- Pronouns
- He/Him
Eventually, however I feel that Incident Eliph had issues with the Quest format. I plan to return to it but likely as serial fiction rather than a Quest.
Eventually, however I feel that Incident Eliph had issues with the Quest format. I plan to return to it but likely as serial fiction rather than a Quest.
- Location
- Dethklok
[X] General Wadiyar heard about that time Pradhana Ali hurled you through a wall and has decided that this constitutes motive. He has convinced Haroun of Mangalore to monitor you at all times for proof. Which in practice means that Haroun is constantly trying to rope you into bizarre or salacious schemes and social activities.
The Engine Must Move
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"I'm absolutely sure, sir," you say, "I didn't see anyone on the curtain wall. I didn't see anything on the curtain wall. If the only concealed location was the tower, then he took the shot from the tower."
"He couldn't have taken the shot from Muntadhir Tower." says the officer questioning you. It's casual, as investigations go, more trying to tease clues out of witnesses than anything else, but it's notably not voluntary and has been going in circles for the last half hour. The room is nice enough, though it entirely lacks windows, and the guard house's chai is rather better than your own. "Ignoring that it was a three hundred meter shot, the stairs have all rotted away. He would have had to be a brute of a man to have climbed the exterior, fired six shots with unerring accuracy, climbed down, and escaped without a trace."
"He wasn't on the wall, I would have seen him if he was," you say, "If only a strong man could have climbed that tower then I suppose he must have been a strong-"
"Officer!" Interrupts Haroun of Mangalore, "I think you can let my friend here go."
You snap towards him, pivoting in your chair to face him head on. Haroun is standing in the doorway, his bad arm still in its sling, looking to all the word like he was fetching a friend for Chai rather than interrupting a murder investigation.
"Detective," drawls the officer, "This is a murder investigation. You can't just barge in ordering me to cease questioning my best witness."
"Normally, sure, but I have orders of my own!" proclaims Haroun confidently. He hands the officer an envelope, and the man reads it once, twice, three times before staring at Haroun in complete puzzlement. "I'm sure you agree that I am free to go?"
"I shall be speaking to General Wadiyar about this," drawls the Officer, "But yes."
Haroun smiles, winks, and motions for you to follow him out. You do, struggling to keep up with the larger man's stride. "Salaam, Haroun, and, ah, thank you," you say, "May I ask what this is about?"
"Ah, it's nothing major," says Haroun, "Wadiyar heard about some incident where Ali hurled you threw a wall-" You wince at the memory, your back still twinges some mornings. "-So he figures you hired a guy to have him killed. It's ridiculous, of course, but he's hired me to investigate."
"What?" you say. Then you pause, think on it a moment, and realize it still doesn't make any sense. "What?" you try again, louder, as if volume will clarify things. Then you finally process the last part of what Haroun said and look him in the eyes, "Why is he having you investigate?"
"I'm a private detective!" says Haroun, "It's what I do. Most of it, anyway." He raises a finger to stop the stream of questions bubbling up at the back of your throat. "But you don't need to worry about that! Cause I know you didn't do it. So I'm just gonna get paid to hang out and write reports about how totally innocent you are. It'll be great!"
You stare at him in grim apprehension. It is, technically, better than being actually arrested for murder and/or desecration of a body. You simply have...unpleasant suspicions as to his idea of a fun time.
"Do you shoot? We should go shooting, it'll be wonderful," says Haroun.
"I don't own any guns," you note, "I, ah, I'm not that well off, I'm afraid."
"Don't worry about it, I've plenty for the both of us," says Haroun, "Come on, I know a range just outside the city. We can invite some of your coworkers!"
"Under no circumstances are you to invite any of my coworkers!"
It is mid afternoon the next day when you arrive at the gun range with your coworkers. Sundari, Hemal, and Sundari's eldest son Abhay in tow. Sundari carries a small, intricately locked bag filled with ammunition, while Abhay rolls a long wooden trunk behind him and Hemal has a massive, canvas wrapped package resting over one shoulder. It is taller than you are, and you are deeply worried as to what, exactly, it is.
