12 – New designs I

After Paul’s first successful spirit walk he was “allowed” to relax a little the rest of the day. More could be said on the question whether Tessera was in a position to “allow” or “disallow” anything whatsoever, but it was easier not to. (So Paul didn’t.)

Instead he tinkered with the wooden wargolem he had been working on. Usually he would complete a simple unpolished golem in a little less than a week, but he allowed himself a bit more time because he was experimenting with a new design that could utilise some of its legs as spears.

It was trickier than he’d expected when he’d started the project. Explosive acceleration was required for a proper armour-penetrating and/or organ-rupturing spear thrust, whereas leg joints needed to be durable and dependable. The first requirement called for a fluid- and valve-based system, whilst the required durability was best satisfied by a temperature-controlled bimetallic bar. Putting fluid-joints on the inside of the legs and the bimetal joints at their knees put a lot of pressure on the bimetallic bars, which meant they needed to be thick, which meant they needed larger gems to power them, which would drive the cost up. In addition Paul would need to put on some spare legs because a little testing showed that even the buffed up legs couldn’t survive being used as a spear. The cheapest solution Paul could see would increase the component cost by more than half, which was much more than he’d intended. Given the prices the guild had set, the design wouldn’t be profitable. At all.

::Could you put explosive joints on the outside of the legs?:: Tessera asked.

◦◦Putting the piping through or alongside the bimetal joints would be a pain, and the risk of the pipes leaking or bursting due to repeated bending would be so great that uncle wouldn’t be willing to give it a months 12-month guarantee of service. That would reduce the golem to the Toy-tier, selling for even less than an unmodified woodgolem-3A.◦◦ Paul answered. ◦◦So. no.◦◦

::No I meant joints powered by compressed blackpowder, ignited by a tiny ruby::

◦◦…◦◦

◦o◦ that works? ◦o◦

::Explosive joints are used to make remotely detonating bombs on the other side of the British Ocean. They were used by the Mapuche to keep the Inca at bay. Crude little buggers. They even got an ironic name that I don’t understand the humour of. What was it… forest sawmill? Landmine? River waterwheel? Anyway, point is, the design works::

Fortunately Paul was already aware of the existence of blackpowder, but actually finding some so that he could experiment with it was another matter. Physical exhaustion and excitement battled it out in Paul’s body, but by evening he had procured a sample to experiment with.

All in all, not a bad end to the day.