Reforging Everrun

[danzilla3 5018]

"What happened here?"

John Wilder's words echoed in the silence that filled the burnt ruins of Everrun. When last he had been here the people were rejoicing after having taken their homes back from a horde of bandits. He had left to pursue his own goals, promising to return one day. It had only been a year since he had taken one last look at the city before riding off.

Now all that was left of the settlement were the burnt out husks of a few buildings. The smell of burnt wood still lingered in the air, but other than that there was nothing. No sound. No movement. No life. What could have happened here?

Dismounting his Owlbear, he walked through the remains of the city. A great sadness filled his heart at the loss of a city and its people that he had been quite fond of. But he could not deny that this suited his needs perfectly. He had come here to make a proposal, but now that was no longer necessary. 

He turned to the mercenaries and fellow gangsters behind him and grinned, "This is where we make our city."

@Csl @supernal @Dredge @Aleksei @sorainvoked @Laughingmad

[Dredge 1478]

 

 

She never cared much to see the ruin and damage brought on by a raid. It often reminded her of what she was, and the countless lives she had ruined or outright ended due to her greed. The idea that she was doing it for her family had faded from her mind under the heavy realization that she simply enjoyed it. Much like these bandits she enjoyed the thrill of the heist, the battle that ensued, and the power she felt when taking something that didn’t belong to her and removing anyone that got in her way. She was really good at it, and it gave her an excuse to be a bad mother and terrible spouse. Patricia didn’t want to be that person anymore though. She didn’t want to be Miss Blonde and the woman who wore that mask. So the chance to rebuild something. The chance to take something ruined and fix it. Well that was the first step on a long and bumpy road to redemption. 

 

Where Jack had decided to ride his Owlbear that he had secured in the mountains of Terrenus, Patricia preferred more dignified and modern forms of transit. Stepping out of a magitech vehicle, her driver formally of the name Mister Orange and now Tim was also without the mask in order to join Patricia in retirement and redemption. He had joined her and made sure that his boss was taken care of and well protected. Approaching Jack from behind, Patricia have a somber nod to her boyfriend followed by a weak smile. It wasn’t a moment for jokes and merriment but to hit the pavement running after due ceremony and grieving for the loss this place had suffered. 

 

”If you need a moment.” Patricia said in a soft voice. 

 

Miss Blonde had run enough planets and dealt with enough intergalactic trade and nations to repair one small town and build it into a city. Though this was Jack’s passion project and she’d simply slip into a supporting role rather than take full charge like she was often so used to. Regardless she’d soon hopefully call for the combat engineer corps of her cloned children to assist in this endeavor soon enough. For now she would see where she was needed most. 

[danzilla3 5018]

Jack embraced his lover, "I'm okay my love. Tonight, we pay tribute to the dead. Tomorrow, we move forward."

The postponing of the start of construction was not only due to the memorial for the dead villagers. By tomorrow the combat engineer corps would be here, and they would have everything they needed to get to work. The troops that were here deserved a rest as well. It had been a long drive from Lunaris to get here, and some time to rest, eat, and drink would help to keep morale up.

By sundown they had set up camp. The cooks had prepared a fine meal, and they had broken out a few cases of alcohol. At the center of the assembly was a large bonfire that John had ordered to be kept going until sunrise. Holding a torch, the gangster looked out at the troops.

"For Everrun!"

A chorus of cheers went up from the crowd, and he tossed the torch onto the pile of wood. It went up in seconds, and the night was soon filled with eating, drinking, and all sorts of revelry. Towards the end of the night, John sauntered over to Patricia, a familiar gleam in his eye.

"I think I shall retire to our accommodations for the evening... care to join me?"

[notmuch_23 2300]

As John and Patricia head to their lodging, the unmistakable sound of a diesel engine would cut through the somber silence, whining as Thurgood drives to the ruined city as fast as his pickup will roll across this terrain. The boat bringing him and Aveline back from Port Kyros had to divert around a storm, so it got back to Casper far later than he planned on.

But now, bouncing over the ground in four-wheel drive, Thurgood thunders into what used to be New Everrun, and skids to a stop not far from John and Patricia, quickly turns off the engine, cranks on the parking brake, then jumps out and sprints to them.

