flasks. The fire explosive is quick and easy to make, so I can make as much as you can get me flasks to put it in. Time is not a real concern with them, since that which can't be finished in my lab can be done on my mobile kit." Requin replied to the comment on how long it would take.

No longer thinking on his craft, Requin began to fully realize the recent events. To see Limial leave with haste, and not stick around and be cheery, made him quite uneasy. Something about that rapid of a change in such a static person made his mind switch to 'when is something going to try and stab me' mode. His tail now released the chair and moved to a new position around his waist, looking like a small plate of armor. His hands clenched slightly on the chair as if ready to attack.

"Hrm, I'll have to head into the city for that. I have a robe edge relative who handles that sort of thing." He waved off the minor detail as he was wont to do before biting his knuckle again. He noticed the other wrapping his tail about himself and furrowed a brow before glancing toward the windows high set in the wall.

"I used to know her more, Limial. When I first came here, we became fast friends. She uh..used to befriend the new students, defend us. But she changed about six months ago, got into some kind of project she will not share. She works in that study of hers off the Academy grounds now. I just chalked it up to a ...Queensblood thing. They get older, they get less social. Eventually, they get so old they go to Greenhaven and never come back. " He ate the rest of his honey cake, crunching loudly before opening a disc shaped canteen wrapped in wool and took a deep drink.

"It is either that or she is getting competitive, wants to be a professor. I just want to stay out of her way, get this over with. I did not enroll here to be a soldier, it is not my way ,you know. But I go then and get the flint vials. Do not worry about coin, Yellow Hills people pay each other in different ways. Coin is for outsiders."

Eberous shrugged and returned the weapon to its place beneath his desk "I have my own weapons to manufacture and ballistic weaponry is not my field of study but do feel free to come to me if you are in need of any biological weapons. I happen to have a surplus at this time". He nonchalantly returned to his notes and papers and absently wrote in his little notebook. He didn't seem to mind the exit of the Queensblood nor did he bother to concern himself with her demeanor. He was as reputed, cold, studious, and reserved even in the most tense or dramatic of situations.

"I must get to checking my stock, and preparing the moble kit." Requin said before standing up, finally letting his tail fall, and putting up his hood. He walked a slightly fast pace to the door, opening it while shielding his eyes from the sun. He always liked the night better, but he had reasons to be aware during the day.

Requin walked to his room on the other end of the academy. It took him around half an hour to reach the building that his room was in. Finally recovered from the events of the professer and Limial, Requin took his key and shoved it into the keyhole and twisted. Opening the door, one could see the room.

On the far wall, near the one window, was a spot for a heating and cooking fire. In a crevice about halfway along the wall sat the bed and a small nightstand, with a chest of drawers at the foot of the bed. In an opposite crevise was a alchemy lab along the far wall from the bed. Facing away and towards the door were several shelves filled with ingredents and the tools that didn't normally stay on the lab.

Walking in and closing the door behind him, Requin moved quickly to the shelves. His movements now showed that he was in a place of near perfect comfort as he swiftly checked from shelf to shelf, moving some of the various bottles and jars and bowls to the lab area. Among the tools he grabbed were a morter and pestel, a small dryer, a few flaskes and other temporary storage glasses, some thing glass tubes, and a good portion of fine ground coal, setting it all neatly on the lab table.

"Professor." Athir watched Requin leave and approached the desk. He tried not to get too curious about the other's notations but there was a prying quality to him. His own people had different concepts of personal privacy, he had adapted some to the local traditions but there was always this small voice that told him it was his right to pry. Communal intellectual property and all that.

"This is not to imply this is our plan. However, if we did get you an Ilth, what could you do with it? The Church is offering a high bounty in Cantherdron for one. But they would just string it up, bolster morale and all that. Could we learn from one? They've never been captured before and beside old legends, people are not really sure of what they are. The Queensblood have some art depicting Ilth but even they have never captured them alive. If they really are ...built from corpses like the legends say, does that mean the divine magics would be useful?" He drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk before leaning back to pull his jacket up on his narrow shoulders.
'You perhaps can make time to come ...with us? " The more the merrier but the more also meant the least danger to him.


Limial left them with annoyance on her features, those who encountered her in the halls felt the hairs stand up on the back of their necks, tremors run through their bellies. Athir had not been that far off when it came to understanding Queensblood physiology, it was a spore they gave off, useful in their own society as a form of mass communication. Panic or fear from one could spread rapidly and be useful to prepare for foes. The flowers sprouting from her hair closed their bright pinkish petals in response to her emotions, her almond shaped eyes narrowing as she left the Academy, picking her way through puddles of slush.

She left the blue bricked towers behind her, the high stately walls decorated with the coat of arms of the Academies' numerous patrons, and the banners cracking smartly in the spring breezes. Her own laboratory was a small building with windows tightly shuttered standing in the ruins of a former vineyard, a few greyish vines still clinging to their trellises. The door was covered in a thick tangle of vines with parted with a wave of her hand. She stalked inside to expose a barren and spiderweb strung laboratory, long since abandoned mid experiment. Tools rusted quietly alongside beakers whose contents had evaporated to cloudy precipitate.

She moved past an abandoned dossier of plans scattered like leaves on the ground, the leather binder near rotten at the edges and the parchment crackled and wrinkled as she walked over it toward something glowing at the back of the laboratory, shedding a lurid green light over the walls and ceiling. She drew upon the air, circular runes and swirling spirals before forcing her hands through it to bring life to the spell. A creature of vines and creepers with a body like a low squat rodent arose and sniffed upward toward her.

"Tell them five days. We will be there in five days." The creature sniffed inward and scurried away, leaving its mistress staring into that light and what brought it forth.

"Well, the value you place on such a thing seems academic, yes? Academic value far outweighs coinage in my eyes, think of the knowledge we could all gain for learning how these...things work. I do have experience with cataloging flora and fauna, perhaps you wish an assistant?." There was an eagerness to him that was dampened quickly when reality dawned on him.

"However, it is remote we shall run across an Ilth, if we are lucky. I believe as raiders, they are long gone by spring. Perhaps, they cannot survive outside cold temperatures. " He found the Professor fascinating and frightening. But like a limitless well of potential, he could see the danger of the depths along with the opportunity for exploration.

"But your guidance would be needed, I think Limial is pushing on a bit foolhardy." He bit his knuckle "I had better get those flint vials for Requin. A shame he isn't human, he could make a great Professor too. I just do not see the Church allowing any Champion races in anymore. Actions down out of fear." He added to the end, he did not entirely agree with their stance. He did not disagree with it either. Seeing how easy it would be for some of these Champion races to dominate humanity, there had to be a line somewhere.

"I'll gladly join you. I think I may even bring one of my experiments in case of any...complications" Eberous said going back to his notes. "As for Limial...she is disconcerning. That may be too harsh but from my experience that much pride only serves to taint academics but then of course that sort of thing is not my field of study" he said as though he were reading a grocery list. The professor put his pen down at Athir's political comment "Perhaps but that is also not my field".