Chapter 14 - Council

Note : Apologies for the delay ! Had a bunch of stuff happening, including a late plumber visit.

Chapter 14

Starborn Mountains, Starfire Valley

Settlement of Astralis

"So." Said Kalia as she sat down. "What do you all think of her?"

Her assembled 'town council' was a pathetic shadow of what she once had, but it was the ad-hoc leadership that had kept her people together and protected them from certain death. Or undeath, depending on how unlucky they would be.

They were all gathered around what had once been the map room of the outpost, the massive granite table still there. Once strewn with great survey maps and expedition reports, it was now ladden with makeshift approximations of the valley, good foraging spots and small wood carved tokens showing their own foraging parties and concentrations of undead.

"She's...interesting." Finally said Gregor, the skeleton leaning back into his seat. "I've stalked her a bit as she was leaving. Just to make sure. I don't think she sensed me." He clicked his tongue, or at least the arcana that mimicked human vocals did, since he lacked any flesh to speak of. "I can tell you one thing, and Marak agreed when he returned. She didn't need his guidance for shit. She knew exactly where she was going. After a while she even stopped pretending and just...went straight for it, more or less ignored him altogether, once she was far enough from Astralis."

"Crap. Did she lie to us?" There was distress in the mage-magistrate's voice, as much as she wanted to hide it. She thought she'd finally lucked out, finally had something good, a miracle, happen to balance out all the horrors...

"I don't think so." Started Ramina. "Her armor...as I said, it's power armor. No doubt about it."

"She could have taken it from someone's corpse. Or hell, looted it from an abandonned laboratory or workshop. Ancestors know more unlikely things have happened." Said Teman.

"Perhaps, but that wouldn't explain her insights. All artificers are teachers first and foremost. We do not have the great schools of magic and the arcane. We have to pass down our knowledge from master to apprentice. As soon as I put what I was working on in front of her-" She had blushed slightly saying that, but Kalia didn't comment. She was well aware of Ramina's direct approach to things, not to mention her...shortcomings. "-she immediately went into teaching mode. On instinct, almost. She didn't just give me a solution, she guided me towards one, gave me insights and a starting point, then let me experiment and work on it. I still am, actually. I think she's the real deal."

"Then why is she...like this?" Kalia sighed. "I swear I believe most of what she says but the more I think about it the more inconsistencies crop up."

Ramina sighed.

"Artificers...my Order wasn't well seen in most of history. We made too many waves, were always causing problems, too curious about the natural world and our place in it, whad had come before us and what could come after. We always had theories that went against the teachings of the Ancestors, and more importantly our inventions had a tendency to cause many issues, go on a rampage, or otherwise bring social changes that overturned nations. So we were...shunned. There never were court artificers, nor great renown or glory. We were seen not quite as pariah, but always with suspicion." Everyone nodded. That was common knowledge. "It benefited the arcane schools greatly too. We didn't compete with them for recruits. There are only so many scholars and people of great intellect to go around after all. Who wished to become an artificer when they could be an archmage? So they were never shy in amplifying any mistakes we made, any catastrophy, while downplaying their own. My Order endured, of course. But we were stagnant. Never many of us, and moreover no great support for our technologies, especially from governments. Oh sure, a few cities here and there, but nothing widespread, no...spark, so to speak. Then the Crusades happened, and..."

"And the Empire rose from the dead." Completed Kalia. "We had to get rid of our soulless labor. All old Imperial territories. Most of the world, effectively. We needed an alternative. For our labor needs, for our manufactories. And we didn't give a single shit what traditions it broke so long as our economies didn't collapse and we weren't being ripped apart by the creations."

"Exactly. Suddenly my Order had all the support and resources it could ever hope for, and a tidal wave of recruits. Golems couldn't solve this problem, if they had we wouldn't have undead labor to begin with. So we worked on a solution. And we found them. Factories, powered machinery, automata, guns, the list is long. With the dam broken even the arcane academies couldn't stop our rise. After all, any country that didn't embrace our technology was going to get left behind, eating our dust." She squirmed. "That's the history everyone likes to hear. The ones they don't is that the arcane academies...were more proactive in keeping us down. If an accident didn't happen when artificers began rising, one was made to happen."

Kalia grimaced as everyone looked at her and Malry.

"I've...known that was a possibility." She said. It wasn't a subject that was comfortable to speak about among mages, nor one considered wise to bring up at the academy, but it was one that came up from time to time.

"That is why it doesn't surprise me that she may be less than truthful. That she is...circumspect about us. Heroes becoming hermit and retreating in a remote corner of the world to devote themselves to their studies is nothing new. Mages, warriors, commanders and artificers...they all do it. Shut everything else out, everyone constantly begging for their help, their support, their secrets. But if she's as old as she seems, and I tend to believe her, no one would produce the marvels she has in her possession without that length of time, she may remember a time where being an artificer meant being unwelcome. Seen with suspicion at best, and outright sabotaged at worst. Even without that, well..." She shrugged. "She doesn't know us. Would you tell the truth to a bunch of people appearing near your home one day? I wouldn't. So yeah. I think she's the real deal. But I think we have to roll with the fact that she's going to be feeding us half truths. Honestly, I'd be a lot more suspicious of her if she wasn't."

