Anyone wants to bet the person who shot Pradhana Ali was the same person who originally stabbed, strangled, and poisoned him, and there is now a very bewildered assassin somewhere, wondering why they were paid to kill the same man twice?
Ah, yes. The whale. Famed for their magnificent off road overland mobility. All shall quake in fear before the might of our steam powered land whale as it swims across the land with its powerful tail, steam trailing from its blow-hole.
Ah, yes. The whale. Famed for their magnificent off road overland mobility. All shall quake in fear before the might of our steam powered land whale as it swims across the land with its powerful tail, steam trailing from its blow-hole.
Ah, yes. The whale. Famed for their magnificent off road overland mobility. All shall quake in fear before the might of our steam powered land whale as it swims across the land with its powerful tail, steam trailing from its blow-hole.
For a nation game i was participating in, I actually had my nation's MBT be named the LandWhale.
naming conventions were whack; ground vehicles were Land sea/air animal, naval vehicles and weapons were Sea land/air animal, and aircraft were air land/sea animal. so we had the LandWhale, AirWolf, SeaTiger...
Ah, yes. The whale. Famed for their magnificent off road overland mobility. All shall quake in fear before the might of our steam powered land whale as it swims across the land with its powerful tail, steam trailing from its blow-hole.
Good news, I've started a full time career in Tabletop RPGs and am going to be coming back to this Quest with a product I'm working on as a mechanical framework.
Probably too much, really. It's been three weeks, now, and while your regular visits to the zoo haven't stopped they also haven't given you anything useful yet. Just less stress or gnawing anxiety about the entirely reasonable fear that whoever killed your boss may start looking your way. Or that you'll fail and your career will detonate horribly as your Engine fails to do anything, nevermind revolutionize logistics.
But fundamentally, it's hard to worry too much about your potential grisly demise (political or physical) when you're watching river dolphins frolic in the Imperial Zoo.
You stand in a corridor carved through the aquarium in crystal and hubris. The walls and floor are transparent, in the style of some djinn-king with a love for glass. The ceiling is open to god's blue sky, but close enough to the lip of the corridor that the occasional wave crests the top, sprinkling guests with thimblefuls of water. In the ever-clear water of the aquarium, river dolphins frolic and examine the guests, as if the walkway turns you into an attraction for them as much as they are for you.
It's pleasant, and relaxing, but it's your eighth visit in two weeks and so, eventually, you drift away and find the Octopus.
The octopus tank is small and not particularly interesting. The small tank is decorated like a reef, covered with all sorts of hiding places and rock formations and nests for its single anti-social inhabitant. Unfortunately, the Day Octopus isn't thrilled with being gawked at by passersby and is very good at hiding itself, so most of the time the octopus tank is an elaborate exercise in trying to figure out if any of the rocks look particular octopus-like today.
Tragically, today is a rather usual day for octopus watching. You stand by the side of the tank, peering through the glass, convinced that a weirdly lumpy rock is actually an octopus and silently daring it to move for several minutes.
Then someone squawks unintelligibly to your right.
You turn and find yourself face to face with a tall european man in tourist's clothes. He squawks again, then gives you a rough sort of frown when you don't respond. You've genuinely no idea what language he's speaking in, but you suspect it's french.
"Hello?" you say in pretty rough portuguese.
He squawks again, and you think it's a new language primarily because he's stumbling over his words.
"Do you speak Danish? Hindi?" you try, swapping between the languages in the vain hope of finding a common tongue.
He says something short and curt in the first language.
"Arabic?" you offer.
"Don't you speak any proper languages?" the Euro just about manages in halting Farsi.
"You're in Mysore and Farsi is the third language you try?" you retort.
"I was attempting to tell you the…" he stumbles over his words for a moment, "Location! The location of the, uh. The Arm Fish?"
"Octopus?"
"That sounds ridiculous, it's an-" and he squawks again in that language you don't recognize.
"I guarantee you, we call it an octopus," you reply.
"Well, it's over there!" he says, pointing towards a lump of rock and reef that looks much like the lump of rock and reef you thought was the octopus. You stare at it with him for a moment, and it doesn't move.
"Jazakhallah," you offer.
"Gesundheit," he says, inexplicably, in surprisingly fluent german.
You stare at him for a moment and, after a time, he awkwardly shuffles off and leaves you to stare at the rock that may, or may not, be an octopus.
You hear a splash to your left. You snap your head around and make eye-contact with the Octopus.
It's a large, bright red creature, long, tentacular arms grasping the glass around it as it climbs out of an enclosure. It freezes, four fish wrapped in its long arms, body half-pulled out of the fish tank, and starts sidling away from you along the edge of the glass.
