Airships Over Brogendenstein
Airships Over Brogendenstein, An Adventure with Romance by Sally Dald
For T.L. of the Arcane Tower
And R.K., my H.B.
Ruby Glitterstone was laying on a beach beneath the starlight on the shore of Brogendenstein Bay. Ruby was a pretty young gnome, with springy hair that like looked like curly maple leaves, and perfect little turnip nose. Attractive as she was, her companion, Frin Bottlebaun, paid her little attention--instead, he was preoccupied with tinkering with some mechanical device used to make measurements of the night sky. They were a good ten minutes north of the landing so that they could be away from the lights of the settlement, which might interfere with Frin's work.
Frin was a shy fellow, with emerald eyes and a brown pencil-thin moustache on his lip. He was an artificer, and although he treasured Ruby's company, it was not in a romantic way. For her part, Ruby had ridden her pony along the shore at night to meet Frin and keep him company. She teased him that it was to protect him from whatever things might be lurking in the fog, but the truth was rather that she was delighted by Frin's passion, which seemed to stir up for the skies and stars more than anything. It was amazing how focused his mind was when there was a task at hand or a problem to solve. His favorite work was on an large mechanical albatross that he was building, which he assured her would soon be a sort of flying machine that he could use to fly out across the bay. Starlight did sparkle in Ruby's eyes as she dreamily stared up at the sky and listened to her friend's quiet explanations of the geometry of the crystal spheres as her shaggy brown pony nuzzled her for sweetberry treats.
As they watched however, Ruby noticed a series of lights appearing a short ways out from the shore, as if floating on the water. She pointed them out to Frin, who seemed equally puzzled as to what these were, but added that they seemed to be fires of some sort. Then, to their wonderment, the balls of fire leapt from the water and streaked in an arc through the air and then landed on the shore in sparking explosions near the docks and taverns and towers of the coastal defenders. Ruby and Frin watched and listened in horror from their distant vantage point and realized that their home was under some sort of nighttime attack from the sea. Alarms and smoke filled the air, the clash of steel and war cries and the screams of the dying. Frin urged Ruby to carry them back as quickly as she could on her pony, and up the beach they sped through crashing surf as the fiery lights rained down far ahead of them.
In the days that followed, the destruction that happened became clear. A navy of goblins had come into the Brogendenstein Bay in a convoy that had somehow traveled beneath the surface of the sea. A strange mechanical cachalot made of clockwork and gears and fins. These undersea vessels then rose to the surface and sent forth a volley of firepots from their mangonels. During this rain of fire, many more goblins came ashore using some manner of mundane mechanical devices for breathing underwater. Swarming onto the shore, those vicious goblins plundered the houses and tavern in the chaos of fire and darkness. Before the Golden Hall and Earthkin Defenders could assemble, the undersea goblin raiders and their submersible crafts had disappeared back beneath the nighttime waves.
The Hearthhouse had been set ablaze and tankards of ale carried off. Stores along the docks had been smashed and looted of their goods. Supplies for ships were taken or put to the torch. Doors and windows as far as the entrance to the underground gnome grotto lay broken and open.
The raid was a great success for the goblins, a success many feared could be repeated. A great meeting was held in the Golden Halls to plan about what to do. The gnomes of the grotto and the Clockwork Tower worked day and night on their arts and inventions to meet this goblin menace. The chief artificer Knoze had invented device for spotting the clockwork cachalots while they were still submerged. A crystal orb that could be used to sense the vessels, but the orbs required skill in spotting and some knowledge of divine magic.
To destroy the goblin submersibles was another matter. Fortunately, there were a number of visiting Lantanese airship pilots who were just finishing the designs of a new kind of airship that might be up to the task. The airships were held aloft by pillows of a marvelous newly discovered gas called plutophlogstonilte, which emanated as purplish vapors from rocks in the deep, deep regions of the Underdark. With the pillows of this gas encased in a rigid shell, the airships were light and quick, and could carry many heavy barrels of explosives to be dropped on targets below. With proper fuses and weighting, the barrels were made to explode underwater as they slowly sank. With the seeing orbs able to find the goblin submersibles, they would be able to tell the airship pilots exactly where to find them and destroy them from above.