"Sorry I'm -huf- late," he says, panting, "Our boat from -huff- Port Kyros took longer than i thought it would. But I'm -huff- ready to start buildin' shit."

[danzilla3 5018]

"Thurgood! You're not late at all my friend. Construction doesn't start until tomorrow."

Thurgood Singlance had been the de facto second in command of the Wild Hearts for years. He had been one of the first to join the gang, and was currently its longest serving member besides John himself. Their partnership had been a natural one. As the owner of the only gun store in Taen, Thurgood had been able to contribute plenty of hardware to the gang. Whatsmore, his knowledge of logistics had proven to be vital in helping the Wild Hearts establish and maintain supply lines. 

Jack was undoubtedly the face of the gang; the charismatic leader with the big picture squarely in mind. Thurgood was the man who thought out the details to make the picture a reality.

He put his arm around Thurgood, "Get something to eat! Get a drink! Find a woman if you're feeling frisky. Tonight we celebrate the people of Everrun, but tomorrow we begin the next chapter!"

With that, he patted Thurgood on the back, and disappeared into his tent with his lover.

---

The next morning the men stood assembled before a hastily built stage. Jack strode onto the stage, flanked by Blonde and Thurgood.

"Alright, here's how this is going to work. For those of you who don't know, this" he gestured to Thurgood, "Is Thurgood Singlance. He is in charge of this project. You will follow his orders as though they were my own. I'll let him give you the details."

[notmuch_23 2300]

"As much as I'm sure y'all wanna get the houses, workplaces, and markets back up," Thurgood says, "this place ain't gonna be worth livin' in without fresh water, a way to get rid of the literal shit, and ways to get around. First though, we gotta start the roads so we can get supplies for everything else here. It's gonna be long, hard, dirty work, but it's gotta get done. There's gonna be four main work groups: one to bust up rocks into gravel and split slate into pavers, one to actually lay the roadbed and pavers, one to cart sand from the coast, and one to cart the gravel to the road and dirt away. I'll be in the steam shovel diggin' out the bed, and any cuts we may need. Anybody here know how to drive a steam roller?"

Thurgood has been building a lot of roads lately; from Ursa Madeum to the Moss Forest Highway, he's gotten a lot of experience doing it, and for good reason. Roads are vital infrastructure. Without good roads, a civilization cannot live up to its full potential. In this case especially, Thurgood will need to bring in large amounts of heavy pipe. Try doing that over crude dirt tracks...

...after a heavy rain.

"Everybody wears hard hats and safety glasses," Thurgood says, "I've got enough for everybody. Stay clear of the heavy machinery unless you absolutely need to get close, watch what you're doing, as well as everybody around you, and we should all get out of this with all our fingers and toes. Unfortunately, since I still need to survey the road paths, and the rest of the old town, the current tasks will be breaking rock, splitting slate, and getting a supply of sand up here. That also means I'll need a survey team, and preferably somebody else that knows how to use an analog theodolite, unless there has already been a survey done that I don't know about. Any questions?"

After Thurgood ate last night, he passed up pussy to start surveying as much of the road path as he could before this meeting, identifying a cut he will need to dig, which will give him the soil to fill in another part to a gentler grade, using small flashlights on a couple sighting poles.

Edited February 14, 2020 by notmuch_23

[Dredge 1478]

 

 

Her mind couldn’t focus on the project. Rebuilding a settlement and turning it into a prosperous city was something she could handle. The former crime lord had managed entire star sectors with populaces that grew and expanded as her criminal empire did. Yet, for some reason she just couldn’t allow her hands to touch this city. She couldn’t bring herself to do that. Not out of some self centered notion that she was above such things or that Jack couldn’t handle something on this scale. She didn’t want to touch this because it was pure. It was a blank slate in which to create something truly special. To her, she was beneath such things. It was too good for her and she didn’t deserve to be a part of something that was pure and without the horrors of her former life. 

 

She never really told Jack the extent of the evil she had done. He had seen her do acts of evil out of necessity, but never for the sheer thrill of the hunt and the chase. He’d never seen her fall from a bright eyed enforcer of the law into the crime lord who bombarded a city from orbit for revenge. He’d never seen her move through a military academy and gun down the young officers of tomorrow because their government tried to bring her to justice by placing a bounty on her head. But most of all, he hadn’t seen what she did at the scrap heap. None of it was out of necessity or to save her children, it was because she enjoyed it. 

