NorthRailInversnecky
Sent 11:28am 7/2/1996
To Lunar Railway General Discussion
Subject: Trains Cancelled Due To Hole In Ground.
We have just had a very close-run thing.
(Impactsite image)
This is taken from standing on the trackbed a little short of six miles south of Inverness, looking almost due south towards Montreal, about fourteen miles south on the far side of our sudden unprovoked four mile long absence of track, trackbed, terrain underneath, etc. The lights you can see on the far side are the morning northbound train and I'm reliably informed that the locomotive crew are currently having a chat via mirror with several seers down at Kirkwall to get a solid idea which gods are most likely to look out for railwaymen as they got 37038 stopped about two hundred yards short of the edge of the damn world. Early days for any sort of incident report yet but our PW gang tell me that the bottom of this hole is about a mile below track level.
Whole town felt the thump that must have been this, there are a lot of people saying nice things to their patrons in town for seeing to it this didn't come down four miles further north, and I don't know about anyone else but I'm still shaking over an hour after the ground did.
TheGeomancyKid
Replied 11:24am 7/2/1996
Looking at how little crater wall got thrown up onto where you're standing - I am right that's the same track gauge we use here in California right? If I've got the scale right you're showing about two feet depth of ejecta here, and it can't be much more on the far side since the train is visible- at a guess the impacter must have come in at a very low angle almost skimming the surface, from almost due east given that I think I can make out crater wall getting taller on your right on the far side.
Jesus, I'm glad everyone's OK up there.
TrainManTed
Replied 11:28am 7/2/1996
I don't think 37038's crew should bother gambling any time soon, they've just burnt through an entire lifetime supply of luck in one shot. Hope nobody got thrown around too badly in the emergency braking application & glad my lunar colleagues are all in one piece.
PeteTheSkeet
Replied 11:30am 7/2/1996
On the PW gang the Montreal side, here's a couple of images from over here.
(Train image 1)
(Train image 2)
(The Gap)
(Crater wall west)
(Crater wall east)
As you can see 37038 held the rails pretty damn well - full E-brake application right enough, the block signal about four hundred yards behind the back of the train went to danger when they were damn near on top of it.
Lot of passengers got pretty well banged up, cuts, bruises, couple of broken bones, no fatalities or severe injuries and it's staying that way. We've got two derailed bogies, trailing end of coach 3 and leading end of coach 4, lot of damage to about fifty-eight sleepers from wheels bouncing over them so it's going to be a while before we can get the train pulled back, but everything stayed upright and no serious coach-on-coach action. Getting people back to town by pretty much everyone with four wheels and more than one seat available mucking in to help, Jarl Randalsson is running around figuring out where to put everyone up until we can get them home.
NixieNoxieNog
Replied 11:32am 7/2/1996
The f*ck didn't the damn OSA spot this coming in and stop it?
GeneOSAgolem
Replied 11:33am 7/2/1996
That is a very good question.
Looking at the images I've so far found here and elswhere, and the very brief section of locomotive 37038's in-cab mirror recording showing the actual impact (this will be released at North Rail's discretion) the impacter indeed appears to have arrived in a very flat, retrograde, trajectory as per TheGeomancyKid's educated guess.
As far as I can make out, it appears to have been orbiting Earth retrograde (opposite direction to the direction of travel of the moon) with the top of its orbit close to lunar altitude. I believe that it must have been quite small - easily below the thousand ton mark - with the size of the crater due to this essentially being a head on collision between two objects travelling at velocities adequately described in miles per second.
I do not yet have any further analysis, and will supply any more information here as it is learned.
If anyone reading this has any potential approaches to prevention of further incidents of this kind to contribute, please join the existing Meteor Impact Prevention thread over on the OSA General Discussion newsgroup. I note that comments relating to 'just nuke the rock' aren't useful as this is reliable only for creating a cloud of radioactive debris on an impact trajectory, and nor is there any known means to ward against an impact of even this small a scale. It's comparable to attempting to ward against an Etente-style warship mass driver slug as fired by one of their secondary turrets and I don't believe that fitting hull armour to lunar Orcadia is feasible at this time.
-/-/-
Harry had been a tad upset when he got back to the Skithblanthir II's cruiser bridge, accompanied by a simultaneously relieved and frustrated (albeit no longer sexually) Hermione to find an ongoing discussion about meteor impacts with Liara, and her mum, chipping in what they knew of the wider galaxy's approach - the hard part was, apparently, detecting dangerous objects in time so they could be deflected into safe orbits with destruction not really reliably feasible even with the significantly higher firepower available in the Sol system, a comment he had been quite surprised by and suspected Benezia hadn't intended to let slip quite yet - but, as the topic of conversation drifted from there into explaining to his little sisters first things like orbital velocity, energy of kinetic impacts increasing as velocity increases, etc, via a question about why a star shared their father's given name, to chatting about the difference between symbology and what's actually there at, as Cassie put it, 'the actually actual Dad's star', he quickly realised something as important as the pressing need to protect lunar Orcadia from any further meteor impacts.
And that was why he, while saying, "Nah, at the end of the day symbology is a method to use belief - or screwing up your nose and -pretending- to believe hard enough- to amplify and sculpt the effects of a magical ritual, it's got very little to do with what's actually going on anywhere that isn't in here," and tapped Cassie's head while his other hand was tapping out a textcomm to his mother asking if she was actually deliberately trying to cause a two-culprit version of the Frankenhedgehog Incident and if so could she make sure to record the results for posterity: his little sisters had at a guess been routinely raising hell and running Narcissa ragged because they were rapidly approaching as bored as he had been when he started playing with necromancy involving roadkilled hedgehogs. "That doesn't only go for people with enough magic to actually use a wand either, I got curious after Kenny, you know, your bigger big brother said something about his boyfriend working magic with a musical instrument and watched J.D inventing 'chunky beats' through a thaumotographic viewer, and -that's- how I know any thinking being, 'magically gifted' or otherwise, can legit create a perceivable flow of magic via symbology."
"Including me, take it I do?" Benezia quietly asked.
"I don't know for certain, but I -do- know a certain kinda shy and awkward cybergoth musician with exactly as little of his own magic as you have, having fun with a synthesizer and beatbox hooked up to a sequencer and really getting into figuring a new song out, resolved enough to actually legitemately power a ritual so I don't see anything saying otherwise. We live in an inherently magical and reliably weird universe, it's just some of us need to put more effort into doing anything using that - and have a harder time realising it actually does something - than people with any use for a wand other than 'slightly inconvenient backscratcher'. It's why I've thought what I saw curling round J.D's fingers and slipping into a still-active ward-charging ritual that morning is going to be incredibly important since the moment I realised what I was seeing."
"I knew J.D's 'sound laboratory' was special," said Ginny, whom Harry happened to know downright -revered- the music of three oddball Londoners who called themselves Night City Radio.
"Aye, and on the note of symbology, it doesn't even need to be anything established by anyone else; Ginny could for example use J.D's music to -massively- increase the potency of any ritual she designed involving it. It's like that with anything even remotely close to as personally significant to you as Night City Radio is to Ginny. I'm pretty sure Ratbag could enhance a ritual almost as hard using - which track was it again? One that you said something about taking you right back to the first time getting out on the road on a breakdown recovery,"
"Hired Guns," Astoria immediately said, nodding.
"Everyone's got something like that," Harry continued. "Not necessarily a piece of music mind, a smell, an object, having someone specific there with you, pretty much anything can do it so long as it is very, -very- important to you. That's why sacrifice works too, particularly if you're sacrificing something that you want gone."
"So -that's- why the past stuff you want rid of goes on the Yule fire," Sarah said.
"Exactly," Harry told her. His mirror dinged, announcing an expected question from their mother about what the f*ck was he on about this time, and he started tapping out a reply consisting of some of the questions asked, and answers understood, by Cassie and/or Sarah.
It wasn't complex stuff for an average to fairly bright student four times their age, but for a set of three year old twins it was resounding proof that Harry had in fact inherited his brain from his mother as so had Cassie and Sarah.
-/-/-
"f*cksticks. Pads, we're going to have to hire tutors sooner than I expected unless we want another plague of undead hedgehog abominations or suchlike, bugger! Oh yes, apparently we've been so busy we failed to realise that our daughters are of course geniuses."
"Well," said Sirius Black, lifting his attention from the final test results on a more flexible mana trunking system he should have realised was necessary -before- he had an entire spacefleet plumbed with tubing designed for fixrd ground installations, "At least we have forwarning with the next kid."
Narcissa, currently just starting to actually show visible pregnancy and being quietly smug about being obliged to be kept very close to hand by Lily as the embryonic soul in her uterus was budding off of Lily's rather than the owner of the womb it currently occupied, which was why Lily had replaced the handle of her taller blonde housepet's lead with a wristband that buckled tight enough to stay on while sleeping, looked up from where she'd been helping her Mistress (and the mother of the rathercless related to her than usual child inside her) collate the final details of the plan to rapidly switch over to the improved conduits aboard Black Colossus and said, "Mistress, hasn't your eldest an extant and in production golem nursmaid-and-tutor design? I have to suspect he'd be -delighted- to sell you ones for each of his siblings."
"Good girl," Lily said, rewarding her with a sharp slap and a stroke.
-/-/-
FhtagnAirServicesVinland
Sent 10:48am 8/2/1996
To Orcadia General Discussion
Subject: Thralldom questions and answwrs.
In the light of last week's sudden unexpected influx of people with an M in brwckets after their display names courtesy of B&B hooking the mirror text communication system up to the electrical text communication system I recently learned inspired it, there's been an incrasing number of increasingly sketchy, lurid, gibberish about what thralldom is coming up on here, and I think it's time that I underscore exactly how qualified I am on the subject.
This is me.
(Wings image)
Photo taken by my dear friend, and rotary-wing aviation mentor, Jenny Olafsdottir three years ago when I got my pilot's wings.
My name is Safiya bint Azharad, saddled with the callsign 'Princess' by my shieldbrother GroundloopVinlandr as I used to be one.
Here is a picture of the document I have framed in my living room as the trilobite torc you may have noticed in the previou image does the job: proclaim to anyone I show it to that I answer to exactly one person as I am effectively serving the Orcadian equivalent of a life sentence:
(Thrallpaper image)
The other document involved - the one proclaiming that I am owned by the King of Orcs until he says otherwise - is currently in an office safe onboard a very large heavily armed spacecraft city I don't offhand know where is, and the details of my 'imprisonment' are so thoroughly unspecified and at my jailor's discretion (the only real restrictions on it are that I cannot be lawfully maimed or killed without having gone on to comit a crime warranting a harsher punishment, and cannot be lawfully caused to die by for example starvation) that I have actually been on the same continent/spacecraft/other thingy maybe about three times since before the end of the war in the Med, during which I received strict instructions from my at that point eleven year old owner not to do anything Orcs wouldn't and that is about all he's ever ordered me.