Haroun, a trio of intricately decorated revolvers on his hip, leans over to you. "Did he bring along a rocket?" he whispers, "I mean, I know I said we should go shooting but you're not actually allowed to do that."
""I don't know," you whisper back, "But I truly wish that I could tell you that he didn't."
The range is is a surprisingly large complex, sprawling out near the base of the Chamundi hills. Great earthen berms serve as backstops and sidewalls for the range itself, and painted ceramic disks serve as targets. A kindly looking old woman sits near a stack of the disks near the front, painting them and offering them as targets for a mushtari apiece.
There aren't many others at the range. A young, gregarious Hindu man runs the place and seems a good friend of Haroun's, while three other customers share the range: A tall sri lankan woman and a rather shorter muslim lady seem to be competing with each other, while some European with a revolving rifle lies prone, plinking away at the mid-range.
The five of you spread across two stalls, unpacking your weapons. Abhay's trunk carries an old jezzail and its equipment, as well as a more modern lever-rifle, while Haroun simply tosses his revolvers onto a table and begins to load them. Hemal sets up a monstrously large tripod upon a table, before thinking twice about it, moving it onto the floor, and then dragging over a rug to place some six feet behind it.
When he finally begins to unwrap the canvas you are extremely worried, and the proprietor has walked over to watch.
It takes a surprisingly long time to unwrap an seven foot long length of canvas, and you doubt that a human could have done it unassisted. But Hemal isn't human, and you can see his arms shift and bulge to facilitate the feat, one head in rapt concentration, the other humming along to a tune you can't quite place.
Finally it is done, he turns the canvas a final time, pulling it away from his weapon. The Wall Gun is well over six feet long, burnished brass and pitted steel, with the impossible carapace of some creature beyond mount Qaf covering the stock and grip.
"What is that?" you ask.
"Oh," says Hemal's humming head, "It's a grapeshot gun, from back home."
"What does it shoot?" asks the proprietor, torn somewhere between awe and horror.
Hemal thinks on it for a moment, clearly trying to do math he isn't equipped to do. "What's the gauge on two inches of breach?" he asks you. You, in turn, look to an increasingly thrilled Haroun for the answer, for you know very little about guns.
"Half," says Haroun, voice hitched in what you deeply fear is joy, "May I try it?"
"Sure!" says Hemal genially.
You feel the gulp travel across the range as the Proprietor calls a halt to the shooting. Abhay runs disks out, to thirty meters, fifty meters, and almost a hundred meters. He's turned around to come back when Haroun calls out, yelling for him to put one another fifty meters out.
By the time he returns the European has joined you to watch this disaster unfold. Haroun is prone behind the enormous gun, getting himself used to aiming it, and figuring out how to brace his still-injured arm against the table to help maneuver the titanic weapon. The two women on the other side of the range are looking your way, but don't seem particularly interested in coming closer. The Sri Lankan is covering her ears.
Hemal hands over a bullet. A massive thing more reminiscent of a canister shot than a normal shotgun shell.
"It's probably going to dislocate your shoulder," notes Hemal idly.
"What?" says Haroun, finger already squeezing the trigger.
The gun fires.
There is a loud shout of pain, but you can't really hear it over the thunderous roar of the rifle and the sound of shattering clay. The entire gun assembly jolts backwards. Smoke billows, and you swear you see sparks of lightning arc within the ash-grey cloud. Haroun stares up at Hemal, his features murderous, but his shoulder seems fine. Bruised, perhaps, but certainly not dislocated.
"That is the sort of thing you say before I pull the trigger!" shouts Haroun, "That hurt!"
Hemal shrugs. "I figured you knew," he lies, his voice utterly devoid of guile. You are unsure whether this is his usual aggravating idiocy, or if for the first time in his life he has managed active deception without prompting.
Haroun narrows his eyes, tenses in preparation for what might be a shouting match and might be a brawl. Then he rolls away from the gun, springs to his feet, and laughs uproariously. His furrowed frown turns to a gregarious grin, and he claps Hemal on the shoulder.. "Then I return the gun to you, my friend," he says, "And hope you have better luck with it than I!"