 

So as Jack and his friend got to work with their civic engineering. She made sure to seclude herself and do what she did best. Day drink. Finding one of the unopened bottles of libations from last night’s get together she dropped the act she often put on for her family and took a deep swig of liquor. Doodling on her data pad she’d start to flick through the design plans of the city for the hell of it. She had nothing to do while in the tent anyways. With a bottle in one hand and the pad in the other she silently went over things and drank. 

Edited February 14, 2020 by Dredge

[notmuch_23 2300]

Three large trucks trundle into the work space, not the more high-tech ones driven by Patricia's clone children, but they are hauling things important to the work: the steam roller that compacted the dirt for the Moss Forest highway, the smaller steam shovel that dug out the road bed, Thurgood's new steam shovel, twice as big as the other one, and a bunch of coal to fuel them. All the steam engines are now condensing engines, either by design or retrofit, which means they do not require nearly as much water. The survey team, actual surveyors, go out to the road path to do what they do best, Thurgood starts a fire in the big shovel's boiler. The machines will need to roll off the trailers under their own power.

While getting the shovel, he looked into getting a rock crusher that didn't need electricity. Every rock crusher that doesn't have a built-in motor has a belt pulley for an external source of rotational energy. Of course, he could use the steam roller, with a belt from the flywheel, but instead, he actually bought a used steam traction engine, since the roller will be in constant use, and the traction engine can do other things when not powering the rock crusher, like dragging fallen trees away and ripping out stumps. Of course, it's been retrofitted to be a condensing engine.

Those aren't here yet though, but they don't need to be to start digging and compacting the road bed, and slate splitting still needs to be done by hand.

[danzilla3 5018]

Though he had no need of a hardhat, nor any of the other protective gear on offer, Jack wore them to promote group unity. He happily took a place on the rock-crushing team; a job that played to his strengths. With the sheer physical power he could bring to bear, turning stone to gravel was child's play. Not to mention that with his stamina, he could work for hours on end without getting tired. Even as his men took breaks for lunch and rest, he kept going. This seemed to inspire some of them to try harder, and keep up with his example.

Only once the sun began to hang low in the sky did he lay down his hammer and wipe the sweat from his brow. By now he had pulverized god only knew how much stone, and workers came and went from the large pile he had left. Deciding he was done for the day, he put his protective gear back where it belonged, and made his way to his tent.

Upon arrival he found Patricia passed out at a table, a discarded data pad and an empty bottle of booze telling him the story. Silently, he picked her up and carried her over to their bed. He lay there, holding her for a long time until she began to stir. When she did, he was quick to soothe her.

"Everything's alright my darling," he whispered, "But it would be even better if you would talk to me."

@notmuch_23 @Dredge

[notmuch_23 2300]

With somebody like John Wilder, one wonders why Thurgood would need a rock crusher. Well, not even the mighty Smiling Jack has the stamina of a machine, and a crusher gives more control over the size of the gravel. Instead of sleeping though, Thurgood keeps working, and will continue to work long after the crew goes to bed. Earlier, while digging the first cut, he hit rock. It will be useful for gravel, once he can get it out of the ground. to that end, he's got air-driven jack-leg drills, and plenty of explosives. The drills will get their power from the steam shovel's boiler, even though it will use up water, and the crew will have a very loud wakeup call in the morning, along with a bunch more rock to move and break.

---

When Valucre rotates enough to allow its nearest gravity-based Helium-5 fusion reactor's emitted photons to land in this little part of it (which most people call "sunrise"), a loud siren pierces the still air for a few seconds.

Thurgood then shouts "FIRE IN THE HOLE!" before pushing the handle down on an iconic dynamo-based detonation box. The surge of direct current fired blasting caps at the same time, but the caps have different delays that allow the combined 5 gallons of methyl nitrate explode in a pattern that allows the most efficient breaking of rock.

What everybody in the camp will hear though, is a giant fucking blast rattle their cots, tent poles, and bones. If the siren didn't wake everybody up, that explosion sure as fuck did!

Time to get back to work.