Chief Artificer Knoze recruited Ruby and two others--Opal Ophiolite and Rose Cleavage--to operate the crystal orbs. Knoze reasoned that gnome priests or priestesses, naturally gifted in illusion magic, would be able to send a projected image to tell the airship pilots where to look. Ruby was a priestess of the gnome gods and a diviner, and felt sure that her gift would be very important in spotting the goblin raiders. Opal was a priestess of Gond, and had a studious look, hazel eyes, and a demure fashion. She was serious in her quest for knowledge of ancient inventions from distant lands.
Rose was a priestess of Garl Glitterlord. She was bouncy, buxom, and boisterous, and the life of the party at the Hearthstone Inn, where she was never known to miss an event. Both Opal and Rose were dear friends of Ruby's and the trio got along famously, making for a good team. Frin, who was Knoze's apprentice, would help operate the quartz rods that gave power to the orbs. The Lantanese pilots were Captain Grimm Lightspark, Roibo Frostmare, and Harry Mars. Captain Lightspark was a serious gnome built almost like dwarf, with an intense gaze like a coming storm beneath his huge eyebrows. Roibo was all charm and had a great curly moustache and very long nose. Harry Mars was a gentle, jovial gnome with a great nose, bald head, and a wild bushy beard and tan trousers with many pockets and bulging with tools and other things.
As the efforts to build the orbs and complete the airships came to completion, Chief Artificer Knoze and the Lord of the Golden Halls decided it was worth the risk to allow a night of relaxation for the watchers and pilots at The Hearthstone Inn. The hardworking earthkin had quickly repaired the inn after the raid, and for that night the fires did glow and the brandy did flow.
As the night did go on, Opal found she very much enjoyed the company of Captain Grimm, and listened to his stories of adventures among snowy peaks far to the north. Rose wasted no time in catching the lively and good natured Roibo into a cozy conversation while sharing some blueberry brandy imported from Bendir and he tickled her nose with his moustache. Ruby was taken with the rough Harry Mars, with his handsome looks and generous smile and large toolbelt. Ruby sat next to Harry near the warm fire, looking his beard and the tangled tuft of hair on his chest, while Harry listened as Frin spoke all about the designs and functions of his mechanical albatross late into the night till the bottles and tankards ran dry.
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After the party, there were many long days and nights of keeping guard over the bay from the tower using the seeing orbs. Each priestess would take a turn while the others slept. Frin tended to keep Ruby company during her late night watch. One night, as her mind wandered into a romantic fancy, Ruby asked Frin if he did not find Harry Mars a most noble and pleasing fellow to look at. Frin at first seemed to caught off guard at the question and stammered with a blush and a fluster before realizing Ruby was asking the question to air her own admiration for Harry.
Ruby was surprised by Frin, as usually nothing could unsettle his concentration, but thinking it over she realized that she need not be a diviner to have seen this development coming. But just as she began to consider Frin in this new light, and puzzle how to say some friendly encouraging thing, suddenly the seeing orb came to life with a blue color and vibration. Glowing points of light in the orb showed something was out there under the waves. Ruby called out that it was time to wake the airship pilots!
The crystal watching orbs worked. Ruby, Opal, and Rose were able to see clockwork cachalots under the sea and then use their illusion projections to tell the airship pilots where to go. And so the airships quickly found the undersea craft, with Grimm leading the way to destroy the first goblin vessel. A huge sonic exploding barrel dropped from the sky into the sea, a lurch on the moonlit sea surface, a spray of water high into the air, and oil and debris and drowning goblins. And quickly another mechanical cachalot destroyed by Grimm! And another by the bold Roibo!
Realizing their peril, the undersea goblins breached their vessels to the surface to take the fight to the airships. A half dozen yet remained and with fire pots sent streaming though the night sky, and with dark, barbed javelins they began their fight. The cunning admiral Stook of the goblins managed to pierce Grimm's airship with an enormous wicked barbed javelin sent into the air with a flick of a mechanical cachalot tail and the airship sank down and down into the sea, its gas boiling up from the foaming water as a boiling and twisting purple fog. Roibo's airship too was damaged by yet another barbed javelin from Admiral Stook, and down his ship went crashing into beach, and more purple fog spread across the docks and onto the shore. Wounded in the crash, but recovering, the gallant Roibo leapt from his airship cabin with gonne in one hand and short sword in the other to meet goblins that began to swarm from the shore and onto the beach in a nighttime melee ensues underneath the lights of the dock. With a desperate determination, Harry Mars did pilot his airship straight towards the clockwork submersible of the goblin admiral.