The European says something in what you're fairly certain is French. He gets a lot of confused glances before he gestures downrange and says, "Look!" in fractured, stuttering Kannada.
The clay disks are shattered. Not one or two, but a narrow cone of shattered pottery and torn ground lies downrange. The three farthest targets are all broken, and the nearest only spared because it was off to the right of the cone of death. The range looks for all the world as if someone fired a small canister charge downrange.
You look at Hemal's wall gun again, shorter, lighter, and easier to load than most modern cannon. And you make a note to investigate it once you begin working on armaments.
The rest of the day goes rather better. You were never a good shot, and remain terrible even after hours of coaching from Haroun and Sundari. But you manage to hit a target at five meters with a revolver by the end of the day, and you are content to call that a win. You and Haroun leave early, to go pray Maghrib at a local masjid, while the Hindus in your party stay rather longer.
It ends up being the highlight of the next week, for as time marches on you find yourself increasingly frustrated my the monstrous prospect of trying to make a train carriage, even a light train carriage, move off-rail in a sustainable manner. You attempt a dozen variations of rail and road wheels, and none will do what you need them to. The math does not work and, when you attempt to brute force the issues, the prototypes fall apart catastrophically.
You write a letter to your sister in Seringapatam, voicing your frustrations with the project. Three days later, you receive the response and, in it, a way forwards.
It's buried in there, near the end of a three page letter talking about family and her kids and the upcoming visit that you really do need to prepare for. A simple, well-meaning paragraph that is all you really needed.
You set the letter down upon an over-crowded desk, stare at your window, and make a decision.
You are going to go to the zoo.
Look somewhere for inspiration
[ ] The sea!
[ ] A snake!
[ ] A dreadnought wheel! (.8x, it's just a fancier version of what's already failing!)
[ ] A bird! Ya allah no! You are not trying to make this thing fly!
"He couldn't have taken the shot from Muntadhir Tower." says the officer questioning you. It's casual, as investigations go, more trying to tease clues out of witnesses than anything else, but it's notably not voluntary and has been going in circles for the last half hour. The room is nice enough, though it entirely lacks windows, and the guard house's chai is rather better than your own. "Ignoring that it was a three hundred meter shot, the stairs have all rotted away. He would have had to be a brute of a man to have climbed the exterior, fired six shots with unerring accuracy, climbed down, and escaped without a trace."
"He wasn't on the wall, I would have seen him if he was," you say, "If only a strong man could have climbed that tower then I suppose he must have been a strong-"
"Officer!" Interrupts Haroun of Mangalore, "I think you can let my friend here go."
You snap towards him, pivoting in your chair to face him head on. Haroun is standing in the doorway, his bad arm still in its sling, looking to all the word like he was fetching a friend for Chai rather than interrupting a murder investigation.
"Detective," drawls the officer, "This is a murder investigation. You can't just barge in ordering me to cease questioning my best witness."
"Normally, sure, but I have orders of my own!" proclaims Haroun confidently. He hands the officer an envelope, and the man reads it once, twice, three times before staring at Haroun in complete puzzlement. "I'm sure you agree that I am free to go?"
"I shall be speaking to General Wadiyar about this," drawls the Officer, "But yes."
Haroun smiles, winks, and motions for you to follow him out. You do, struggling to keep up with the larger man's stride. "Salaam, Haroun, and, ah, thank you," you say, "May I ask what this is about?"
"Ah, it's nothing major," says Haroun, "Wadiyar heard about some incident where Ali hurled you threw a wall-" You wince at the memory, your back still twinges some mornings. "-So he figures you hired a guy to have him killed. It's ridiculous, of course, but he's hired me to investigate."
"What?" you say. Then you pause, think on it a moment, and realize it still doesn't make any sense. "What?" you try again, louder, as if volume will clarify things. Then you finally process the last part of what Haroun said and look him in the eyes, "Why is he having you investigate?"