I took this as carte blanch to take up full time helicopter aviation in Vinland while raising the son I was pregnant with when the twit who took me prisoner in the early stages of the Mediterranean War actually being a war decided it was sensible to go 'HEY KINGIE WE FOUND A STRAY PRINCESS AND SHE'S YOURS NOW WAHEY!', as messing around with helicopters is a perfectly respectable Orc thing to do. I currently live in Neo-Oshamambe in lunar Orcadia and am living off savings and a stipend for my upkeep from my owner as there just aren't all that many places in Orcadia where there's enough air to really put my Blachawk to use, so she's in storage down at Priestley, and just got engaged to my next door neighbour. I'm also a founder member of the Society for Allegedly Captive Princesses (membership nine) and one of the first people to join the Royal Property Association formed by my very weird penpal Shieldmaiden Hermione Granger, who along with being a formally accepted royal concubine, very publicly active shieldmaiden, career ehibitionist, and high-energy research thaumaturgist has similar documents with her name on them due to having very emphatically given ownership of herself to a certain king and taken to violently and expletive-riddledly rejecting any proposal that she might someday have some vage semblance of interest in resuming self-ownership,I told you she's weird.
Feel free to ask me pretty much anything related to the piece of paper on my wall and the piece of paper in my owner's safe.
GigglesTheTerror
Replied 10:51am 8/2/1996
There's exactly nothing unusual about a high-energy research thaumaturgist being weird. Not sure if it's cause (routine proximity to improbabilities going weird boom isn't great for your sanes) or effect (you have to be f*cking weird to willingly mess around with things you know are able to unexpectedly transmogrify you into literal ravioli) but it is definitely a fact.
Puncertawnee (M)
Replied 10:52 8/2/1996
Safiya, you have been brainwashed into accepting nothing more nor less than enslavement-
-/-/-
In a place called Oskegee a half-skraelingOrc rotorhead named Kenny Tozer also known as 'Tipstrike' finished reading 'punker tawny' waffling in an incredibly condescending tone at -his f*cking shieldsister-, and became very calmly, very methodically, -bloody outraged- as he read nearly fifty responses of Princess being repeatedly, -disrespectively-, targetted with what amounted to 'don't bother your silly little head about it' interspersed into a stream of thoroughly insulting penny-dreadful fantasies with the final insult being pretending to believe Safiya was a 'obviously male slaver inventing a persona to make excuses for the inexcusable' causing Safiya to cease responding to the thread within half an hour of having started it, concluding with a mirror recording of herself instructing 'punker tawny' to 'go and f*ck yourself'.
Courtesy of being the owner of one of the very few actual electronic connections to Usenet available to an Orcadian national who wasn't ROIS at that moment in time, it took Tozer less than five minutes to find an email address, and start digging up information on someone who thought they were anonymous and really decidedly wasn't.
It didn't take him too long to get some code bashed together to keep an eye on what the little sh*t did on mirror text communication next either. Wasn't like keeping tabs for his Jarl (who didn't entirely trust the ROIS spooks to do the right thing when it wasn't -Orcs- in trouble) on whether the muggle government decided to do anything stupid to ordinary decent Vinlandr skraelings who'd elected to stay on Earth while posing as (and being) an entirely normal one-man rent-a-helicopter business took -all- the time of a retired Canadian military helicopter pilot and Gungnir air-wing veteran the muggles thought didn't know who his dad was or anything.
-/-/-
TipstrikeVinlandr
Replied 2:58pm 8/2/1996
Gonna give you a rough lowdown on who you've been talking sh*t to, 'Punker Tawny', cause you just wasted the first of exactly three chances you get to show her the respect she's due.
See that circular patch on Princess's oldschool flying jacket, the one directly below her wings? The winged lightning spear with GUNGNIR above and AIR CAVALRY below? There are exactly twenty-two of those in existence, on exactly twenty-two rotorheads flying jackets, handed out by Randall Randallson to everyone in the rotary-wing aviation team aboard the Gungnir at the end of the Mediterranean War. Princess flew left seat for Jenny Olafsdottir, was in the front of the Huey that the Redcap and the Jarl of Stromess rode in for the kill at the taking of Istanbul, and spent most of the time between then and now flying her own whirlybird in and out the north end of f*cking nowhere in Vinland, to places clinging to life on the edge of Fimbulwinter you muggles are only just noticing exist, places where there's a general damn high opinion of her, for just enough cash to keep her kite fuelled up and good to go.
That's why she has that other patch, the one above her wings. The silver sheave of grain and VVEF: stands for Vinland Volunteer Emergency Flight. Fifty-three of those exist, all on jackets worn by aviators who own and fly their own kites, some fixed-wing, some rotary, many amphibious. You don't get one of those without at least dozen people verifiably surviving a winter in the frozen north because, and only because, of you and your aircraft, I don't even know how many times Princess baled out of bed and got her Blackhawk wheels up with the big fan turning at 0dark00 on a forty below night because a mirror woke her up dinging and told her someone was in trouble, but it's definitely not a small number.
There are not many people who will spool their own helicopter up to run an ad-hoc medevac at no charge in flying conditions best described as 'impossible' months before sunrise a second time and she's done exactly that eight times that I know of, there are not many people who will RUN to burn thousands of pounds of their own avgas searching for one overdue hunter from buttf*ck nowhere and never expect one bent knut back, so don't you ever let me catch you pulling that self-righteous condescending head-patting 'oh your empty little noggin doesn't know anything' bullsh*t or that stream of made-up insults on the northland's sky princess again or this old skraeling's gonna have to do something about you.
Puncertawnee (M)
Replied 3:22pm 8/2/1996
Like you even know who I am, dick.
Tipstrike
Replied 4:58pm 8/2/1996
f*ck around and find out.
-/-/-
SandraSimmons (B&B R&D runescribe)
Sent 7:26pm 8/2/1996
To Black and Black Official Announcements
Subject: I present, Titles! And, Public Diary improvements.
OK, so I present, the functionality I've been testing using the M-in-brackets-for-Muggle thing: there are now titles that can be added in brackets behind display names!
The ones that so far exist are all Black and Black, Orcadian Space Agency, or official Jarldom representatives, and exist due to the steady rise of people claiming to be people they're not and tslking utter tosh. So far if you see:
(B&B) with anything else after the second B this is coming from a Black and Black employee using their work mirror, so be sure to tell their manager if they're making us look bad;
(Definitely Serious) found only attached to our majority shareholder, Chairman of the Board of Directors, head of R&D, and my boss, about whom the main thing you need to know is that he changed his middle name to 'Padfoot';
(Yes, That One) attached the 'TheRedcap' also known as Black and Black Chief Executive Officer Lilly Ann Black-Potter;
(OSA Mission Control) attached to people actually genuinely in command over at the OSA.
And (Confirmed Jarl) attached to certain people claiming to be Orcadian Jarls.
I note that the Orcadian royal household has turned down my offer to add something similar dor them, no idea why.
For people using our Public Diary service, you will have as this goes up received a message explaining how to use similar functionality on your diaries. Titles handed out there will not appear on newsgroup messages, they're only for diarists and commenters within the environs of that specific diary.
I have also hooked our existing connection blocking functionality up to the diary system. Diarists may now block specific commenters - this will prevent them seeing or further commenting on your diary. Their previous comments will receive a title that you can specify, default is, (Blocked). Note that diaries are still not accessible from muggle electrical artefacts, and that when this does become possible it will be strictly on each diarist to decide whether theirs should be accessible from outside the mirror system as all will be set to deny electrical connections to begin with.
Still working on the request to add a dedicated connected newsgroup structure to a diary. Getting it to not just pop up on the main newsgroup system is turning out a bit fiddly, thus the several times a group titled TEST has popped up then gone away - the solution appears to be rewriting newsgroup functions from scratch with enough deliberate differences, so it's going to take a couple of weeks.
The step after that is probably going to have to be adding blocking functionality to the newsgroup system, allowing you to stop seeing specific users - I have a start on that spun off from the diary block function, it needs a few tweaks as it currently wants to block all access to all newsgroups as of my latest experiments using test mirrors.
Have fun! I now need to actually clock out and dash home and get changed, I'm supposed to be going for a night out with my mates twenty minutes ago.
-/-/-
The Skithblanthir II dropped out of displacement in the outer Jenjen system, lit its levitation apparatus for several minutes to fimish getting its actually velocity and angular momentum pointing in the right direction, then settled in high orbit at damn near twelve noon sharp on February 10th on 1996.
They were expected - Harry had spent several hours discussing the visit with Ancient Mother Green Rock River, as her current revision full name now translated to, and half a dozen golem-crewed scout corvettes, only a few million tons apiece and resembling almonds with over half their mass just pairs of blasting hex generators copied directly from Skithblanthir II's secondaries and most of the rest armour, had been standing by one light minute from the location in which the mobile heart of Orcadia dropped out of displacement and stabilised her orbit.
Pleasentries and official welcome to kobold space of a valued ally were of course made, and Harry was reasonably confident that he managed to conceal just how funny he found Benezia's reaction to whst happens when Orcs are formally welcomed by a species of absurdly cute little lizard-puppy-people whose formal clothing involves a lot of furs and feathers and elaborately carved bones and whose concept of a formal greeting appears closely inspired by Maori while being ridiculously cute lizard-puppy people with natural pixie-cut hairdos, he was rather looking forward to learning what his friends from Aeotoaroa made of the kobold equivalent of a haka - any number of detail differences even without the thing about kobold morphology but the general idea was very reminiscent and the attempts by an Asari queen not to go 'wut?' at an adorable ferocious stomping grimacing chicken-voiced teeny-tiny war-dance was probably going to make his Maori pals crease up when it stopped being the middle of the night their time and they saw the recording he sent in a text communication titled 'I just found out kobolds want to be you lot when they grow up'.
-/-/-
Nchurdamz (Staff Mastersmith)
Published 1:23pm 10/2/1997
Subject Some laying down of laws.
So, speaking as the stunty who in 1957 thought it was a great joke to conclude a newspaper advertisem*nt jonesing for commission as a newly certified mastersmith by ending a potted list of artefacts I would gladly accept comissions to manufacture with the fateful words 'chastity belts', as I just demonstrated there has been a considerable amount of yikyak and tommyrot in comments on this thing, and I have had one too many conversations with Miss A involving me saying 'That never happened'.