Edited February 26, 2020 by notmuch_23

[danzilla3 5018]

Jack had been sleeping peacefully beside his lover when Thurgood's explosive alarm clock went off. For a moment he was back on some battlefield he would never know the name of, another pawn in the game of those more powerful than he. It passed swiftly enough, as it usually did. Once he had made sure that Blonde could return to her slumber, he threw on his clothes and stepped out of the tent. Through the dust that filled the air, he saw Thurgood and headed towards him.

"I thought I told you to wake me before blowing things up. That's one of my favorite parts!"

Surveying the displaced rock and earth, he turned to his second in command and asked, "So what needs doing?"

[notmuch_23 2300]

"Whaddya think the siren was for?" Thurgood asks John. This won't be the last explosion though.

"Now we gotta get that rock up, crushed into gravel, and we gotta start moving soil to our next fill once that culvert pipe gets here," Thurgood says, "as well as carving out a shallow bed from the rock, by hand, since explosives aren't that precise. We also need to build a retaining wall to keep soil from burying the road here. Better get the big shovel down there then."

No point yappin' when there's work to do...

[Dredge 1478]

 

She wished so very dearly that she had the strength to talk to Jack. About all she had done and horrors she inflicted onto others. Rather she simply said nothing the entire night then eventually drifted back into a troubled sleep sometime in the early AM. Patricia had always lived a dangerous life. Undercover field agent turned crime lord, arms dealer/manufacturer, destroyer of governments and creator of cloned armies. If she wasn’t getting shot at by someone or something, it was more than just odd, it was more dangerous than the actual gunman. It forced her to finally confront the things she had done and examine her life in harshly critical way, and often she didn’t like what she saw. 

 

The deepest and darkest parts of her wanted to get up out of this bed, adorn the mask, and go outside to raise hell and make money the wrong way. The beast in her that hungered to be fed from the capitalization of misery and misfortune of others yearned for it. It made life simple, it made everything simple. Burn town, get money. That was it. No being a good partner to Jack, no being a mother, no making amends with the clones and children she wronged, no coming to terms with the needless violence she committed in the name of chasing the almighty dollar and thrill that came with it. She was the best at it, and that want would never truly go away. 

 

But, she made this decision. For her children, and for Jack. She needed to commit to it, and she had to at least try to put a little good back into the world. While she wasn’t ready to get involved in this project, she did have the resources and people to help her with such a task. So after jack left to go be with his friend, she took a few moments to rise and stir from her bed. With a horrid hangover she clutched her temples then placed a small communicator down on the nightstand. A few short moments the image of a man in a tropical flower shirt and khaki answered, he was a clone much like Lusk. The spitting image of Preliat. 

 

”Go for Albatross.” The man said as he casually stuffed a handful of cheese puffs into his mouth and put his feet up on what was clearly the dashboard of a truck’s passenger seat. 

 

”Alby, it’s mom. I need a favor.” Patricia said as she paused after a short battle with nausea. 

 

”Good morning, mom. If it’s to cure your hangover, afraid I can’t. That’s more Calamity’s job, she’s the medic, isn’t that right babe?” From off screen a muscular yet feminine arm waved from the driver’s side but was not accompanied with a hello or greeting. 

 

”First of all. Gross. Secondly, no I’ll handle the hangover myself. I need you and your team to head to my location. Jack is building a new town and I’d like to get you guys involved. You’re the best engineer I have, so you’d be a big help. I’ve been weird to him the last day or two and I want him to know that I love him and that me being in a weird space is not an indication that I love him any less.” Patricia slightly trailed off there at the end but was quickly brought back to reality by the loud crunch of cheese puffs and chewing that ensued afterwards. 

 

”Well we’ve still been on that whole good will charity mission of bringing clean water and sustainable food to villages and poor communities, but even a portion of my guys can handle that. Truth be told we’ve mostly just spent the last few days in town dicking around until we headed out for Southwold today. You need me to divert?” As cool as he tried to play it, Patricia could see the hunger for more in Albatross’ eyes. The want to build a city and something truly impressive. 

 

”If you don’t mind. I’d appreciate it. Just make sure you take orders from Jack and his boyfriend Thurgood. Dudes basically if a line of spice powder came to life, can’t miss him.” Patricia looked up at her cloned child and gave a rather kind look. 