"I'm a private detective!" says Haroun, "It's what I do. Most of it, anyway." He raises a finger to stop the stream of questions bubbling up at the back of your throat. "But you don't need to worry about that! Cause I know you didn't do it. So I'm just gonna get paid to hang out and write reports about how totally innocent you are. It'll be great!"
You stare at him in grim apprehension. It is, technically, better than being actually arrested for murder and/or desecration of a body. You simply have...unpleasant suspicions as to his idea of a fun time.
"Do you shoot? We should go shooting, it'll be wonderful," says Haroun.
"I don't own any guns," you note, "I, ah, I'm not that well off, I'm afraid."
"Don't worry about it, I've plenty for the both of us," says Haroun, "Come on, I know a range just outside the city. We can invite some of your coworkers!"
"Under no circumstances are you to invite any of my coworkers!"
It is mid afternoon the next day when you arrive at the gun range with your coworkers. Sundari, Hemal, and Sundari's eldest son Abhay in tow. Sundari carries a small, intricately locked bag filled with ammunition, while Abhay rolls a long wooden trunk behind him and Hemal has a massive, canvas wrapped package resting over one shoulder. It is taller than you are, and you are deeply worried as to what, exactly, it is.
Haroun, a trio of intricately decorated revolvers on his hip, leans over to you. "Did he bring along a rocket?" he whispers, "I mean, I know I said we should go shooting but you're not actually allowed to do that."
""I don't know," you whisper back, "But I truly wish that I could tell you that he didn't."
The range is is a surprisingly large complex, sprawling out near the base of the Chamundi hills. Great earthen berms serve as backstops and sidewalls for the range itself, and painted ceramic disks serve as targets. A kindly looking old woman sits near a stack of the disks near the front, painting them and offering them as targets for a mushtari apiece.
There aren't many others at the range. A young, gregarious Hindu man runs the place and seems a good friend of Haroun's, while three other customers share the range: A tall sri lankan woman and a rather shorter muslim lady seem to be competing with each other, while some European with a revolving rifle lies prone, plinking away at the mid-range.
The five of you spread across two stalls, unpacking your weapons. Abhay's trunk carries an old jezzail and its equipment, as well as a more modern lever-rifle, while Haroun simply tosses his revolvers onto a table and begins to load them. Hemal sets up a monstrously large tripod upon a table, before thinking twice about it, moving it onto the floor, and then dragging over a rug to place some six feet behind it.
When he finally begins to unwrap the canvas you are extremely worried, and the proprietor has walked over to watch.
It takes a surprisingly long time to unwrap an seven foot long length of canvas, and you doubt that a human could have done it unassisted. But Hemal isn't human, and you can see his arms shift and bulge to facilitate the feat, one head in rapt concentration, the other humming along to a tune you can't quite place.
Finally it is done, he turns the canvas a final time, pulling it away from his weapon. The Wall Gun is well over six feet long, burnished brass and pitted steel, with the impossible carapace of some creature beyond mount Qaf covering the stock and grip.
"What is that?" you ask.
"Oh," says Hemal's humming head, "It's a grapeshot gun, from back home."
"What does it shoot?" asks the proprietor, torn somewhere between awe and horror.
Hemal thinks on it for a moment, clearly trying to do math he isn't equipped to do. "What's the gauge on two inches of breach?" he asks you. You, in turn, look to an increasingly thrilled Haroun for the answer, for you know very little about guns.
"Half," says Haroun, voice hitched in what you deeply fear is joy, "May I try it?"
"Sure!" says Hemal genially.
You feel the gulp travel across the range as the Proprietor calls a halt to the shooting. Abhay runs disks out, to thirty meters, fifty meters, and almost a hundred meters. He's turned around to come back when Haroun calls out, yelling for him to put one another fifty meters out.
By the time he returns the European has joined you to watch this disaster unfold. Haroun is prone behind the enormous gun, getting himself used to aiming it, and figuring out how to brace his still-injured arm against the table to help maneuver the titanic weapon. The two women on the other side of the range are looking your way, but don't seem particularly interested in coming closer. The Sri Lankan is covering her ears.