The one last night with someone apparently claiming to be an unprecedented example of communication with the dead via lying about the location of the fist ever chastity bra was enough, to put it very bluntly two years ago I had the solemn duty to serve as pallbearer to the dear friend, former employee, and person who in 1967 requested that I figure out some way to shield her rather daunting longshanks mammaries from unwanted advances, my first company product tester, the unforgettable ironclad Madam Nancy Spungen. The prototype's current location is in her tomb and certainly not on some lying longshanks sh*t to whom I have already pallied what I like to call a Rune of Wazzock Ejection, name improved from B&B's yikyak about calling it a 'block function' by my apprenticehood friend Urist Redbeard over at U.Redbeard & Co Jewellers Ltd.If you really want the sordid details look for the former commenter with the 'title' (not my term, blame B&B) of 'Wazzock' on the reviewer post for chastity bras.
With that out of the way and at Miss A's urgings courtesy of the recent conversation she held with several people via comments she and I have put together a full structure of titles for commenters on this company diary, which she has kindly volunteered to administer while lounging around looking chaste and, I am informed, by longshanks standards very attractive in my workshop's showroom. What? Dwarf, you numbskull.
As such it is now possible to earn yourself a title by privately messaging Miss A with an image of the production reference code - a series of Old Khazalid numerals - that I stamp into every artefact I manufacture.
By providing her an image matching this one, showing a small portion of the waistband above the forwards righthand corner of your hip as you wear it,
(Miss_A belt code image)
With a code proving that it is indeed not someone else's via the cut down, lacking any identity details save for a customer number and space for a display name, version of our sales records that Miss A now has to hand as our secretary golem is very quick and efficient, you can get yourself the title of, (Belted)
By providing an image of a key head matching this one,
(Miss_A key head image)
Code specifics as above, you can get yourself the title of (Keyholder) and note that the code does not entirely match the belt it goes with - there's an extra numeral, a 0 or 1, to allow me to keep track of how many keys I've manufactured matching that specific lock as I've occasionally accidentally made a third or fourth when distracted.
And because there's always going to be room for yikyak, by providing an image matching this one,
(Displayarticle image)
Showing both belt and key, you can get yourself the title of (Casual Wearer) as I'm told that's a thing some people apparently want to exist, no skin off my nose.
There are of course staff titles, added solely by me, as seen above. Two others can be gained by being full of yikyak (say for example making wild claims that you haven't backed up by one of the above titles and Miss A being able to see that you purchased what you're on about when you claim to) which is of course the (Yikyak) title you'll see appended to every existing comment from someone that's resulted in me saying the phrase 'that wasn't what happened', such as the yikyak about being who inspired me to start making these things, and the title (Wazzock) acquired by being ejected for being a wazzock and breaking the rules.
What rules? These rules:
Do not harass other commenters for their identities. Collating freely given information is okay, whining about other people's sex lives being private makes you a wazzock.
Do not harass other commenters, or Miss A, for images or recordings. This makes you a sponge as well as a wazzock.
And do not claim you inspired this that or the other thing or it exists because of your comission or yik yak yik yak when you bloody know you didn't,there are exactly three people alive (exactly one of whom has probably been commenting here) who are not lying if they make that claim, all others are wazzocks.
Miss_A (Staff Tester)
Commented 1:28pm 10/2/1996
In addendum to what my employer said, do not expect me to act on title requests outside working hours, take notice of the fact that 'working hours' means 9 to 5 Saturday to Wednesday and Orcadian Standard Time, and don't expect an instant response. This is something I am doing when lounging around in the showroom, any customers actually in the building take priority as do things like my lunch hour.
GibHtimsain
Commented 1:35pm 10/2/1996
Just scanned back through old comments and a lot of the locations containing a (Yikyak) aren't the slightest bit surprising in hindsight. One location that doesn't contain one - just after a 'MamaeK' - is quite surprising, could this be the 'possibly true' mentioned by our dwarfen underlord?
Also wow, is a lunch hour normal in Orcadia? I get twenty minutes, for reference I'm in New Amsterdam.
LegitematePervert
Commented 1:38pm 10/7/1996
GibHtimsain - Normal doesn't exist here yet, hasn't since the old normal started to break up during Operation Hillclimb in June of 93.
Between the fact something like three quarters of Orcs used to work for muggles and the huge influx of refugees damn near tripling the Orcadian population so far this year, about nine out of ten people in Orcadia today are living off the King's Eighth, a huge proportion of essential work up here is done by golems, and there's this slow realisation growing that in all seriousness in Orcadia a job is something you do to afford extra bennies or save for big purchases.
I have absolutely no idea what normal is going to be this time next week and never mind in ten years time, but I'm entirely certain it's going to include a roof over my head, a warm place to kip, and food in my belly, which I wasn't ten years ago.
TwoMindsOneFace (Belted)
Commented 1:41pm 10/7/1996
Ha ha! Beat ThaumaturgyCat to it again!
-/-/-
Hermione Granger, who was amusing herself with her mirror while waiting around in armour while the whole thing with formal greetings would its way to a very koboldy conclusion - this had involved a big meal put on by the kobold greeting party in their sole so far heavier military vessel (almost describable as what you'd get if you fitted a pair of Orcadian Orcadian battlewagon primary turrets together bottom to bottom then encased them in an almond shaped heavily armoured hull) at an excellent approximation of a typical kobold 'sky village' centre in the centre of the frigate's habitable area, with the next item on the agenda transferring to high Deadland orbit, gave the nearest Carrow - namely Flora - a sudden unprovoked mock piqued look, drawing Harry's attention to the resumption of Hermionieing as they were getting set to return to their own ship and head over to high Deadland orbit where Barenzia and her personal ship's techies were going to take possession of a collection of probable information storage devices, while the smaller Asari ship's crew undocked and spent most of the next week examining the cloud of debris from close up.
He was almost but not quite distracted enough by Benezia, who had been discussing blue stuff decontamination proceedures - nobody wanted it getting loose in Thorsdrumsheim, -nasty sh*t- - with Dora asking "That a 'bull' a male livestock animal is, I am not wrong?" that he didn't reguster Fleur pulling her robe's slit side up just enough to aim her mirror at part of the band of metal round her waist while batting her eyelids at Hermione, who looked quite cross and confirmed that she was indeed getting het up about her favourite kink again.
"Yeah, and?" Dora asked, immediately perplexed by this offbeat question.
"Curious I am, why as 'livestock animal excrement' to Blue Stuff you refer."
"It's pretty much an acronym joke from my first language, which we're not talking in. Okay so in English Blue Stuff is said," and Dora switched to English, "Blue Stuff," back to Norn, "And bullsh*t is said," back to English, "Bull sh*t," back to Norn with Harry starting to try to not snigg*r as he enjoyed this latest episode of Banazia being Doraed at, "So they're both two words starting with the same letter, right? So we started out calling Blue Stuff 'Weird Blue Glowing Stuff' in English, I barely spoke Norn at that point, then that got cut down to 'Blue Stuff', again in English, which turned into an acronym - the first two letters, 'Bee Ess' - which is -already- a shorthand for 'bullsh*t' in English, right, and that turned into calling Blue Stuff -bullsh*t- after we started getting an idea how f*cking weird it is, because 'Bullsh*t' pretty much means 'total nonsense' as well as what comes out the back end of something that goes moo."
"My guess is that's because when a bull sh*ts it's -a lot of sh*t- and comes out spectacularly, really f*cking big animal, really f*cking big turd, and 'sh*t' already gets used talking about nonsense or stuff you can't believe is real," Ginny helpfully provided.
"With livestock experience you have?" Benezia slightly sceptically asked as they started heading for their ride back to the Skithblanthir II - a Queen-class ferry, waiting in the kobold warship's central starboard docking bay.
"My parents are farmers, so that's a yes," Ginny told her. "They don't actually have a bull, well, they didn't last I knew, but one of their neighbours, bloke called Pete Giles, does and lets Dad to put the cows to his bull when they're bulling, not sure what he gets back for the favour but there must be something as he's a miserable git. They're really thoroughly not small animals, Roger - that's Pete Giles's bull - weighs about two thousand pounds all in."
"f*cking vile tempers on them too," Harry said.
"Then some, I mean you don't want to go into a field where there's cows with young calves at foot cause when Mum weighs like half a ton 'stop bothering my baby' has a lot of impact cause we're small and squishy by cow standards, but a bull is about as much bigger than a cow as Master is than me and tends to have a really bad temper," Ginny agreed.
"Ah, like ralotii," Benezia said with a nod. "On Thelessia common meat animals ralotii are, males unfriendly and large they are - on a farm for three summers as a young woman work I did. Like living landslide a male ralotii is, from aircars fed they are."
"Pete Giles feeds and moves Roger from inside his tractor," Ginny said, nodding. "His tractor's got dents from an even more annoyed than usual Roger but yeah."
"Colour me surprised, I wouldn't have taken you for the sort who'd have any farming experience," Harry told Benezia.
"Many things trying when young nothing unusual about there is," Benezia said, nodding with an amused smile. "To allow the urban youth of the pastoral lifestyle to experience, an organisation there is, of its name the phrase 'Society Holiday Working Agricultural' sufficient translation is. My hands to get dirty quite a lot did I enjoy, but fade the interest did, and new excitements seek I did, to the next adventure always moving. Usual for the young adult Asari it is, to so settle swiftly upon a way of life perhaps the thing most alien about Orcs to me is."
"We're exceptions even by Earth's standards," Harry told her, shrugging. "It's more usual to do something like what you're talking about, come to think of it if you'd asked me what I was going to do with my life when I was Astoria's age the first thing out my mouth would've been 'healer'."
"I wanted to run a bookshop when I was a little girl," Hermione said, having apparently shook whatever off and rejoining the ongoing conversation. "Honestly I think why that fell by the wayside was realising that running a bookshop means you don't -keep- the books, at that point I started thinking 'librarian' but -that- involves them not being your books, to be entirely fair I didn't even know 'shieldmaiden' and 'research thaumaturgist' were -possible- at that point."
"Yes yes, we all know Master lured you in with an enormous stack of musty old tomes, Madam In-Case-You-Hadn't-Noticed-I-Like-Books-Rather-A-Lot," Tracy sniffed.
