Infiltration

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Shyriath
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Infiltration

Post by Shyriath »

(OOC: This is more of an introductory post; I was going to start the story as well, but I'm running short on time. I may have to do that when I get back from the camping trip on Sunday. )

The Deep Singers had not had much experience with boats. Even nearly a hundred years after establishing their first coastal Beacons, their only vessels were small, simple rowboats with metal hulls, which they used for fishing; they never left sight of shore, nor did they feel any need to. The world paid them no attention, and it was entirely possible that they were unaware of the rest of the world.

But they were found at last, and the world poured in on them. The Beacon of Xalt, largest and southernmost of the settlements in the World Outside, began to attract ships from distant lands, and along with the goods they sold they also offloaded ideas, and news, and information. Among the ideas were designs for larger and sturdier ships, which they promptly began building; among the information they received was that they had neighbors on the island to the south, who called themselves Favored. They were prosperous, so it was said, and had great knowledge of machines and devices. And, so it was said also, they were militarily strong.

As awareness of this filtered throughout Kennerext, numerous factions came to the conclusion that what was known about the Favored was not nearly enough. The merchants and the Outside ports wanted to know what else the Favored might have to sell, and what they might be willing to buy; the Technologists were eager to learn about, and learn from, devices beyond their own capabilities; the Illuminating Council, and the Beacon governments, sought clues to the strangers' mindset and intentions, and how they might be countered if shown to be hostile. And, finally, with the rise of the disputed Herald King in Naidax, those associated with him began to take an interest for unfathomable reasons of their own.

The Deep Singers lacked many arts, but one in which they had considerable practice was information-gathering, and they set out to employ it. Now that ships capable of making the journey to Real Diamond were available, enterprising merchants made their way there, bearing loads of those things that Kennerext could produce well and in quantity: stone and metals, gemstones, jewelry, fine metalwork and engraving. They appeared to be interested mainly in profit, and indeed they were; but they had been encouraged to keep their eyes and ears open, to observe, and to learn.

Some of the things they learned about did not bode well for attempts at less innocent espionage. The markedly different appearances of Deep Singers from other humans made it nearly impossible for them to blend in in any meaningful fashion; and the requirement to wear bracelets made it difficult to go anywhere without being tracked.

Technologists in Kennerext began studying several bracelets that were returned from Real Diamond to determine how they worked, and if it might be possible to interfere with their signals; but progress was slow, because once in Kennerext the devices began to break down after being left powered on for extended periods. In the meantime, however, intelligence efforts began to turn toward bypassing Real Diamond, to more easily avoid the scrutiny of AURA. Although simply steering ordinary vessels to random points on the coast would be too easily noticed, it occurred to some of the more ingenious Technologists that they already knew how to create airtight compartments, and the principles of ballast, and how to build chemical-powered steam engines, and that therefore it might be possible to create a more... unconventional vessel.
Shyriath Farstrider (aka Shyriath Bukolos), KD MOU OLH XBH
Viscount Farstrider of Erysisceptrum, Count Bukolos of the Condo, Harbinger of Cheese

TOTUS MUNDUS TABULAM RASAM EST

Rei Milharna

Re: Infiltration

Post by Rei Milharna »

Whoa, nice.

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Harvey
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Re: Infiltration

Post by Harvey »

Whoa, nice indeed.

I'm rather waiting for you to make the first move here though. But if you want me to do so, uh, at least tell me what I should be looking for. :D

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Shyriath
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Re: Infiltration

Post by Shyriath »

Yeah, I should've thought of that earlier. Watch your PMs, I'll be sending something shortly.
Shyriath Farstrider (aka Shyriath Bukolos), KD MOU OLH XBH
Viscount Farstrider of Erysisceptrum, Count Bukolos of the Condo, Harbinger of Cheese

TOTUS MUNDUS TABULAM RASAM EST

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Shyriath
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Re: Infiltration

Post by Shyriath »

It was, by the standards of Technologists' work, a marvel. It was a triumph of their techniques over telluric adversity, it was an entirely new mode of transportation, it was a portal to the mysteries of the deep, it was (so far as they knew) unseen and unheard by ships on the surface...

It was also damned uncomfortable.


-----

Iltin Vo stared gloomily out of the little viewport embedded in the hull. What was outside was blue, lots and lots of dark, murky blue; but she was coming to prefer it to the view inside the water-tunneler, and it was slightly more cheering than thinking about the experience of traveling inside it.

The Immersed Blade was, despite being nearly thirty meters long, very cramped. Much of its interior was taken up by the power and propulsion systems, which relied on chemically-generated heat; yet more was taken up by the ballast tanks and complicated system of weights that allowed the vessel to surface, submerge, and steer. And all of these systems had to be tended by crewmembers trained in their use, who milled around performing their tasks. The air was humid, unpleasantly warm, and smelled of too many people confined in too small a space.