Hemal hands over a bullet. A massive thing more reminiscent of a canister shot than a normal shotgun shell.
"It's probably going to dislocate your shoulder," notes Hemal idly.
"What?" says Haroun, finger already squeezing the trigger.
The gun fires.
There is a loud shout of pain, but you can't really hear it over the thunderous roar of the rifle and the sound of shattering clay. The entire gun assembly jolts backwards. Smoke billows, and you swear you see sparks of lightning arc within the ash-grey cloud. Haroun stares up at Hemal, his features murderous, but his shoulder seems fine. Bruised, perhaps, but certainly not dislocated.
"That is the sort of thing you say before I pull the trigger!" shouts Haroun, "That hurt!"
Hemal shrugs. "I figured you knew," he lies, his voice utterly devoid of guile. You are unsure whether this is his usual aggravating idiocy, or if for the first time in his life he has managed active deception without prompting.
Haroun narrows his eyes, tenses in preparation for what might be a shouting match and might be a brawl. Then he rolls away from the gun, springs to his feet, and laughs uproariously. His furrowed frown turns to a gregarious grin, and he claps Hemal on the shoulder.. "Then I return the gun to you, my friend," he says, "And hope you have better luck with it than I!"
The European says something in what you're fairly certain is French. He gets a lot of confused glances before he gestures downrange and says, "Look!" in fractured, stuttering Kannada.
The clay disks are shattered. Not one or two, but a narrow cone of shattered pottery and torn ground lies downrange. The three farthest targets are all broken, and the nearest only spared because it was off to the right of the cone of death. The range looks for all the world as if someone fired a small canister charge downrange.
You look at Hemal's wall gun again, shorter, lighter, and easier to load than most modern cannon. And you make a note to investigate it once you begin working on armaments.
The rest of the day goes rather better. You were never a good shot, and remain terrible even after hours of coaching from Haroun and Sundari. But you manage to hit a target at five meters with a revolver by the end of the day, and you are content to call that a win. You and Haroun leave early, to go pray Maghrib at a local masjid, while the Hindus in your party stay rather longer.
It ends up being the highlight of the next week, for as time marches on you find yourself increasingly frustrated my the monstrous prospect of trying to make a train carriage, even a light train carriage, move off-rail in a sustainable manner. You attempt a dozen variations of rail and road wheels, and none will do what you need them to. The math does not work and, when you attempt to brute force the issues, the prototypes fall apart catastrophically.
You write a letter to your sister in Seringapatam, voicing your frustrations with the project. Three days later, you receive the response and, in it, a way forwards.
It's buried in there, near the end of a three page letter talking about family and her kids and the upcoming visit that you really do need to prepare for. A simple, well-meaning paragraph that is all you really needed.
You set the letter down upon an over-crowded desk, stare at your window, and make a decision.
You are going to go to the zoo.
Look somewhere for inspiration
[ ] The sea!
[ ] A snake!
[ ] A dreadnought wheel! (.8x, it's just a fancier version of what's already failing!)
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SirLagginton
Shadow Cabal Caerbannog Bun-Bun
- Location
- Arrrghhh
[X] The sea!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Eventually the locomotion system will become legs, this is gonna be vignettes and stuff you discover on the way.
- Location
- Somewhere
I can't pick because either option is amazing. On one hand, giant crab walker and guns. On the other, giant snake as guns.
NothingNow
Corpse Wrangler
- Location
- Tampa
CRAB BATTLE!
[X] The sea!
[X] The sea!
- Location
- The Land of Many Bregrets
- Pronouns
- They/Them
...Even with the Dreadnought Wheel option?
Now I'm even more curious!
- Location
- New England
[X] The sea!
CRB-01A CRAB PROTOTYPE
CRB-01A CRAB PROTOTYPE
- Location
- HELL
- Pronouns
- They/It
[X] The sea!
we must become the giant enemy crab
we must become the giant enemy crab
- Location
- Washington
[X] The sea!
Just be careful about weak points the Brits can hit for massive damage.
Just be careful about weak points the Brits can hit for massive damage.
[X] The sea!
