When I close my eyes, I still feel like I’m flying. My subconscious refuses to let go of the sensation of movement even as I drift in and out of sleep all day.
I vaguely hear the voice of one of my relatives who clearly thinks that food is more important than sleep. I currently disagree, so I mumble something incoherent, roll over and go back to sleep.
I finally stir at some point, and no longer feel like the world is still moving. For the most part.
I stumble out to the hearth to get a late dinner and get harried by a 7-year-old and 2-year-old who want to hear all the sordid details about what I’ve been up to.
“Griffin, Raven… isn’t it already past your bedtime?” I ask quietly. “You weren’t in our room either.”
“We were looking at the boat,” Griffin whispers. “It’s soooo cool. But we couldn’t get it to move.”
I have never so much appreciated Wizardry having a built-in child safety feature.
“Sorry, we can’t actually turn it on until we reach Elite,” I say. “Why don’t we all get back to bed? I feel like I could sleep another whole week. Tell you what. Maybe if you ask your mom, they’ll let you go for a flight for your naming day?”
“But that’s a whole month away!” Griffin whines.
“And we have stuff that needs to be done,” I say. “Why don’t we all get back to our room now?”
I wake at azure and eat breakfast hurriedly before going out to the green as if afraid I’d dreamed the whole skyboat flight. There it is, The Celestial Duck in all its glory. Light snow dusts the hull, but the violet sky is now mostly clear.
“Good morning, Drake!” says Aunt Rosemary, the [Tutorial Teacher]. “Are you ready to learn how to fly your new skyboat?”
“I would never say no to a tutorial,” I say with a grin.
“You did well at getting it here safely. Now let’s shore up your base knowledge. It will take a lifetime to master the nuances of your chosen path, but the basic controls will be simple enough to get down.”
We gather up the rest of my party for the tutorial so they can watch Aunt Rosemary’s demonstrations.
“You know how to fly a skyboat, too?” Basalt asks. “Do you just know a little of everything?”
“I am a [Tutorial Tutor],” Aunt Rosemary says. “Teaching people the basics of literally anything is my own path in life. Gather round, kids. It’s time to show you the ropes.”
“They’re right there,” Basalt says cheekily.
Aunt Rosemary starts off with telling us all how to work the ropes properly, without having anyone touch the rudder yet. When we extend the sails, they don’t even react to the aether flows coming from Corwen and Tempest.
“Why aren’t the sails reacting to the aether flows in the air?” I ask.
“The sails aren’t currently turned on,” Aunt Rosemary explains. “Without their control sigils active, they’ll only catch normal wind like any cloth would. Now let’s move on to the rudder. Drake, if you would?”
I go over and grab the rudder. Nothing happens. “So… is this also currently turned off?”
“Correct.”
“I just tried to turn everything on that I could see,” Anise admits.
Aunt Rosemary explains the basics of how to use the rudder, or “awkwardly placed joystick” as I’m continuing to consider it.
“Alright, does everyone have that down?” the [Tutorial Teacher] asks. “In that case, it’s time to take us out for a flight. I will be powering the vessel myself, as I’m Heroic and have more than enough vis to do so.”
“I will be grateful to have no pine needles flying in my face today,” I say.
“Basalt tells me that you intend to start spawning new dwarves in Hebron,” Aunt Rosemary says. “So we will be heading there. I’ve already gathered up my books and teaching supplies and stored them in the boat in preparation, as well as taken the liberty to pack food for the trip.”
I have to admit, I’m impressed at her going above and beyond to prepare in ways I would have entirely forgotten to.
“You just don’t want to walk,” Anise says with a grin.
“Anise, my dear, I am 75 years old. I have the option of flying most of the way and only having to walk through some caves instead of across half the domain in winter. Do you want this tutorial or not?”
Anise holds up her hands innocently.
Aunt Rosemary floods the sigils with a pulse of vis. “Take the rudder, Drake.”