"Nothing wrong with a bit of biblophilia," Hermione dismissed the attempted nose tweak. "And besides, think about it - when you open, oh, a copy of 'ORCS', an actual copy of the original like thecone in the Hogwarts collection, if you can read it that's someone who has been dead for over a thousand years speaking directly to you. Forget all this," and she gestured around herself, "That is the -real- most magical thing anyone has ever invented, in the end writing is the single most important invention in the entire existence of any species who've ever hit on the idea. Without writing we're all just some fancy kind of monkey that's got good at hitting things with sticks, with writing history begins, myths begin to give way to truth, and we are a -civilisation-. There's a lot more I love about books than the fact that if they didn't exist -nothing- that we take for granted would be possible, but it's why I think they're important as well as being lovely things in their own right. And for your information they're nothing to do with why I decided that my future involved this," and she touched the metal at her throat, "Though they -are- part of how I stopped panicking after I jumped in with both feet and made a mud splat."
"A -mud splat-?" Liara asked, trying to not giggle.
"Mm, I have this lifelong bad habit of see, want, immediately jump in with both feet, mud splat, panic. I've been managing to do that on and off since at least when I was about Ratbag's age and I still occasionally get carried away with whatever I'm doing and realise there's just been a mud splat again," Hermione told her as they arrived at the boarding ramp and it was time to return attention to koboldian pomp and ceremony.
-/-/-
It took a couple of hours more all in to finish orchestrating the day's diplomatic goings-ons, get the couple of hundred kobolds who had applied to emigrate to Orcadia at this opportunity situated, sort out ongoing details about what was slowly becoming an Orcadian exclave and trading post on one of Jenjen's smaller and more distant planets (very reminiscent of Pluto if a lot closer in actual distance because red dwarf star) and get the Skithblanthir II situated in high Deadland orbit well clear of the Blue Stuff contaminated debris cloud to which the smaller Asari ship was going to spend the next few days taking repeated trips to confirm Orcadian findings, etc, but by just coming up on four they were finally back to the palace, where Harry immediately sat down and dragged Astoria and Gabrielle into providing aesthetic ideas for the still being worked on designs for a golem whose Purpose was to be a sufficiently 'Orc' mobile throne with a rather more permanent and practical equivalent of a howdah strapped to the top of a slightly unenthusiastic Crab II.
(Big Mike hadn't said anything, he wouldn't, being an armoured vehicle wherever his country needed armoured vehicles to be was very explicitly his Purpose,but Harry was perfectly clear that a war golem far prefers to be doing something more warry such as, say, imposingly patrolling a border, looming and meaningfully fingering his man gun in case that bunch over there get funny ideas, etc - you didn't actually need to ask to tell that the big bloke found royal transport duties uninspiring.)
The first thing out of either of the two household junior postapocalyptic road warriors when they sat down and Harry pulled out the existing concept sketches and frame design notes came from Gabrielle and was, "I still don't quite get why you want Mistress and me to advisecon this, Harry. You're -a lot- better at golem design than I am."
"That's not the point," Harry told her, "Look, it's like this, there's a setcof very good reasons I decided 'Ratbag and Filly' when I realised this," and he pulled out his latest attempt at a styling concept sketch, "Just doesn't look right."
"Looks kinda like a bigger version of a Sleipnir," Astoria said, "That's a you sized person for scale right? Harry, I think you're going to have to say what you want to do with this and what's not working."
"Because I can do 'mechanically augmented kinky girlie' pretty well, and I know I'm dead good at directly copying a pretty version of a real creature - my sisters dogs, our centaur golems, that sort of thing. But it turns out I really don't have the eye for making a fantastical living machine look even half as good as Little Phillipe."
"The Crab and Sleipnir families of golem designs," Gabrielle started.
"Are entirely function defines form. They look like they do because they're the most efficient and effective way to lay out heavy armour I could work out, looking good just isn't any part of what they're for - it just works because 'walking tank'."
"You're saying that this is about," Astoria said, paused a moment, tipped her head, "Huh, I think I get it, looking like 'well duh, of course that's what the King of Orcs is riding around on top of with his harem of kink sh*t addled birds'."
"Times needing to be a fantastical machine-creature that -fits that-. It took me stupidly long to realise 'hotrod armageddon' fits, I didn't really clock it until Benezia said something offhanded about still thinking Little Phillipe is the most 'Orc' thing she's ever seen, and it turns out that I don't have anything like you two's eye for what makes 'hotrod armageddon' -look right-."
"Point, you definitely need help with this, I can't draw nearly well enough so that's gonna be on Filly and I think we're gonna have to do a bunch more concepts," Astoria mused.
"Okay, so I already have half a dozen quick sketches of the rough frame layout I'm thinking, let's see what shakes loose," Harry said, pulling over another stack of sheets and a drawing board.
"I think the eight legged centaur basic layout is right, thinking about it maybe less 'machine being' and more 'ratrod walker vehicle with a cab and a driver that's actually built in'?" Filly suggested.
"What, like say the cab part of something like that utterly dead Cozzie I've got laying around - you know, the red one with the back end totally smashed in," Astoria suggested. "Draw that chopped behind the doors where the head and upper torso section are, so the torso section's shoulders line up with where the front wheels should go."
Hermione wandered in, apparently having changed out of her armour into one of her current typical goth princess dresses at the first available opportunity, sat down, and asked "What's going on?"
"Permanent solutions to the how to impressively stomp around being a royal household of Orcness going on," Astoria said. "I think the stairs tail is definitely about right."
"Oh right, I guess you helping put that together -does- make sense," Hermione agreed, seating herself the far side of Astoria from Harry.
"How easy would it be to put fake hydraulics on the limbs, like a muggle digging machine's big spade arm thing?" Filly asked. "Something like this,"
"Should be simple enough mechanically though it adds to the need for maintenance, more sliding metal surfaces needing kept lubricated," Astoria immediately said. "Think the throne bit needs to be higher with more of a raised dias sort of affair around it for the gang of scary girls to lounge menacingly kinkily on, and I think it wants pretty much a fan sort of thing of sticky up tall chrome exhausts and big spears behind it."
"I think we're going to be designing a dedicated group of subordinate crew golems to cover maintenance and the likes, and I think some sort of postapocalyptic punk fashion version of my usual kinky girlie golem style fits there," Harry decided. "Probably set them up as semiautonomous, speech-capable, dronesisters. Do you think an off the shelf Crab II anti-tank death ray mount works? Say under the left wheelarch of the car body part, I think that'd fit."
"How hard would it be to make it look like it's been salvaged and scrapyard engineered in?" Gabrielle asked. "This whole thing wants to look like he got awesomed together in a barn out of whatevers."
"Peice of piss, the gun shroud is small enough to fit in there with what looks like hydraulics connecting it," Astoria immediately said. "We're gonna want grabrails everywhere but that's stuff to work out during the actual build, adding details as it comes together is a big bit of how you ratrod properly. Bullbars! I've got an old Land-Rover bullbar that'll look perfect on the car bodyshell part with a string of lights hanging on the bottom! Haha this is gonna be f*cking awesome!"
"Hang on Mistress, just going to put this aside and get onto a second drawing, it's always worth doing that to tighten up the where everything fits, and I think I can see how to have limb systems that stabilise the whole platform area so it doesn't judder around when he walks," Gabrielle said, putting the first sketch on the table.
They were, by dinnertime, pretty much ready to start turning concept sketches into actual design drawings, and Harry had started jotting down notes on scriptures, wardings, mana systems, and the mechanical side of six subordinate golems; it was now looking very much like the desire to have the idea turn into a reality that was really going to make his mother twitch (and solidly fit the 'king of the giant Viking bikers' thing) by the time they got back from Jenjen was becoming possible.
-/-/-
MadameK
Commented 8:36pm 10/2/1996
Well, I won't have Miss_A's confirmation that I am not lying until tomorrow as she knocks off 'work' about an hour before I have my morning cup of tea, but I have just sent the necessary image to prove I am not lying when I say this,
(MadameKupskirt image)
Is the first ever Japanese Housewife Special, comissioned in either late 1979 or early 1980 (can't remember without figuring out if I still have the invoice somewhere, a reminder would be appreciated) by me.
She doesn't have any direct evidence that I'm not telling fairystories when I say it has been where it is continuously for the last three weeks and won't be coming out until a very special day in another thirteen weeks time, but oh well, that's that for now.
FanboyimusMaximus
Commented 8:45pm 10/2/1996
I am now legitemately awed and slightly terrified by Japanese housewives.
ThaumaturgyCat if it's not ptying how come it took you several hours to get your title?
ThaumaturgyCat (Belted)
Commented 8:51pm 10/2/1996
For (annoyingly, not kinky) reasons that aren't anyone's business I couldn't get access to the waistband of my belt until just before four, standing around with it just out of reach while locked on where it belongs between my corset and my clothes and resisting the temptation to glare at a certain smug person with the tarnished halo get a bit of a drag but oh well.
Anyway to get on with what I'd planned to announce, I wish to confirm LegitematePervert's wild guess that Allegedly InnocentAngel and I share the same keyholder, who doesn't comment here, and request that Miss_A confirm that our belts were indeed ordered by the same customer number.
InnocentAngel (Belted)
Commented 8:53pm 10/2/1996
Indeed, ThaumaturgyCat and I discussed the idea earlier this evening, and as any good submissive does when her Master's switch makes an appealing suggestion I of course comply.
LegitematePervert
Commented 9:12pm 10/2/1996
Apologies, no updating the lore on the mysterious tale of the cat and the angel tonight, I had a heavy day (rail joint broke at the north end of Kirkwall northbound loop and put 37149's two leading axles on the ground obstructing the northbound main, sod of a job getting her re-railed) and am currently too drunk to trust myself to remain gentlemanly in my perversion.
Insert the sound of a me drinking a toast to amazing and evocative ladies!
GibHtimsain
Commented 9:22pm 10/2/1996
Er, Legit Perv, you just lored yourself. Hope your boss doesn't get mad about you drunkly revealing you work for North Rail in lunar Orcadia.
LegitematePervert
Commented 9:44pm 10/2/1996
GibHtimsain don't think that's going to bite me on the arse bud, I'm currently staggering home from the pub in Fort Lamb still wearing my work vis-vest which has had GENTLEMAN PERVERT written across the back since I started the job, and everyone in the depot's seen the pictures of my dozy grinning ginger mug with Miss A I paid for last week.
Talking of which is it okay to show off pictures we've bought here? Thought I'd better ask as my legitemacy as a gentleman pervert is very important to me and there's nothing saying either way in Nchurdamzs above decree.
ThamaturgyCat (Belted)
Commented 9:56pm 10/2/1996
Get to bed you daft lump, you're plastered.