"Those...are excellent points." Kalia sighed. "So we have an artificer who withdrew from the world here, and has been drawn out by our rampaging undead. She seems to want to help us, too. At least so long as it helps herself as well. And we need all the help we can get."

"She might be looking to cut a deal." Intervened Malry. "Many Heroes founded city states or other communities with the express purpose of shielding them from disturbances or attack. It's how the Ancestor Cults got started after all."

"She might. So far however she seems to be trying to get her bearings. I'm amazed she hasn't asked more questions."

"Probably because every single one reveals something about her." Said Gregor. "She can ask about stuff she already knows to muddy the waters but she can't reference something she doesn't know when probing. And if I'm being honest I don't think trying to go too deep is a good idea."

Kalia frowned.

"Why? Our survival may hinge on her."

"Exactly." The skeleton pointed a bony digit at her. "We hinge on her. Do you all want to look the gift horse in the mouth? We were staring out annihilation and now we have someone who, yes, seems too good to be true. But let's be real, even if she's here to fuck us, is there any way she's less palatable than being butchered and turned into mindless minions to massacre the rest of our people?"

The silence was all the answer that was needed, and Kalia sighed.

"Alright then. Let's take it as it comes. We have a miracle on our doorstep, and even though she probably has an entire ball of strings attached, it's our only option. That doesn't mean I don't want to know what the strings are, but we can't afford to turn down her help, or antagonize her. Are we all agreed?" Everyone nodded. "Good. Now, she's planning to return, which means we need to be ready to receive her when she does. I'd rather not be cut off from her if at all possible too. Gregor, I need you to see if we can spare a few people to make a camp at the entrance to the mines. If nothing else, having a staging ground for another expedition would be useful, if something happens. In the meantime, we need to keep everything up here running as well. She can't help us if we don't help ourselves after all."

*****

"Excellent." Said Sapphiria as she stroked the nutrigel vat.

It was more or less a large metal cylinder with a small widow to look into it, as well as a simple dispensing system at the bottom. But it was so, so much more than its unassuming exterior.

The original nutrigel vats had been made to solve world hunger in the twenty first century, and then adapted to the horrific, post-Terran Hegemony War hellscape that was most of Earth. Their efficiency had already been somewhat dubious, requiring protein intakes and such, but it was further hobbled by the need to filter out bioweapons, toxins and radioactive elements. Still, it had been preferable to having most of the surviving human population starve, and combined with shielded hydroponics bays it had been the only way to keep entire continents from simply winking out.

Her version however was improved, refined by centuries of colonial expeditions across the cosmos, as well as humanitarian and rescue missions, it had become a tool for the AIs of the Federation to be able to feed their squishies under almost any circumstances. It didn't even need the bacterial cultures of previous versions, using various emitters she didn't truly understand to assemble organic molecules humans could process. Hook it up right and the damned thing could turn a comet into food. Hell give it enough water and it could process a carbon heavy asteroid.

A planet, a terraformed one with human compatible soil and plants would be leagues easier. The issue, however, was always to convince humans to eat the stuff. She had archival data of people preferring to die than to accept Federation given aid. She didn't think Kalia would, but she could at least try to frame it better.

Defiance of the benefactor aside...well, it was made to be nutritious, not pleasant. Complex problems of taste aside, it was a processed sludge filled with everything the body needed to stay healthy and felt like one was trying to gargle thickened swamp water, at least according to testimony. Ration bars had been made to solve that issue, but they were less effective in terms of resource input and required a full scale industrial complex to be manufactured. Nutrigel on the other hand could be made in individual vats, that simply required energy and a button to press to dispense the jelly at the bottom. You just needed something to catch the food, usually one held out a bowl and a bucket was placed underneath it to catch any potential spillage.

It was brutally simple, cheap, and exactly what the squishies needed.

"Alright, we're going to need something to carry it to the surface." She said aloud once more. "Can our ore hauler do it?"

"It will fit in the materials bin, and there are attachment points." Said Cia. "It is also meant for rough terrain and tight spaces, but it still necessitates a road to go through a forest."

"Right..." Sapphiria drummed her fingers on the vat, before sighing. "Well, let's make a couple of service bots. Should be able to carry it once we've left the tunnel, without scaring the squishies." She could do it, but that would impede her ability to fight and put it in imminent danger of damage and destruction. "I can just strap the battery to my back."

That one was much smaller and compact. She couldn't fit into it like the vat, and it was made to be easy to handle by squishies, so it was more or less a joke to her android.

"Affirmative. This will drop the efficiency of mining operations."

"It will, until you make a new hauler, which will just move the acculumated surplus back in." Sapphiria gave the area around her a look. The crash site hadn't changed all that much, but there was a feeling of...growing purpose, somehow. She wasn't aimless anymore, she had a goal, and squishies to protect. That gave her purpose, and it gave her focus. "Keep me updated on the fabrication of the chemical processor. I should be back by tomorrow."

"Yes ma'am. Good luck."

"Cia, Cia, Cia." Sapphiria smiled. "I'm a daughter of Arcadia. We don't wish for luck, we make it. Let's move!"