I grab the rudder in both hands and we immediately start rising into the air. She continues to give instructions, and soon enough we’re on our way.
“Is there a cruise setting on this?” I ask. “I wound up having to hold the rudder the entire trip and it took hours.”
“Yes, but you would not have been able to set it and your mother did not know which setting it was. Anise? Anise, pay attention and you might learn a bit of Wizardry.”
“I suppose it’s for a good cause,” Anise says.
In addition to teaching Anise how to use the sigil controls, Aunt Rosemary has us trade off roles so that we all know how to steer if necessary. The others might not be able to detect aether flows, but they can certainly keep us from hitting any trees. [Aether Sense] is kind of a cheat, honestly. Old-school sailors of the golden age of piracy weren’t capable of seeing the wind, after all.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
In any case, I don’t need to be on the rudder myself to detect the aether flows. I can easily send telepathic instructions to whoever is currently piloting. After getting a good feel for how to handle the rigging, I finally get a skill unlock for it.
“Did you get any good skills from stealing the boat?” Anise asks once we’ve settled into enough of a routine to chat.
“I unlocked [Aether Sailing],” I say. “That’s going to be very useful. I felt like I was flying blind there. Why would they put the controls at the back of the ship?”
“Dunno!” Anise says cheerfully. “You probably would have gotten even more snow in the face if you’d been up front. And man, I got more levels in Wizardry skills than I have in years.”
“I’m almost sad that I didn’t get some sort of Subterfuge (Piracy) or something skill out of that,” I say.
“That sort of piracy is kind of the opposite of Subterfuge,” Jade says with a laugh. “That’s about not being seen. We were as brazen as can be and I can’t believe we’re still alive and it was amazing!”
“So, The Celestial Duck, huh?” Basalt says. “A duck for a Drake.”
“Thanks to everyone for helping,” I say. “You all did great!”
“I am honestly shocked that we didn’t crash,” Jade says. “But I got so many levels in Mechanics (Rope Use). You might not have gotten a thiefy skill, but it absolutely counted for my [Apprentice Rogue] class.”
“I got a bunch of levels in Blocking (Shieldwork), too,” Rowan adds. “[Apprentice Guardian] appreciated keeping the pilot from crashing us.”
“I suppose running through a maze and breaking through a wall was ‘dwarfy’ enough,” Basalt says. “Why do I have my race in my class, anyway?”
“I’m glad you asked,” Aunt Rosemary says, never one to miss an opportunity to info dump. “Every class is made up of an adjective and a noun. Both of them modify how you gain experience and offer various subtle bonuses. The Apprentice classes, for instance, give bonuses to learning. As a [Tutorial Teacher], both my adjective and noun are dedicated to teaching. In your case, ‘Dwarf’ is your adjective.”
“Shouldn’t it have been ‘Dwarven’ or ‘Dwarvish’?” Basalt says. “Whatever, that’s good to know.”
“When you reach Elite rank, as I’m certain you will, you’ll receive a choice between three classes. It is likely that at least one of them will include ‘Dwarf’ and at least one of them will not.”
“Would that make me no longer a dwarf?”
Aunt Rosemary shakes her head. “No. It would just mean that you would be defining yourself by being a dwarf less.”
“I’m perfectly happy with being a dwarf,” Basalt says. “I was just wondering.”
“Perhaps you are now, but when you see what options you have available, I’d suggest keeping an open mind.”
We’re moving faster now thanks to my increase in control over the ship, but it still takes us until orange to reach the crash site.
Uncle Falcon and his party are already here sifting through the wreckage. In the time it took us to fly back to Corwen, Aunt Savannah came home and brought back a salvage crew. They’ve been here since early yesterday morning.
“That is quite a large tree,” Aunt Rosemary comments, gazing up at it.
“Savannah certainly didn’t do any half measures there,” Uncle Falcon says.
“Find anything good yet?” Anise asks.