Eyes wide, you just watch.
Eventually, it decides that you're not going to stop it's untimely heist, and begins to climb down the outside of the tank. One arm grasps a wooden support pillar, one stays nestled along the lip of the tank for safety, while the others slowly extended down, pulling it surely, securely, towards the safety of the floor, stolen fish in hand.
For the first time since you've visited the zoo, you have an idea. And as the Octopus crosses the narrow corridor, climbs back into its own enclosure, you start making notes.
*
Another week has passed, and you are making progress. The arms are inspired. Low-lying and a little complex, sure, but you're an expert at precisely this sort of engineering and the possibilities are limitless! You could make an engine that could climb cliffs! That could swim! That could load and unload cargo with the same limbs used for mobility. Really, the example of the Octopus was so obvious, so incredibly, that you're amazed no-one else has seen it.
So you've scheduled a demonstration and are hard at work on the Miniature Test Model. It isn't a true proof of concept, but it's close. A small, functioning automaton about the size of a large dog. Just big enough to proof some of the concepts involved, to show that you're making progress and have viable ideas, to jumpstart the creative process in the rest of the team.
The only question:
What to put on it?
What goes on the Miniature Test Model? Choose up to 10 points of Features. Plan voting.
[ ] Prototype Combustion Engine. (3 points)
-Steam? Hah! A coward's device. A gas guzzling prototype combustion engine will give you space and speed! +2 Speed, +1 Cargo
[ ] A trailer! (4 points)
-Look, it's got to drag supplies around anyways you might as well rig the proof of concept. + 5 Cargo, -1 Speed.
[ ] Underslung Cannon! (2 points)
-It's a simple addition, but putting the main armament beneath the body will free up some space and provide a potent deterrent to infantry. +3 Defense, +1 Cargo.
[ ] Multi-Purpose Arms! (4 points)
-Arms are one of the easier things to do with Nar, and can be used for defense, moving cargo, and clearing obstructions in the path! +1 Defense, +2 Cargo, +1 Speed.
[ ] Mast Rocket Array! (3 points)
-A series of combat and signal rockets atop the Engine should allow for longer-range signalling than traditional methods and a potent deterrent to attackers! +2 Defense, +1 Speed.
[ ] Alloy Plating! (2 points)
-Getting the newest, most expensive alloy plates should allow for a more durable design that's also lighter than iron construction! +1 Defense, +1 Speed.
Iterate! breaks designing your invention up into discrete phases. We are in the first phase, defining your objectives and putting together The Dream.
Your objectives are defined by four categories, each rated from 0-10, and each with their own target rating based on what the machine is meant to do. For the Mysuran Engine, those are as follows:
Efficiency: How expensive and functional the Engine is to produce and operate. You're aiming for a 5. It's meant to be a large, expensive engine, but General Wadiyar would appreciate something feasible to mass produce.
Cargo: How much cargo the Engine can carry on the march. You're aiming for an 7. You've told the Shahzadi that you can fully replace a train, after all.
Defense: How much punishment the Engine can withstand, both in combat and on the campaign trail. You're aiming for a 5. Considering the projected cost, it needs to be able to defend itself from infantry or cheeky cavalry.
Speed: The Engine needs to keep up with an army on the march. You're aiming for a 3. It won't be fast, but it'll be faster than wagons and that should be good enough for the Sultan's specifications.
To start the project, you have a Dream. A Dream has Efficiency 10 and 0 in all other stats. This is because Dreams are dirt cheap but also do jack shit.
To change this, you're going to start designing Features of the Engine. Features will raise most of the Engines ratings while swiftly reducing its efficiency, slowly forcing you to watch your dream be mangled into an actual product that can ship and do something approaching its job.
We'll get into more specifics on that next update.
Goal: 7 Cargo, 5 Defense, 3 Speed. (?/7/5/3)
This is obviously impossible with the available choices. This plan is 4 Cargo, 4 Defense, 3 Speed. It also only spends 9/10 feature points which should be helpful in meeting our the efficiency goal of 5 later on.
My understanding is that this mini is meant to be a show-off piece more than a practical item. As such I think that Cargo is the least important stat right now. That's crucial for a production model, but not a miniature tech demo. We'll still need a little, but that's the stat I'm most willing to compromise on right now.
In comparison, Plan Shiny Octopus with Box is (0/7/2/1). It's got full cargo space but moves at a crawl and is below half on defenses.
. Let's see how many plates our protagonist can spin.