-/-/-
"I can't make any promises about retrieving anything from these, I trust you realise," the Asari computer tech chief from Benezia's crew, whose name Harry hadn't the faintest idea of, said as she finished looking over the assortment of apparently undamaged information storage devices that had been collected from the Ruin Ring since Operation Leif Eriksson had discovered it, "This sort of read-write crystal stack storage technology is very stable -in a controlled, ideal, environment- but thousands of years of hard vacuum exposure while adrift in a planetary radiation belt is -not ideal-. Even beyond that it's likely to take a lot of work, and luck, to distinguish any actual surviving data from the mess of hopelessly corrupted leftovers - there's effectively no chance we have anything like the correct codecs to read even as basic a bitmap, or an ancient kobold plaintext file. I think the best approximation would be trying to read the remains of a burnt book written in an unknown language with only particular psges still partially intact. Which isn't to say I won't be making a very determined attempt, it's more a matter of: don't get high expectations."
"Understood, well, if you need any equipment or resources we can supply, just ask, it's yours," Harry said, nodding, once he'd translated the basic gist via mirror to a thoughtfully frowning venerable recently-established empress of koboldkind, Ancient Mother Green Rock River, necessary as the Asari techie had the worst grasp on Norn out the whole lot of them due to a leftover severe aversion to mind-melds from her very badly planned unprovoked attempt involving Olaf Stonefist.
"I may have something that would aid in these efforts. They have not worked since I was but a few thousand days old, but perhaps the blue people might have some knowledge useful in their repair," the ancient kobold queen mused.
"Of what do you speak?" Harry asked, surprised.
"The ancient knowledge repository within the bunker at the heart of my warren, of course. It must be treated as a sacred behest of my ancestors, of course, but I don't believe I have any real objection to a friend of a friend seeing if it might perhaps be repaired, and I have to suspect that it would make the task of reading what remains of these damaged ancestral crystal libraries rather easier if indeed it -can-."
Harry immediately translated that, and the tech facepalmed and said, "Yes that could potentially be an -enormous- help and oh -drat-, I'm going to have to learn Kobold... Matriarch, how feasible is it for me and my equipment to take up residence in the Orcs Jenjen exclave until this is done? I don't think there's any reason to expect I'm going to actually manage to work out what repairs the bunker's computers need in a matter of days, never mind getting them in place and getting a reader for these damaged crystals cobbled together, and I sincerely believe it'd go a lot quicker and easier and just generally -more doable- if I was on site here rather than trying to do it from the remote end in Midgard."
Benezia nodded.
"I shall see to chasing that down," she said, then turned to the kobold in the mirror.
"I don't think I need to muddle on trying to help there, Ancient Mother, you may have a houseguest for a few thousand days if that's acceptable, even finding out is going to be a slow process," Harry butted back in.
"Discuss this for myself, acceptable is?" Benezia added.
"Carry on," Ancient Mother told her, then winked at Harry and added, "Scoot, kid, I can tell when a youngster's raring to poke his snout into something else, the thought is appreciated but you don't need to run around laying furs on logs for me."
"Thanks, Ancient Mother - we still on for a proper sit down and chinwag about rune structures the morning before I sod off back the way I came?"
"Of course, wouldn't have suggested it otherwise, now shoo!"
"Yes Mum, going, going," Harry said, and headed back to resume working on a Mad Max golem design - which they were probably going to be getting stuck in to frame construction for after lunch - while pretending not to notice the kobold snigg*ring on the far end of the mirror.
He liked the cunning old bag it was coming from rather a lot, after all.
-/-/-
"Well that got rid of him, not a bad lad, decent head on his shoulders, give him a few hundred thousand more days seasoning and he'll be a sight to see, but kids is kids and he's definitely still a kid," Ancient Mother told the new, definitely rather more experienced than her young ally, potential ally on the far end of her mirror, in Norn, the current only mutual language, "Oh well, that's enough to do with young leaders of Orcs for now, I can tell at a glance this isn't even remotely close to your first war-party, let's see what two sharp-eyed old hunters with seats at the Orcs fireside gab can do for each other eh?"
(It didn't take Benezia twenty minutes to pick out that Kobolds did -not- share the Orc aversion to mind-melds, and not twenty minutes later she'd determined, with the aid of a kobold by the name of Thinks-Deeply, that there would not be the same problem with running headlong into the Orc not-quite-hivemind -there-; coaxing the poor girl who'd had -that- experience into learning Kobold the easy way became the tricky part.)
-/-/-
There were a handful - a small minority - of the assumptions about life as the Veela sex-pet of the King of Orcs had proven accurate so far, most of them involving silk and chains, but most of what turned out to be the actual reality would not have even -occurred- to Fleur Delacour as, the latest two hour session of sitting around in her royal owner's bedchamber wearing the body of one of His ninjas, she got her actual introduction to what happens when Harry Potter decides something needs built.
At least, the version that takes place when the King of Orcs is collaborating with a fellow force of nature by the name or Ratbag Greengrass, Fleur's very weird little sister, and a fifty-year-old squib motor mechanic, in a scrapyard crossed with a garage containing increasing traces of golem foundry, commencing to the tune of a muggle Australian rock band singing about Big Jack (how the hell did these AC/DC people know -that- name anyway?) always having your back.
Ratbag and Eddie, with tools being passed by Ginny Weasley, were busy rebuilding the interior of a car the wrecked back half of which they'd chopped off just behind where the front seats would go, which had at some prior time been entirely taken apart; Harry was enthusiastically teaching his little sisters to weld as a squat, eight-legged, mechanical skeleton came together; Gabrielle was teaching another, blue, why is it a good idea to teach kids that small to weld, again how to weld; a golem by the name of Athena Zero was rushing around helping with everyone in a state of high golemy excitement; and everyone else currently in the royal household, golems and ninja and a redheaded Asian lady Fleur was starled and slightly embarrassed to have taken some time to recognise as Kai Yoshisson's widow (what the-?) were rushing around keeping the tools and materials flowing to wherever they were needed, whenever they were needed.
(Fleur just followed Hermione's lead in that, she was as good teaching which tool is which, which steel is what, as she was at shoveling languages into your brain.)
Even her sister's rust-monster golem had mucked in, apparently 'heavy lift golem' or maybe 'crane' was on Little Phillipe's list of Purposes, announced with a proud, 'Because I am Little Phillipe, and I am Strong Golem!'
(The seven lawn gnome scrapyard workers had taken her embarassingly long to recognise as A, golems, and B, also Gabrielle's. They had an -incredible- knack for popping up wherever and whenever something needed kept steady.)
The whole thing just -flowed-, they'd torn into it directly after lunch and by two in the afternoon of February 11th, one full month after she had entered the maelstrom to stay, as with a support frame in place Little Phillipe ceremoniously positioned the half a car for it to be bolted down,Fleur started finding herself just -knowing- what needed to be where next, plunked her first just the right spanner into a stuck out hand (actually Eddie Campbell's) before it was asked for, and the feeling like she was somehow intruding finally began to fade.
By the time they stepped back to have dinner, spurred off by Cassie Black-Potter telling her big brother she was -starving- and had a hole in her middle, the frame that would become a golem expression of just what the Royal Orcadian household -actually is- was almost ready to start having the clay that would become its, -his-, muscle and flesh added to his bare steel bones; there was still a lot to do, after they were done with the clay cladding and decorative work and an actual inbuilt glorious throne of mayhem and and and would be needed before the beast could be Awakened, but you could actually get a sense of the whole, and as they all sat down at the table ravenously hungry and starting to realise how tired everyone was, she finally decided to broach a subject that had been bothering her for a few days, which was why she daribgly annoyed Hermione by inserting herself directly beside their rightful Lord and Master.
She didn't interject into the conversation until it had drifted from how today's work on a grandly absurd very Orc golem conveyance had moved on to the topic of continuing the build in the morning, when Master announced, "Ah, yeah, going to have to jump out two hours before lunch on my end, Fleur's morphic therapy takes precedent."
"I've been meaning to talk about that, Master," Fleur said. "I am right it's not working, aren't I?"
"Not nearly as fast as it should, no," Master said, frowning. "I thought you caught Dora's talking about that the other day right enough. Look, we wre not giving up no matter what, I want to be actually certain you actually legitemately want," and he stopped saying whatever he'd been about to continue with.
She nodded, already having a pretty good idea where that was going, and didn't bother saying anything about how utterly him having any problem with soething the both clearly knew he legitemately -really liked- locking her into and putting the keys away -baffled- her, instead going with, "That I actually genuinely like my chastity belt and it's not just because of a medical condition? Honestly Master I think that's why it isn't working, needing to take it off for anything thst isn't you using me feels wrong and I find myself impatient to have it back on and the keys where they should be, in your posession, even though it isn't physically uncomfortable not wearing it when I'm not wearing my own body."
"An evil idea of how to get you to want it off occurred to me the other dwy," Hermione said.
"I'm pretty sure I had the same one and Hermione? -A bit much-," Harry said.
"If you're thinking about a plug, I'm already curious about those," Fleur admitted.
"We'll chew that over tomorrow morning when there aren't people uninterested in 'kink sh*t' around, at the moment the plan is eat grub, blob out with a couple of beers, bed, sleep," Master told her, and there was something about his tone that hinted she might actually not have to wait for 'therapy' to actually -work- after all.
Hermione nudged her and muttered, "Mud splat, panic."
"I'm an innocent angel and have no idea what you're talking about, Hermione," Fleur sniffed.
"Yeah right, innocent my kittycat arse and the halo's downright rusty."
-/-/-
"Okay," Hermione started, sitting down beside Fleur on Harry's bed, about twenty minutes before Dora was due to stick her head in and temporarily transform a certain Veela into an Ishikawa lookalike, "I think I have a proposed plan together, it took about an hour for me to start regretting my decisions week before last, and it definitely started to get a bit too much by the time I went to bed with the little one," and she indicated the two objects currently laying on Harry's bedside table.
"I don't know if I's say little," Fleur said, pocking it up by the locating pin and contwmplating it.
"By comparison it is," Hermione said, holding the other up alonside it.
"Point, just out of curiosity how long does it take for that forearm to get too much?" Fleur asked.
"Half an hour intervals, pretty much every half hour with this in you start realising half an hour ago wasn't 'a bit too much', -this- is 'a bit too much'," Hermione said. "I'm honestly awed and slightly terrified by Kasumi, anyway I don't see any reason to expect everyone's exactly the same, what I'm proposing is finding a baseline for 'a bit much' is, and having it in you just long enough before your therapy for it to be 'a bit much' but not 'a bit -too- much' which I'm pretty sure was a span of about two hours for me."