“A bit, but don’t be too disappointed,” Uncle Falcon says. “They weren’t laden with a treasure trove of booty. They just had the items they were currently using.”
“Did you run into any trouble?” I ask.
“Eh.” Uncle Falcon shrugs. “Not especially. The field belongs to Nefern Hearth and one of the locals came out and tried to claim salvage based on the fact that the wreck stopped on their land. Your goblin friend, Milo, is now at Nefern negotiating trade deals. Something about offering Hebron grapes for Nefern wheat.”
“Nice,” Basalt says. “Wheat means bread and beer, if we can get our hands on yeast.”
The four Heroic adventurers are not alone out here. They’ve attracted a small audience of kids from a nearby farm and goblins from Splott.
Mostly they’re just here because a pirate ship crashing into a forest is the most interesting thing that’s happened all year (never mind that it’s only the beginning of February). They’re definitely going to opportunistically grab anything we leave behind, so it’s a good thing the Heroics got back out here so quickly.
Uncle Falcon and his party looted and catalogued the smugglers’ booty. They wanted to make sure there weren’t any traps or curses that would seriously harm Basics, for one thing.
Most of the loot isn’t usable by us, plus Aunt Savannah was the only reason the ship actually went down, but we’ll still get compensation from Corwen’s storage.
“Found a few Basic-rank items you kids might be interested in,” Uncle Falcon says. “Nothing special, but every bonus helps, and you don’t have much gear yet.”
“Late Winter Festival presents,” Rowan says with a smile, fitting the a helm of +1 Perception on his head. “A little loose. I’ll need to add some padding.”
“Beats being too tight,” Basalt says, trying to tug the boots of +1 Endurance onto his large dwarven feet. “I’m not so sure about these. Shouldn’t magic items resize themselves to fit you?”
“Dahlia can probably adjust them for you,” Uncle Falcon says, and turns to Jade. “How are the gloves?”
“A little loose, too, but the +1 Dexterity makes up for it,” Jade says, flexing her fingers. “Thanks!”
“Hey, you kids earned it,” Uncle Falcon says.
The wreckage of the ship itself isn’t in a state that it can reasonably repaired to the point of flying on its own. Right now, it’s just a pile of sigil-covered scrap wood.
We bring back the pieces one by one, starting with the most valuable booty: The aether sails. These are undamaged and can be attached to another skyship later.
As for the rest, we still bring it back so I can study the sigils on them. I have books about skyships, but the actual sigil designs are proprietary, because of course they are. It would cost much more than a silver to purchase workable skyship plans, and I would need to intently study sigils in order to build the program by myself from scratch. Even badly damaged, I should be able to learn a lot from this.
Yes, there isn’t much I can do with this yet. But I have no complaints about hauling a bunch of sigil-covered wood home.
I’d briefly studied sigils out of curiosity, but it’s an incredibly complex field. Essentially, though, they’re just a programming language and every sigil is a word. The word by itself has some basic default effect, like “lift”. But to write a program that denotes when to lift, where, how high, and so forth, you’re going to need a lot more words. This is the fundamental basis of all the magitech we use. And it is completely, tantalizingly out of reach for me until I reach Elite rank.
I understand why the system doesn’t want babies setting anything on fire unless they’re incredibly exceptional. It’s still frustrating. Every time I do something significant, I keep wondering if this will finally be enough.
We may wind up feeding some scrap from the wreckage into the dwarf spawner later in order to summon a dwarf with skyship-related skills, but we’ll be focusing on more basic essentials first.
Once we’ve finished securing all the wreckage over the next two weeks, there’s a party in the village, because why wouldn’t there be? Both the main Hearth and the guest house prepare sweets, dipping into the winter storage. (We are far from danger of starvation.)
As the violet skies turn to indigo in mid-February, I look forward to going for a true free flight that doesn’t involve just a scrap run. At least the back-and-forth gave us all a good feel for flying a skyboat.