I’ve been trying to get Tiny to help narrow down the window for the scythemaws to do their thing, but the big guy can’t get much of a read on them. He agrees that it’ll be soon, but he also says it seems like it won’t just start instantly. So the best he can do is say it’s not imminent, but still should happen soon. Ugh, it’s like waiting for a patch for a game that forums insist will ruin the whole thing.

If I had an actual time, I could accommodate the stupid things. You know: dim the lights, put on some good music, maybe light some candles… set the mood. But no, they’re going to do it on their own time and just improvise. If I thought anyone would get the joke, I’d make a bunch of fake cars so they can do their business in the back seat.

Alright, enough grumping like that. The door is progressing as smoothly as can be expected. It’s difficult to line everything up so each part of the hinge actually helps support the weight and will let the door open, but it’s not impossible. Queen’s ants have been life savers for the fine adjustments that have been needed.

Speaking of Queen, I finally understand what she was so interested in the quartz for: she wants to grow crystals. I’m not exactly sure why, but the idea has Thing inspired, too. Maybe if they can get specific shapes, certain spells will work better? I also wonder how they’ll react when they learn that quite a lot of various gems are the same gem, but with different impurities. I just don’t remember what gems are in that family.

Still, I think they’re planning to grow the quartz pickups for the guitar to their specifications, and then we’ll be that much closer to bringing some rock music to this world. Slash is definitely going to blow some minds.

Speaking of minds being blown, Rocky is kinda blowing mine. He’s figured out kinetic affinity. He was sparring with Fluffles and something just clicked. He tossed a cool swirling vortex of ice and fire at Fluffles, who put up as strong a barrier as he could manage. It was quite a drain on my mana, too. Luckily, the attack wasn’t held together too well, and hit the barrier with all the force of a wet noodle. Still, Rocky has another affinity under his belt.

Fluffles is having a harder time with gaining affinities, but at least his kinetic mastery is being refined pretty quickly. He’s a lot more efficient, and I almost wonder if he’ll manage wind affinity out of the blue instead. I don’t think he’s quite figured out that air is still made of matter, but I also don’t know if grabbing air and throwing it around with kinetics will count as wind affinity. If anything, that might count as sonic instead.

I’m probably getting ahead of myself, though. Rocky’s hardly a master of kinetics yet, and even Fluffles has a ways to go before I think he’ll have the fine control to get an extra affinity. Stop worrying about the tools you don't have, get ready to do the job with the ones you do.

I start drawing up an access passage for the scythemaws, if only to feel like I’m doing something. Maybe I’ll get lucky and not only get it finished, but the things will actually use it.

Old Staiven

The aged ratkin can’t remember the last time he had something so interesting to experiment with! Nor can he remember the last time he had something so frustrating to experiment with, either!

He’s distilled, desiccated, crystalized, and everything else he can think of to get at the secret of the bottled lightning, but it continues to insist it’s made with only Ochredill and Spell Spore! With trace amounts of ant drool, soil, and other impurities. But no matter what he tries, once he separates the reagents, they refuse to recombine into the yellow fluid!

Oh, but what he can get that fluid to do! He didn’t have much left after the initial experiments to use on making something useful, but even a minor infusion of the liquid into a wand made from a tree struck by lightning made it the kind of lightning spell conduit that even a master mage would pay dearly for!

Maybe he’ll try to trade it to Thedeim for some more of the bottled lightning… or something else. He’ll round his ears and declare himself a giant mousekin if the dungeon doesn’t have other unique alchemical creations. He had joked with himself about becoming a dweller or even a resident to get access to just the bottled lightning, but now he finds himself sometimes pondering the logistics.

Of course, they never work out. At the end of the day, he has his lab just the way he wants it, and moving it would be too much of an ordeal… not to mention there would be various dungeon things poking through everything at all hours, wanting to pick his brains as much as he wants to pick theirs.

He smiles at that thought and stands from his notes. He’s out of bottled lighting now, but there’s a master alchemist not far who knows how to make it. Maybe he can make a new friend.

“Rhonda!” he shouts, and soon hears her muffled reply drift down to the lab from the store floor. “I’m going to the dungeon! I want you to practice with that lightning wand I made the other day! If you’re going to earn a proper mage class, you’re going to need to get a feel for mana more than meta and ice!”

She shouts an affirmative at him as he gathers a few things. If he’s going to go and try to make friends with the dungeon, he should do some delving. He's hardly a battlemage, but he’s learned enough tricks over the years to get close enough.

Hullbreak Harbor

The First Mate swims slow circles around the shipwreck-turned-jail. The whole situation makes her uneasy. She’s not surprised the Captain put the dweller in there. The great white had hoped he’d somehow not notice when the merman swam off, like the First Mate pretended to not notice, but they had no such luck.

She was pushing it to not immediately go chase him down when he wandered away from the fishing expedition, but chasing after the one would have left all the others without her protection. That didn’t stop the Captain from wanting to keel-haul the merman for wandering off, even if he actually was chasing a large fish.

Whatever he was actually up to, the First mate is pretty sure he accomplished it. She can’t imagine what it could be, though. As far as she could tell, he swam off, outside of even her senses, and swam back not long after. She had actually expected him to have abandoned the Captain. She wouldn’t blame him.

Things have only gotten worse since that fateful day, so long ago. She can remember the sound of the anchor chain snapping on that merchant vessel, then the horrible crunching of it being swept into and onto the trading hall atop the reef.

And then… a frenzy. The next thing she remembers clearly about that day is there being so much blood in the water… and an inspector’s badge stuck between her teeth. She returned it to the journeyman inspector at the time, and now full and experienced Inspector Tarl.

He still comes back every couple months, in that little dinghy. He still heaves the anchor over the side, still respects the border, still asks if delvers can return. She longs to be able to tell him they can… but the Captain refuses. He was always suspicious of the delvers, but the mana they brought eased his concerns for a time.

But when his precious dwellers were killed, even in an accident, every paranoid whisper in the Captain’s head started screaming. She tells herself he’s just mad with grief… but mad is still mad, no matter the cause. But what can she do?

She’s a scion, and the Captain’s Voice to boot. Even if she knew how to stage a mutiny, she just couldn’t do that to the Captain. He just wants to keep his dwellers safe. But he’s killing them, and he’s too scared to see that.

She peers through the hole in the hull, where she can plainly see the adult merman in the brig inside, idly floating behind the bars and looking off in the distance. Hmm… off towards where the delvers used to come from. Just what did he do? If he somehow got their help… she doesn’t think it’ll make much difference. The delvers haven’t been able to do anything in the years since the disaster to help the Captain. Nothing could have happened to change that.