Iltin was not a stranger to discomfort, and it was obscurely painful to find herself moping about it. Brothers (or, as in her case, Sisters) in Darkness were feared and respected throughout the Beacons for their self-sufficiency, their discipline, and their vast and inventive stores of skills, many of them tailored to difficult and unpleasant goals. Being depressed by travelling under the sea in a can seemed inappropriate. On the other hand, in most other situations she would be fully in control; she would be in a vehicle she could steer, a room she could walk out of, a situation she could defuse. Here she was just waiting for someone else to let her off. You couldn't walk out of an underwater vessel.

All this, she thought, just to carry a few people around unseen.

Rather reluctantly, she looked away from the viewport at the other four Brothers. At least they all had equally sour looks; this was true even of Kannim Gal, whose persistent zealotry had been annoying Iltin from the moment they'd been introduced.

The thought brightened her mood a bit.

-----

The Immersed Blade moved slowly through the water, aimed squarely at the smaller island the Favored had claimed as their own. It deviated from its course only where necessary to avoid obstacles; the crew found their way by magnetic field and by visual reckoning, which allowed for little in the way of exploration. The principles of navigation at sea were new enough to the Deep Singers even without being beneath the surface; although it was suspected that echolocation would serve as well here as it did in the dark of the caves, one could not simply stick one's ears into the water. The Technologists knew well enough how to produce sound artificially, but receiving it and making it useful when it got back was as yet a different matter.

The water-tunneler had been concealed beneath the hull of a specially-shaped boat for most of its journey from Kennerext, being incapable of moving the entire distance by itself. It had been detached and submerged at a distance judged to be as feasibly close to the island as possible without being likely to encounter Favored ships; even so, it had been traveling for hours, and would have only just enough fuel to return it to the vicinity of the carrier boat.

It slowed as it reached the eastern end of the island, a promontory jutting out into the sea. The Deep Singers knew little of the island's geography, but the coast here seemed like that around Xalt, rocky and worn by salt and wind; if there were caves to be found, they would be here.

-----

Iltin spared a moment to watch the vessel slip back into the water, the reflection of the moon rippling back into place where it had been, and then hurried back up the narrow ravine whose entrance they had used as a landing point. There was no sense in remaining in sight of the sea any longer than necessary; the Immersed Blade would return in ten days, and if they expected it to pick them up again in the same place they had to avoid drawing attention to it.

Halfway up the ravine, a shallow cave had been etched into the rocky wall; it went nowhere, but it was enough to conceal the five of them and their supplies. Iltin ducked into it.

"They're away."

There was a barely noticeable relaxing of tension.

"Good," said Palik Kur. "At least their warning systems aren't perfect."

"Did you have a chance to look at the terrain?"

Of the other four Brothers, Iltin got along best with Palik. He was from Kurkenna, an Outside Beacon like Iltin's native Xalt; both of them, like most Brothers trained in the Outside, had begun their careers as scouts, and were most familiar with outdoor camouflage and survival.

"A bit. I think the colors you use in Xalt will match more closely; the vegetation here is a lot like yours."

"I'm a bit nervous about this hiding place," said Oxethir Fau. He was a small, quiet man, from some Inside Beacon Iltin had never heard of. He was stealthy and observant, and Iltin approved of that in a professional sense, but it did give her the impression he was watching all the rest of them as much as anything else.

Oxethir continued, "I think there are patrols of some kind out this way. They don't seem to bother coming into the ravine itself, because it's too steep near the top, but there's disturbed ground on the cliff above us. If someone was stationed up there looking down, they'd spot us coming and going."

"We might be closer to one of their settlements than we expected," said Vante Nar. He was from Ezhku, and spoke Taxnim with the urbane polish other Beacons tended to associate with it. The wiry young man was particularly skilled at close-quarters combat.

"The closer we are, the sooner we can investigate and leave," murmured Kannim Gal. She was Naidaxith, and had had Technologist training; she was their expert on devices. She was also an ardent adherent of the self-proclaimed Herald King. This fact had already caused some tension, particularly with Vante, who seemed convinced that the King was as much a charlatan as any would-be prophet. Iltin, in the privacy of her thoughts, agreed with him on that, but had refrained from speaking out on the topic.

They weren't a well-matched bunch. Iltin would have preferred working with Brothers from her own Beacon, or at least more like Palik, instead of this mob, but there had been "other considerations", as the Council had said. Politics, that's what it was. Trying to please everybody.

"We have all our supplies here," Palik spoke up. "We don't have enough time before dawn to move anywhere else tonight, so we can wait till tomorrow night to try to find the settlement. And a better shelter."
Shyriath Farstrider (aka Shyriath Bukolos), KD MOU OLH XBH
Viscount Farstrider of Erysisceptrum, Count Bukolos of the Condo, Harbinger of Cheese

TOTUS MUNDUS TABULAM RASAM EST

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