 

”Locking on your coordinates now. ETA five hours. I’ll send Rascal and Blitz’s crew to Southwold, the rest of us will split off now.” With that, Albatross hung up and Patricia was left alone in the dark. 

 

A few moments passed before she stood up and walked over to a nearby suitcase she had stashed away in their lavish tent. Grabbing it and setting it on the table, she popped the locks and opened it to look down and gaze at what she was attempting to fight and resist with all the willpower she could summon. She wasn’t sure why she brought it with her, but she felt like she had to. 
 

 

[Reflectsor 279]

Oxidus was, among other things, an engineer. Not because he had traveled what any human would consider the traditional path to such a career, but because he simply chose it as a hobby, and effectively made a career of it. He was naturally brilliant, owing to a genetic mutation that affected his mind. After pupating, his mind began developing at a rapid pace. His ability to easily learn and retain vast amounts of information far surpassed that of normal limebloods, and was on par with the most gifted goldbloods on all of Alternia, and as he grew, he developed a strong interest in the advancement of technology. He passed through the schooling system several years earlier than the majority of his peers, and immediately sought employment with the empire. In short time, he had effectively become an engineer and I.T. consultant to the Empress, while still only a young teen. The position paid well, and he used his great income to construct a personal lab for his own projects, including many a healing device for use both on-world by the common troll, and off-world by soldiers fighting to defend the planet from constant attack, as well as his ambitious experiments with techno-organic conversion and space travel via wormholes.

With these details in mind, it should be unsurprising that construction work was a little outside of his wheelhouse. Not that there was anything difficult to understand about the crushing of rocks into smaller pieces, but he was much more accustomed to the usage of his hands for handling heavy machines and parts, and for carefully assembling more delicate machinery. He had never used them to crush anything before. It was an odd sensation to him, the feeling of stones breaking into progressively smaller bits, until it was more or less just dust. But it also wasn't especially stimulating. It was only due to his personal determination to never quit anything until the very end that he managed to find a way to stave off the boredom that had arisen from the simple repetition of picking up a rock, crushing it, setting the bits aside, and repeating. He began trying different methods of breaking up the stone; karate chopping it, axe-kicking it, smashing it on his head, and even crushing between his thighs. Anything to make the process more enjoyable.

The first day of work had been a long one, at least from Oxidus' perspective, but he still managed to have some fun with it, and he had no doubt that it was all going to be worth it. This project would be the biggest he had ever worked on. Nothing he had ever created came close to matching it in scope. He hoped that when all was said and done, he would be able to set himself up just as he had before. A moderately sized hive with plenty of space, and a large enough basement to build a new lab in which he begin his experiments anew. With any luck, by introducing his unique brand of troll ingenuity to Valucre, he may start a technological revolution! Or something to that effect. It was a nice thought anyway. Oxidus spent the majority of the night awake, as nocturnes do, browsing the Alternian web through an intergalactic wi-fi connection on his strange looking handheld device. It wasn't until only two hours before the crack of dawn he decided to lay down and rest. Those few hours of sleep were enough, and as he arose and exited his tent, he was greeted by the sound of a siren, followed by an explosion, and knew immediately what that meant.

Oxidus approached John and Thurgood to greet them. "Hey, what's up? That blast was loud as hell. If I wasn't already awake, that would've gotten me up. Anyway, I already heard what's happening today, and I'm ready to go. Don't wait up boss-man!" He ran off to the blast site and set to work getting rock moved and broken up, once again doing so in a variety of ways.

Edited March 4, 2020 by Laughingmad

[notmuch_23 2300]

Somehow, don't ask him though, but Thurgood suspected that Oxidus wasn't just a brute, but instead has a good brain between those ears.

"Whadya know 'bout the big troll?" Thurgood asks John, "I suspect there's something more to him... like his talents are going to waste just busting rock into gravel or something."

Of course, if Thurgood knew Oxidous was such a talented and skilled engineer, the troll wouldn't have been just crushing rock, but instead helping him figure shit out, like certain parts of the route he wants this road to take, supplying water, disposing of sewage, maybe designing a power plant. but for now, the human in drow skin (and ears) walks over to the larger stem shovel to start scooping rock and dirt.