"How would you suggest doing that? The establishment of a baseline I mean," Harry said. He had a lot of very mixed feelings it was taking some unpacking here - on the one hand definitely a bit much, on the other hand watching Hermione squirm those two times had been -incredibly hot- and it was tempting as hell to just see how long it took both girls to break down and beg.
-Not- on the agenda. Ever. No matter how tempting.
"So if I put this in after my 'therapy' today," Fleur started.
"That depends on whether you think you're able to firstly keep track of it getting a bit much, and secondly actually communication 'please defuse now', to me while we're all -completely caught up in golem fabrication- this afternoon," Harry said.
"I shall be fine," Fleur told him, clearly actually keen on this idea.
"Master, may I," Hermione wheedled, picking the big one up.
"Not unless you are going to actually tell me -as soon as- you start to want it out," Harry firmly instructed. "Even if that means knocking on the door while Fleur isn't looking like herself, or waking me up, or whatever, is that understood?"
"Yes Master!"
-/-/-
ThaumaturgyCat (Belted)
Commented 12:14pm 12/2/1996
(Uptwoskirts image)
Attempt 3 for me, and a first try for someone with a very grubby halo! Bit of a fiddle getting into a position to take the picture without giving who we are away but oh well.
I don't know how many tries it's going to take but I WILL join MadameK in the 'it only comes out for sex' club, I refuse to be outdone and I know she's telling the truth.
InnocentAngel (Belted)
Commented 12:15pm 12/2/1996
... I am starting to realise why the slow-motion naval weaponry effect.
LegitematePervert (Gentlerailwayman Pervert)
Commented 12:46pm 12/2/1996
Oho, lore expansion! The cat knows the Terrifying Japanese Housewife!
I take it that my sudden unexpected title is me being teased by a Miss_A to go with this morning's big leg-pulling session at the depot? Thankyou ma'am, much obliged!
ThaumaturgyCat (Belted)
Commented 12:58pm 12/2/1996
Know her?
Not hugely well but she (and her keyholder) kindly gave me this company's address and I've never once seen her without a visible plug attachment pin, which given Miss A confirming she only owns those two products...
Got to go, even plugged feline thaumaturges have busy days. Will tell you all how I get on with my current contents later.
Miss_A (Staff Tester) (Belted)
Commented 1:04pm 12/2/1996
At this point I'm probably going to have to alter ThaumaturgyCat's title to another custom one. I'm thinking (Belted And Terrifying) fits.
Thoughts?
-/-/-
To Gabrielle's pleasure, day 2 of the mobile throne golem build proceeded in good order, by about two the final lines of motility were strung, all internal joints checked for lubrication, and Harry moved on to adding the integral mana systems and access panels for maintenance and repair of, while she, her mistress, and Eddie got stuck into building the electrics with cables running in the same conduits as the mana plumbing; they had everything that needed done before clay started going on done by 3pm, and went ahead with that immediately, carefully building up what would be thaumaturgically baked into golem fleah and muscle, first to the several intricate internal limb structures controlling things such as the golem's vocal apparatus, engine noise generator (inside its main torso, tested by Eddie hand-cranking it, and carefully tuned to produce a suitably heavy big-diesel-engine rumble) smoke and flame emitters, electrical generators, so on, so forth.
The gun arm and right arm came second, along with the car-based head, then they worked backwards building up clay around the wire mesh forms around internal compartments, over which steel cladding would start going on day 3 once the final clay, around the tail/access ramp and hindmost pair of legs, that remained to be added when the alarm they'd set up that morning to make sure there was a set 'down tools' time as nobody wanted to wind up utterly bushed again, went: everyone cleaned up, left the gnomes to stow tools and offcuts and trooped off for dinner where, about halfway through, Gabrielle's crazy elder sister casually remarked in a rather odd tone of voice, "I believe that our baseline should be two hours, Master."
"Good to know and- bugger, what the -f*ck- Fleur, that was four hours ago and-"
"Master, I can handle it long enough to finish eating, it's not become overwhelming."
Gabrielle calmly said, "What."
"Kink sh*t, she's playing Hermione games," Astoria said.
"How in the f*ck did you divine that?" Hermione snapped.
"Hello? This is a nose on my face? I have a functional -sense of smell-?" Ratbag sneered. "Oh for f*ck sake moggy, not wanting to be involved in kink sh*t doesn't mean I'm stupid and I can smell Froggywobbles is about ready to glue her skirt to the chair near as bad as you were the day I broke Filly."
Gabrielle set her fork down a little harder than she intended and said, "Mistress -you didn't break me-. I am -not broken-. I don't know whether I was broken or -just starting- to break but I do know for absolutely certain what happened is you -basically welded over cracks in a me- so please stop blaming yourself."
"Aye," Eddie said. "Listen to yer girl, Ratbag; speaking as someone who knew Bellatrix, Narcissa, and Andomeda Black when they were three bright, -happy-, -functional-, deeply in love very kinky teenage girls following the landholder's heir's girlfriend around like three little duckies and calling her 'Mistress'? Gabrielle is -right-, you never broke her, you f*cking welded her back together with you being you. Believe me, I've seen what happens when someone like her, or like any of the bunch who say the M-word about that twonk who's sitting on his arse when he should be picking his Froggy princess up and legging it to bed and -shagging- the poor lass, I've -seen- what happens when someone like any of them actually breaks. -And it ain't pretty-."
Harry paused, turned to Gabrielle's she suddenly realised -insanely turned on- elder sister, and said, "Er,"
"Go on, sod off and shag the poor lass, she's been gaging for it at least a couple of hours you daft bastard, bloody Potters, not a lick of sense the whole bloody lot of you!" Eddie ordered. "Food can wait, we'll whack stasis charms on yer plates, -get to bed and shag-."
"...Fleur?"
"-Please- Master, -right now-," Fleur whined, and Harry shot to his feet, grabbed her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and bolted.
"Bloody kids," Eddie announced, punctuating it with a forkfull of haggis.
"Oh -bugger, I should've bloody said something when I realised she'd got a mud splat and panicked," Hermione, whom Gabrielle abruptly realised was -also- emitting sex smells, muttered.
"Self-inflicted injury, kittycat. And don't you -dare- interrupt them tonight or I'll be forced to -do something to you- you're going to hate -and- want more of, you talked a French idiot into your favourite mud puddle, -suck it up-," Tracy flat out ordered.
"You're not the dom of me, Davis," Hermione told her, unimpressed but, probably notably, not moving.
"Wanna bet? Oh, say, you lose your tongue cleans my snatch to -spotless- tonight, I lose I don't even try pushing you under my boot for at least a month, do we have a bet? Betcha I can have you begging for more right here, right now."
"Bullsh*t," Hermione fair old hissed.
Tracy got up, walked round, sat down beside Hermione, rolled her sleeves up, pulled Hermione's skirts up, and did something that made a funny buzzing rattle and nearly lifted a siddenly very much obedient sex kitty clean out of her seat.
"Want more hmmm?"
"... you -bitch-, you, how'd you -do that-,"
There was anotherbuzz andHermione-toned squeak, and Tracy said, "That's for me to know and you to -beg for more of-, kitty. -You lose-."
"... I know," Hermione mumbled, a huge amount of the built up tension draining out of her.
"Right, in that case we're finishing our dinner and you're going to spend the rest of the evening pleaseing -me-," Tracy announced, patted her head, then added a disgusted, "And you lot can stop gawking, just resolving a little dispure about pecking orders."
"Come off it, Tracy, we all know that argument's never going to be over," Luna said, clearly of the opinion that this was funny as hell.
"Wouldn't be any fun if it was," Tracy said "It's much more fun playing with people who play back."
"Mm, she's got a point applicable to my own situation," Hinamori, who had been quietly eating while enjoying what she had, to Gabrielle, described as 'an entertaining soap opera', piped up. "I think that's why I'm bored with messing with Miss Snoop Frog, she's no fun. Probably still going to make her jump once in a while, but it's time for this little foxie to find what else there is to stick my nose in around the city that flew."
-/-/-
"Bugger I'm sorry, Fleur, that was my fault, I should've taken into account how distracted I get when I'm working on a build" Harry admitted to the snuggly, affectionate, recently thoroughly shagged, gorgeous Frenchwoman currently cuddling up to him.
"Oh, don't blame yourself for that, I promised I'd say as soon as it started to get a bit much and I didn't," Fleur said, in between distractingly nuzzling at his neck. "It's not as if I have any real importance, after all."
"Bollocks, particularly the last part," Harry said, then added, "I think it's time to take these off," tugging lightly at the chains where they attached to the piece of metal locked and bolted around her neck.
"Must we? They're not morphicating me for definite and I like them quite a lot," Fleur said, sounding genuinely disappointed.
"... I take that back, which is going to make Hermione insanely jealous, and I guess that means that the idea of a concubine's necklace with permanently attached chains and wrist and ankle irons matching this is on the cards," Harry said. There was something he was pretty sure he'd forgotten about involving Hermione, probably wasn't all that important, she'd keep.
"Good," Fleur murmured, then frowned a little and added, "I think I need to clean up a bit and have my belt back on, and now we know sex means not noticing the discomfort of its absence for a while."
"We need to get round to getting you a replacement wand, remind me about that in the morning please," Harry said, starting in on the very intimate cleaning charms.
"I'll remind you when it's time for me to put that evil thing back in ahead of my therapy session, Master."
"I thought you didn't particularly care about that and after this afternoon,"
"Master, you just told me you're talking me as a concubine. That means that I am going to bear some of your children, and that means I actually -have a reason- to want to not be obliged to wear my belt where I didn't have one before. And I was f*cking desperate to get it off earlier, I think Hermione's evil idea is going to work."
"It's your decision," Harry said, cleanup finished.
Fleur nodded, carefully removed the plug from her belt, put it down on the bedside table, and started putting the belt in place around herself.
"I know Master, and I've decided. Lock please?"
"I'm starting to enjoy doing this bit too much," Harry said, obliging, then putting the keys away, once again noting that he -really- needed to remember to give Flora and Hestia theirs back, and that there was definitely something he'd forgotten involving Hermione.
"I think you enjoy it the exact right amount, Master. It wouldn't be half so much fun if you didn't, and it's not like yu'd ever do anything to me I don't want."
"Important critical part of not being an arsehole, and I make a point of not being an arsehole as much as physically possible," Harry said, starting to get his clothes back on. "The tricky part is when people make huge mysteries about that stuff so if there's anything actually -feasible- I'm not doing to you it's probably best to just flat out say so, anyway I'm even bloody hungrier than I was, bugger, three hours ago when I legged it in here with you so, er, clothes, grub?"