Then came a great unexpected turn in the nighttime battle. A hum of noise in the air that reached from the towers to the bay began and was followed by a gnawing pain piercing into the minds of all in the battle. At the tower of the watchers, Opal looking into her orb screamed at something as if a nightmare had come to life before her. Her seeing orb began to glow with a deep violet hue. Rose in turn fell into a great panic, repeating over and over that a bad feeling was coming over her. Ruby sensed a sudden clawing in her mind and then a sense of imminent doom as she looked into her orb. With a quick decision, Frin quickly threw a spanner at a geared engine to shut off the quartz vibrators powering the orbs, and their light quickly dimmed. Opal had fallen senseless upon her orb, while Rose was yet in a panic. Ruby felt with a great certainty that there was something awful out there, and together with Frin went to the top of the tower to look out on the bay. In horror they saw in the moonlight that there were enormous horrible tentacles reaching up through the purplish fog. They had gripped the remains of Grimm's airship, and were crushing the goblin admiral's clockwork vessel, breaking it in half, with many goblins screaming being strangled and dragged below, fed into the maw of the tentacled leviathan. On the beach and on the sea, a madness and panic of the mind came on them all, earthkin and goblin alike. Ruby screamed as tentacles darted up from the churning water to grab Harry's airship and felt surely that he would die. But Frin quickly and with calm assurance made that he would go out and save Harry. The incredulous Ruby in a state of panic and wonder demanded how it could be done, and Frin quickly answered as if it were obvious cocking and eyebrow that he would take his mechanical albatross, of course. Still in a wonder but now with a glimmer of hope, Ruby handed Frin a portal lens and then did beg the gods to aid him.
Frin arrived just in time, landing his mechanical albatross in the water by the airship. Harry had been able to keep the massive tentacled abboleth held back for a time with a mighty repeating mechanical gonne that fired from a turret in the nose of the airship. But now the explosive slugs were all used, and tentacles had wrapped around the ship, piercing it to let the gas escape and dragging to the surface of the water where it lay crippled. Frin made his way into the steering cabin that was flooding and found the airship captain clutching his head in madness and confusion. Frin calmy, soothingly touched Harry's bearded cheek and as their eyes met a moment of clarity came over the airship pilot. Frin handed him the portal lens, telling him that he would himself escape in the albatross, and Harry was whisked back to the tower in a burst of magic. Looking around him in the ruined airship, Frin realized that he had to stop the abboleth somehow. It was drawn to the airships and the gas inside them, and the beast would next be headed to Roibo's crashed ship on the beach. The monstrosity would come ashore at Brogendenstein. The surroundings twisted and screamed with psychic energy blazing, but there was is a task at hand, a problem to be solved, and so Frin's mind was focused and he was unaffected. He reasoned that a smashing the mesmer coil powering the engines should cause the gas to ignite and then all the remaining explosive barrels... From the tower, Ruby and Harry watched and felt as a tremendous explosion rocked the air and the water around the aberration, tearing it apart. And then all became calm.
There were days of mourning and rebuilding in Brogendenstein. The loremasters, sages, and chief artificer Knoze concluded that the monstrous tentacled thing was an elder or ancient abboleth drawn from some deep ocean lair by the plutophlogstonilte vapors or perhaps psychic vibrations caused by the seeing orbs. Some thought perhaps it was the same thalassic horror that broke Old Greg Fielding's mind. Opal had lost her handsome Captain Grimm in the battle, as well as her mind much in a manner like Old Greg himself, and spent the rest of her days selling trinkets by the seashore. Rose, who seemed resilient and unstoppable in good nature, was reunited with the dashing Roibo, who recovered from his injuries and was a hero of the battle, and the two did take over the management of the Hearthstone Inn, and it became well known across the island for its fine food and fine parties. Ruby's affections were on Harry, and she helped him heal in the days that followed the battle invited him to her favorite spot on the beach north of the settlement, riding out on a pair of stout ponies. Healed of his wounds, but still troubled and filled with a sadness, Harry confided that to Ruby that he had lost his heart out on the bay that day. Frin. Although Ruby was a diviner, she had not see that coming. With a smile, Ruby put her hand on Harry's to comfort him and the two of them look out to sea.
[On the inside of the back flap, there is written: Crane & Crow Publishing (c) 188 AR.]