With night comes the latest reports from the spies in Hullbreak, and Leo dutifully works through them. There’s definitely an increase in sharks inside, and it looks like their expeditions have finally discovered the beachhead. They’ve even tried a fly over with some gulls, but Poe’s patrols quickly convinced them it’s a bad idea. While I’d prefer they hadn’t discovered the beachhead, I’ll settle for them not having much information about it.

There doesn’t seem to be much activity with the gull spawner, but I also haven’t been able to get any of the spies into a position to get a good look. No news is good news, as far as I’m concerned. There’s not a whole lot of defending Hullbreak can do with the gulls.

The biggest piece of information is about the merman in the shipwreck. He’s been imprisoned, and if the report is accurate, he might have been the one to send the note to the Office of Dungeon Affairs. He’s not being mistreated, but he’s also certainly in trouble with Hullbreak.

Which gives me an idea, but it’ll be a huge risk. If I go through with it, it’ll be go time, one way or the other. I need to make sure I have everything ready before then.

The shortcut through the woods is done, and Teemo is taking some time to expand it a bit. Jello and Slash should be able to get through it without any problem at all, but Teemo is working to see about letting an army of skeletons get through it quickly, too. I just leave him to it for now. I’ll need him for my risky idea, but I don’t need to distract him until I make sure I have all the pieces I’ll need.

Like Slash and his Axe. If I’m going to potentially call down the wrath of Hullbreak, I want to have as much support as possible to fight underwater. I’m uncertain how well swinging an axe under water would work, but sound should work great. Water will conduct sound way better than air. The only problem is that it will conduct electricity a lot better than air, too.

It’s not the superconductor that a lot of movies make it out to be, though. In theory, the metal of the circuit should still be the path of least resistance, though I’ll have Thing make sure to reinforce a bit of lighting essence to help encourage it to behave properly. Heh, maybe he’ll manage a magical superconductor. That’d be cool.

I’m a bit more concerned about making the arc work properly. A tesla coil is so loud because it takes a lot of energy to get the electricity to jump through the air, so a lot of energy gets converted into sound. With salt water being more conductive, it’ll need less energy to jump, so less energy to convert into sound. If I’m lucky, the quieter sound and the ease of sound moving in water will cancel each other out and everything will work fine. If I’m not… I dunno. Thing might have to lean more on magic than simple physics.

Either way, the axe is coming along great, and I think I’ll be able to give it to Slash in a couple days.

Queen is still working on the water movement potion, and still isn’t having much luck with it. While Staiven and her have compared notes, and he has several formulae for it, we still don’t have the stuff to make it. I haven’t been able to come up with any kind of good physics work around for it, either.

Water is a massive pain to deal with. It will drink in ridiculous amounts of energy and hardy heat up at all, it’s shockingly dense, and it absolutely despises being compressed. Air is easy to move in, thanks to it not having much mass to be in the way, and it’s also more than happy to squeeze down. The only thing I can think of to move quickly in water is to more of less turn into a fish and take advantage of hydrodynamic design… but that kind of magic is way beyond what we can do now.

At least the electrolysis potion seems to work like a dream. Oh hey, I should have her team with Thing and see if they can use that principle to create a bubble of air around the hat and possibly guitar. Probably just hydrogen and let the oxygen escape. I’m pretty sure it won’t be able to explode if there’s no oxygen.

Maybe they can just kludge together something so it’ll just bring a bit of air with it when it first goes under the water. I’d really rather avoid Slash exploding during his debut.

So while that prep will still give me a couple days, I don’t see anything to theoretically stop my idea. I just want to run it by Leo and see what problems he sees, and if he thinks we can handle Hullbreak’s reaction.

Teemo? Can you head to Leo? I want to hear what he thinks about us rescuing/kidnapping that merman.

Teemo just pauses in his work for a moment, before chuckling and shaking his head as he gets his current work into a spot where he can leave it.

“That’s a pretty bold idea, Boss. How do you plan on doing that?”

Well… I’ll explain once you go meet Leo, so I only have to explain once.

My Voice nods and soon hurries down the shortcut, and before long, he’s before my wolf scion. Leo gives him a nod of respect and a short yip.

“Thanks, Leo. The Boss has a crazy plan about that one merman in the ship, and he wanted to run it by you.”

Leo opens his mouth and lets his tongue loll out in a grin, and Teemo laughs. “Crazy even for him, yeah. So, what’s the plan, Boss?”

So… that merman. I’m pretty sure he’s the one who sent the letter to Tarl. We might be able to convince him to… not exactly turn on Hullbreak, but to at least convince him we want to help and that we need someone Hullbreak might actually listen to. So I’d like Teemo to sneak in, try to talk him into helping, and if he agrees, get him back to the beachhead.

“Uh… Boss? I can’t breathe water.”

We have the electrolysis potion. And with your shortcuts and natural sneakiness, you could get in and talk with him, and quickly get him out, too.

Teemo doesn’t look too convinced, but with the obvious objections out of the way, he goes ahead and relays the idea to Leo, who immediately grumbles in that not-quite-a-whine way dogs sometimes do.

“He says Hullbreak will probably immediately attack if we do that.”

Yeah, I kinda figured. Does he think we can hold Hullbreak at bay, if he does?

Teemo asks, and Leo paces for a minute or so as he considers. Through the bond, I can feel him going over troops and the various tactical options at our disposal. He eventually sits and gives Teemo his opinion.

“He says he feels confident, but that we’ll be tipping our hand about being Neverrest. He says he’ll probably need Slash and Jello, as well as Rocky, to be able to keep the merman safe long enough for the initial panic to lessen. If it lessens.”

Yeah, that’s the biggest risk. Hullbreak doesn’t want his dwellers to get hurt. They’re his number one priority. If we threaten them, he might go nuts. But if we don’t, he won’t take us as seriously. If we manage to get the guy out, Hullbreak will probably immediately attack with everything he has. We’ll have to keep that assault at bay and make sure he can see the guy’s unhurt, and hopefully have him try to negotiate with Hullbreak.

“What if Hullbreak thinks the guy has betrayed him?”

Then we’ll really need to make sure he’s safe, and hope he can give us some kind of idea to get Hullbreak to listen.

“That sounds really risky, Boss,” Teemo points out, and I can only sigh and agree with him.

Yeah… but is it riskier than letting the status quo go on? If you two can think of a better plan, I’m all ears. You can even ask the other scions, Folarn or any other dwellers, or Aranya and Yvonne. I’d love a better plan, but I don’t know that we’re going to get one.

The best time to do it will probably be the new moon low tide after Slash’s Axe is finished. That looks to be about a week away. So we have until then to try to come up with something better than forcing Hullbreak’s hand while hoping he’ll hold back because of his dweller.