"I don't think I shall bother with clothes this evening," Fleur grandly declared, rising to her feet and admiring herself in Luna's big (enchanted only for zoom and rotate view functions) mirror. "It feels like a very perfect mostly naked evening if I'm permitted?"
"I'm not complaining, just being a bit baffled about how reality is real."
-/-/-
"Sooo," Harry announced, sitting down at the breakfast table with Fleur one side of him and Luna the other, "Got some extra errands to crack on with this morning, Fleur reminded me she's not got a wand at the moment and we're - she and I - seeing about sorting that out before breakfast, probably going to take long enough we're going to be running around wandsmiths until coming up on time for her therapy so I don't think I'm going to be down in the garage until after lunch."
"Loan me Hermione and Maia and I should be okay to get the rest of the clay built up round the back legs and tail this morning," Gabrielle offered.
"Thanks Filly - Eddie, Ratbag, you good to start getting plating onto the forelimbs? I have a couple of parts for the fake hydraulics to pick up while we're up the town, so being ready to start getting that into place up front would be a bonus, and- crap, I need to check in on how Blue Queen's doing, we're going to be bloody rushed Fleur, I don't have a lift set up,"
"Oi buggerlugs, I know you got round to learning to drive and Contraption's keys are in," Astoria said. "And yes that's an I'm okay with you borrowing my car, specifically if you're driving and if you check I won't need my car before you borrow it. Just go easy on the fun pedal, the back end -loves- spinning up and going sideways if you floor it below third on cold tyres. f*cking four hundred forry brake horse -at the back wheels- and stonking torque makes not-a-Volkswagens look like tin toys."
"Advice taken into account and thanks Ratbag, I'll be bloody careful with your baby. Thinking about it if you could get a couple of semi-sane cars you'ed up a bit so they're officially yours so I don't go and tell Ragnar 'aye couple of cars kicking around at the palace we're not using' then three weeks later go crap I need something with more seats and cwrgo space than a centaur today that'd be cool."
"Sure, got a couple of old motors with potential, there's an old Ford the actual same car as Mad Max's car that Pakeha bunch ditched after they blew up the gearbox and a Hilux with mental custom suspension that look like they could be good start points. That's going to have to be after we've actually finished we definitely need to actually think of a good name really soon. I say his name's Humongous Rex."
"Don't you mean Stompinator," Tracy, who was oozing smugness this morning, apparently she'd managed to find a chink in Hermione's armour because the 'dog' was definitely being deferred to by the 'cat' today, said.
"Nah, your idea of names are still stupid, and not nearly Mad Maxish enough. Humongous after the Lord Humongous, the Warrior of the Wasteland, the Ayatollah of Rock-And-Roller, it's from a film okay, plus it's appropriate for a big stompy apocalypse ratrod throne golem cause he actually is humongous, and Rex cause it means King and guess who sits on his back. Thus, Humongous Rex."
"And by the power of this thing on my bonce I select the Ratbag's proposal," Harry intentionally pompoused. "I hereby dub our collaborative golem Humongous Rex, ever may he stomp. Anyway we're going to need to figure out designs and styling for his crew, that's on you two, Ratbag, Filly, and Hermione because I mean look around you, they have to be sufficiently kinky as well as postapocalyptic punk, so if you three can brew up some concept sketches for me to pick out six out of a load more than that? Not top priority yet, but I'm pretty clear at this point it's beneficial to awaken a full seven-golem group one after the other in a couple of hours tops so I'm going to be building them while Humongous Rex is being painted and decorated, that's probably going to be no later than the day after tomorrow."
"Sure, we can hit that after down-tools this afternoon," Astoria said. "You up for that, Filly, Hermione?"
"Certainly, Mistress."
"I should be, yes."
"Awesome, thanks," Harry said, nodding. "Right, let's get our grub down us and crack on!"
-/-/-
"North Atlantic sea-drake whisker and Caithness bog oak, eleven and three quarters inches, unyielding, strong for runecraft and geomancy," Master said, sounding both astonished and delighted. "-sh*t- Fleur, that couldn't be a more Orcadian wand if it tried, are you sure you're French?"
"France didn't want me, Master," Fleur told him, marvelling at the feel like having a lost limb back as her magic flowed through the black, slightly gnarled, wand that had just become the second to ever accept her. "That was made adamantly clear when I was eleven. Can we go now? I'm getting a bit het up and it's nearly time for my therapy."
-/-/-
ThaumaturgyCat (Belted and Terrifying)
Commented 12:22pm 13/2/1996
Passed 24hrs and I can still mostly think.
It's a bit touch and go but so far... sh*t this afternoon is going to be insane. I feel like I'm going to explode at any moment. Still not exploding, quite.
-/-/-
Day 3 went well to; by the time down-tools arrived Humongous Rex's entire head, shoulders, arms, and foretorso was together, the actual throne section well on its way, and base plating in place back to his second from front set of hips - Astoria and Eddie had got a head start on preparing for paint and masking chrome and glass, Harry had the forwards two (arms and first set of legs) sets of faux hydraulics freely able to move in the right directions and masked, and the whole build - the biggest golem yet to actually directly be worked on by Harry - was very much coming together.
Cassie and Sarah were -stoked-, as was Liara. They'd put in hundreds of welds each, spotted and solved as many potential mechanical issues, had their names officially burnt into the steel plate listing build crew members, and Harry had made a point of keeping track of his little sisters contributions just to help bash his bloody parents over the head with how much intellectual stimulation was missing from Cassie and Sarah's young lives.
Bona fide geniuses just like their proud as f*ck big bro.
Outside Ratbag's Scrapyard everything appeared to be going well in the Jenjen system - a difficult to detect but very real shift in Benezia had become noticeable over the course of multiple meetups and gabs with the kobold empress and one Orcadian claim about the Ruin Ring after another turning out accurate and making Harry's obsession with big guns for big warships steadily look more and more reasonable.
(Harry had no real idea what the turning point had been, but the alien woman had for definite meant the, during their brief chat while an increasingly fidgety Fleur waited in Astoria's car, statement of, 'Concurr I now do. At war the galaxy has been, before any civilisation here represented with fire played, the 'Fimbofeeze' against. And -losing- we have been.')
News from back home hadn't settled in the slightest - two more 'pirate' raid had taken place, both Orc, one putting a stop to someone else's short stupid war of annihilation in the asteroid belt, two shiploads of people not deserving anything in the Orcadian criminal justice system's playbook had been dropped off on Mars, the last Chinese had got the f*ck out of Tibet (finally! What took them?) and otherwise the general mayhem didn't show, as Harry finished checking situation while eating dinner and being more and more certain he'd forgotten something important, any sign of subsiding.
He finally realised what he'd been forgetting when a highly agitated Hermione burst into his bedroom at ten o'clock that evening just as he was getting his togs off to crawl into his pit with Luna, who took one look and legged it right before the unexploded sex bomb went off.
-/-/-
Hermione drifted awake to the sound of her owner's alarm clock going off, attempted to sit up, and remembered somewhere in the deliriously aroused frenzy she'd insisted he chain her wrists to the head of the bed before pulling the plug after she had in a frantic scramble at clothes left four fingernails worth of bloody scratches down his leg.
He let out some mumbly noises, heaved upright, more mumbly noises, then "Okay so that wasn't a dream, bloody hell why didn't you -say something- Hermione?"
"Didn't wanna Master, I wanna do that again."
"... bloody hell, okay, okay, but -not today-."
"Aww."
Harry gave her an exasperated look, removed a certain component from one of thw two of her most treasured possessions laying on the bedroom floor, and chucked it in his bedroom safe: she attempted, unsuccessfully, to pout.
"Mean, Master, can't even pout right now, too fuzzy. Can I have my bra and belt back before I have to not be chained? Maybe the little one in?"
"It's not 'little', it's 'less huge', and I need it you insatiable moggy," announced a Froggy.
"Stealing my things, innocent my arse."
"Talking about arses," Harry said, "We need to sort out Fleur's arse-smacking permissions."
"My the you what? I think I'd prefer you do the putting in, thankyou Master."
"Household tradition, no smacking arses without written permission, the smacked arse matches were getting out of hand and it just occurs - there - you don't have any worked out so I can't have you give Hermione a smacked arse. Oh well," and Harry's hand arrived in a predictable place, "Bad Hermione! No overcooking yourself."
"But overcooked me sex is -amazing-, Master!"
-/-/-
Hermione had, in hindsight inevitably, decided that a freshly very thoroughly smacked backside went perfectly with her Maximum Sex Kitty outfit with no concern given for the fact that she was spending the morning getting more concept sketches together for Humongous Rex's crew, and about halfway through lunch Harry had, narked, told Tracy to knock off the adding intermittent extra slaps unless she wanted Harry to order Hermione to get her riding crop.
By the end of the fourth day in the Jenjen system the skin of interlocking steel plate was in place, the pair of plumbed in and connected by secondary spines 'driver' and 'gunner' bodies in place (more or less cut down versions of a basic Gene-derived body with no extra limbs, only mechanical-looking parts a faux-prosthetic arm made of random junk on the 'gunner', no inbuilt scripture, and styling as chained-in postapocalyptic slavegirl-warriors) how to give Humongous Rex basic directional input by the reins that would at the end of the build be connected to the 'driver' and how to get believable 'control inputs' figured out, cab decorated and masked off, everything aside from painting and decorating outside the cab, actually building the six crew, get the ward network set up, hook up reins from the direct copy of a standard pilot golem head to a stanchion conveniently located in front of where the throne (a comfortable luxury car seat eventually to be clad in furs) and finally Awakening the newest members of the household, was done and a raft of sufficiently luxurious furs purchased from the kobolds along with, as someone had clued people in, a variety of bone talismans provided at the behest of the kobold empress. Those were basically going to get added wherever Ratbag and Filly agreed they looked cool until they ran out, with several already set aside for the 'crew'.
Harry was pretty confident that by the midafternoon of day six of the planned fifteen day stay at Jenjen, Humongous Rex would be motile, at which point he was going to have to figure out something to do for the next nine days of basically killing time.
It didn't take ten minutes to decide that the obvious answer was: further encouragement of sisters to absolutely kick the stops off and let their very apparent genius -shine-: how to get the impression that the 'driver' body was responding to commands issued by reins by driving a massive eight-legged postapocalyptic war machine like a car was -their work- as was the way the 'gunner' body would appear to be controlling Humongous Rex's big boomstick and main manipulator arm, and he -could not wait- to see just what incredible things his sisters would, in the coming years, create.
He received a textcomm from his mother asking about comissioning teaching golems for Cassie and Sarah with some aesthetic specifications, and it was hardly his fault she didn't say the builds -shouldn't- already be set up to act as lab assistants for the two brilliant young women his sisters would in a few years be now, was it?
-/-/-
ThaumaturgyCat
Sent privately 6:58pm 14/2/1996
To Nchurdamz
Subject Custom Commission Inquiry
I recently found out the hard way, involving my keyholder's other switch taking extremely stimulating and unfortunately enjoyable advantage, that it is possible to cause a plug to vibrate in a very DRAMATIC fashion by directly applying the correct actively cast charm to the protruding mounting rod.
How feasible is an additional front shield that will stop this from happening? The one I have does not fit on top of a plug and appears to be the only style currently available, and it's really going to annoy her if she can't get that to work any more.
-/-/-
Getting a wand correctly lined up between the two primary eyes on the front of an eight-legged juggernaut easily as big as a three-axle lorry took a bit of doing - there was a radiator grill and a set of old Landrover bullbars in the way and the damn thing was above head height even if your name was Olaf Stonefist - but a helpful rusty cherrypicker impersonator by the name of Little Phillipe did the job, and there was something just -perfect- about having everyone who had cracked on and brought him to be forming a half-circle around the tallest member of the build team as Harry looked their Creation in a visual sensor cluster occupying the former location of a headlight and incanted, "I Name you Humongous Rex. AWAKEN!" and the magic flowed.
A huge, front half of Sierra Cosworth with a lot of added on gnarliness, head shifted, main gun traversed, faux hydraulics smoothly slid, the convincing faked sound of a big engine rattled into life, two inner heads glanced around, and one of the juggernaut's two voices - the one directly copied from the percussion-based vocal apparatus Gabrielle had designed for Little Phillipe - rumbled "Mana systems appear nominal, deferring gun test. Electrical system charging, deferring light test. Wards active. Rein input inactive, idle stance prepared. co*ckpit life simulation active."
"Testing secondary vocal apparatus," the second vocal apparatus, mounted in the 'gunner', added, lifesim mouth movements lipsynching. "Secondary persona check: I live to serve, Master."
"My crew are absent, Majesty," the rumbling voice concluded.
"They'll be with you beginning as soon as we've checked all your joints are working correctly and run that lighting and sound system test, they're already prepared for their awakenings, and once they're up and motile we can go to a docking bay to test your gun, then go out and stretch your legs a bit," Harry told Humongous Rex, tugging his Ollivander wand - which he'd let go of to avoid any risk of snapping it - out of the massive golem's forehead. "Let's start with how you primary neck and main arm shoulders feel."
-/-/-
"Billy you burbling bag of meat, -you have to see this-!" Hephaestus Sigma warbled, bolting into the front office with two of his hands full of visual sensor components and the rest busy assembling a forearm frame. "Master Potter's built another golem utterly unlike anything else in his repertoire and it's -spectacularly insane-!"
"Hold yer horses you warbling brickworks, I'm coming, I'm coming, I- What. The. f*ck."
"I know right!"
"You sure that's a bloody golem?" Billy complained, watching the eight-legged mechanical moto-throne crewed by a gang of eight derangedly beautiful pink-pigtail-hairdoed barbarian slavegirl-warriors (two visible chained into seats at its controls, another two tethered by chains near its cab/head and conveniently located pintle-mounted wildly decorated machine guns, two more likewise tethered each side of the back and armed with similarly decorated Lee-Enfields with axe heads instead of bayonets, two not tethered and hanging off grabrails with grease guns) stomping in a rumbling machine-swagger down the street past their recently relocated business with the entire Orcadian royal household plus guests lounging ludicrously atop as this outrageous conveyance came to a halt, engine rumbling to a tickover.
"Of course that's a bloody golem you Weegie fleshsack kickstand, the movements are -far- to graceful and coordinated for any mere -machine-, and besides muggles can't get their piston-powered contraptions to -walk-, have you been kicked in the cranium too often you pratt?"
One of the bizarre barbarian slavegirlies hanging on up the back let her mashup of rifle and poleaxe dangle, and flipped Billy the Harvey Jones then shouted across in a musical golem voice, "Of course we're bloody golems, shorty! What else would we be, the Marmite Monster?"
"f*ck you too, longshanks brickworks, and what the f*ck's a 'marmite monster'?"
"f*ck do I know shorty!"
"Stop taunting the dwarf, Coig, you don't know how drunk he was last night," Harry Potter shouted back down from his seat amid a mound of furs and more mostly slightly less outlandish longshanks girlies most of whom Billy recognised, causing the sole other male occupant - a totally unfamiliar grey-haired longshanks bloke in a grubby blue boiler suit and Trade Union hat - to burst out laughing.
"f*ck's this you mad bastard?" Billy demanded, storming over for a better look - sure enough he could make out top-end factory-produced Orcadian military golem sensor heads, the stuff they didn't sell to third-party operations such as his own, pick out probable lines of motility, the girlie who's stuck two fingers up had what looked like a lot of off the shelf Gene-line parts.
"I am Humongous Rex," a great big rumbling voice cut in, "Mobile throne to the King of Orcs!"
"Latest and most humongous resident of the royal sh*tshow," one of the younger girls - another bizarre barbarian warrior type, her voice gave away that she wasn't the golem Billy had briefly taken her for and a moment later he realised that was the Greengrass chit, the younger one - cut in. "Hey, we gonna check everything goes proper at a gallumph already? I got cars to abominate."
"Aye, you up for getting on the belt road and turning the taps on Rex?"
"f*cking -yes-," the rumbling voice agreed.
"Awsome," and the -mad bastard- in charge of the country that Billy, and his entire bloody family, and Heff, had gone and emigrated to as Earth started turning into a right mess, gave the... set off reins connected to a bridle on the... oh what the f*ck -ever-, ridiculously convincing pink-haired faux longshanks squeaker probably plumbed straight into Humongous Rex's steed functionality, a flick, and, with a rumbling cackle and probably faked gunning of engine kicking puffs of fire and black smoke out of a dozen towering exhaust pipes, off the insane assemblage swaggered in the general direction of the long road looping all the way round the outboard edge of the ship-city's vast main deck.
"What," said Billy, "The -f*ck-."
"I divine that you have just fulfilled one of Humongous Rex's primary Purposes."
"Off, f*ck. Put that in order, Heff. I need a real bloody drink, bloody hell you're not wrong, that -mad longshanks bastard- definitely built that motor-mechanic's fever-dream to -get reactions-," and Billy saw the funny side and started snigg*ring. "Oh bloody hell, kid's only figured out how to make a what-the-f*ck golem, y'know what Heff? I'm looking forward to seeing what the -f*ck- that nutter's gonna come up with -next- even more now. Oh well, better crack on with building golems for sane people."
Billy had feared that the existence of mass produced golems would, despite every last one being strictly not for sale and only a tiny handful owned by anyone who wasn't a certain teenage mad master-motilist, severely damage his business but it had, along with sudden ready availability of cheap as chips off-the-shelf top-quality components like visual systems and vocal apparatus, followed by plunging materials costs, done the exact opposite; overheads were down, construction time was through the floor, and suddenly rather than being a curio for the rich golems were damn near ubiquitous in Orcadia with the direct result of every twat in Orcadia who couldn't be bothered to tidy their room and had a bit of dosh put away suddenly being interested in getting hold of a golem to do it for them... which with the avabilly of off-the-shelf previously extremely time consuming to make components Billy and Heff and their growing staff could actually find enough time to -make out like pirates- off of. Down to a hundred fifty person-hours for a single longshanksize household golem with room for further streamlining, sixty-eight fabbies and sculptors working nine to five, material costs down so far wages were nine tenths of overheads,the order book was still full for three months with new orders coming in as fast as they could fulfill them, and no sign of an end to getting custom jobs worth the touch of a master - Heff was halfway through building a 'decorative' household guardian for a well-to-do Swede, Billy was just getting scripture together from an order for seven traditionally masterworked and -damn expensive- guardian hounds for the Low King of Mars, there was a shiny new By Royal Martian Appointment sign in the window...
Business as an established motilist was -utterly booming-, and it was entirely Harry James Potter's fault. No complaint -at all-, there was a damn good reason they'd up and budged their business to the City that Flew.
-/-/-
"This is gonna make Mum -sh*t a brick-!" Shouted Sarah Black-Potter, a set of ridiculously big motocross goggles keeping the wind out her eyes as nearly eighty tons of golems and persons responsible for the existence thereof thundered down the Thordsdrumsheim ringroad at fifty miles per hour, crew golems and scrapyard gnomes keeping a sharp eye on machinery for signs of trouble as Humongous Rex hit full 'gallumph' for the first time.
"Looking forward to it?" Harry shouted back.
"Aye!" Sarah shouted.
"Gonna be our first proper what the f*ck!" Cassie agreed, enormously pleased with this idea.
'Bloody knew there was three of 'em Ratbag. Potters, eh, what're they like,"
"Even better than that Eddie, the munchkins are Padfootspawn to boot!"
-/-/-
"The f*ck's that? It looks like a Sleipnir f*cked a scrapyard and fed the bairn on an Orc's scran."
"f*ck do I ken, but it's f*cking funny."
-/-AN-/-
In which Harry is distracted by 'WAHOO big stompy golems!' while various people take various degrees outrageous advantage of this and each other's kinks. I have -no f*cking idea- how Hermione is going to comeuppance Tracy for sad*stic use of magically induced vibration and I don't think Hermione knows yet either, but I -do- know Tracy is very interested in finding out, a kink dicking contest over which switch doms which isn't nearly so fun if it ever actually stabilises.
The reverse-catfight over who's subbiest sub is still brewing, mostly between Ginny's ears and I am starting to think Fleur's trajectory may wind up with her ricochetting between repeat failure to outsub Ginny and switching at Tracy whenever Hermione's top switch, just to make it even harder for anyone to keep any semblance of track of kink pecking orders.
Working-Title-Fox is about to start dipping in and out of the royal sh*tshow while finding interesting things to poke her nose in sround town, though she's told me she still fully intends to intermittently randomly fox Fleur for yuks, particularly on January 9th.
'Coig' is nothing more than 'Five' in Gaelic. The other crew golems for Mad Max War Rig Golem are named 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7 also in Gaelic - Dha, Tri, Ceithir, Sia, and Seachd respectively - whileHumongous Rex's 'gunner' subsystem responds to Aon aka '1'.
Heff's dead on the money about fullfilling a Purpose, Humongous Rex and his semiautonomous crew-drones are in a very big way designed specifically to make people go 'Wut?', they know it, and like any golem and their express written-in Purposes, they -thoroughly enjoy it-.
Cheers,
Cal.
