Date: Sixth of July, 810 PSW

  Location: RAN Destroyer Lea

  Job Arseoth reached out his hands for the square of black silk, but all faded to darkness before he touched it. He woke atop an uncomfortable cot to the sight of a metal ceiling and the gentle rock of wave and the thrum of an engine. Job found this strange, and he did not recall going to sleep, much less falling asleep aboard a ship.

  “The fire-slinger wakes.”

  Job let his eyes slide back shut in relief, “hello Candle.”

  Candle gives a lopsided grin with one fang hanging over her lip. “You gave us quite the scare. A multi-day coma is nothing to screw about with.”

  “How in the nine hells did that happen? I don't know of any undead that can induce comas.”

  “Bone golem, not undead. Some of the same rituals, but not the same result. I don't know the specifics of it.”

  “Never heard of one of those.”

  “Golems are rare, and bone golems rarer still because of their unstable, grisly nature. It managed to hit you with a paralysis effect that shut down your lungs, along with the entire rest of your body, for several minutes. The resultant 'drowning' put you under.”

  “Damn, that's... deadly. I remember hitting the hissing lady with a Web. Did we catch her?

  Candle nods, “Cassandra? She's down in the brig with Blue watching her. Chedal banished her as the penalty for starting a brawl between Adventurers, and Althiem wants to question her given her planned destination. The commander of the ship doesn't want her to start another fight until we dock.”

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  “I know that we're on a ship, but which one? Where are we going?”

  “The Destroyer Lea, headed to Alth in the kingdom of Althiem. I got the tube open and read the message inside. It's going to shake things up a fair bit in that kingdom unless I can politic a solution.”

  “And what about me?”

  “What about you? I'll be tied up in politics for years to come and Blue will happily dive right in to the same. Probably with Cassandra at her side. Blue needs the help in adapting to modern times, and Cassandra needs the help re-adapting to polite public society. You are free to go whichever way you want to.”

  Job sighes, “There's probably going to be a huge effort to dig Gurvurm out of his hole and put an end to him...”

  “If what you said back on the dock is true then I'd wager that every Bahamut worshiper in a thousand miles will be part of that crusade in one form or another. Figure on joining in?”

  Job though back to his choice of black silk of the dragon scale, “nah, I'll pass. I've had enough excitement for a while. I'll meet up with my friends, see how they are doing, and move along from there. Might be Head Archivist Innoch will have something or possibly Miss Thallia. She was working on her thesis on Mevada. Probably done by now, but I wonder what she's up to.”

  “Mevada you say?”

  “Yeah, the City of Mevada on the isle of Bera. Why?”

  “That's what the tube contained. The last Will and Testament of the previous Lord Bera, concerning the cities of Bera and Mevada, the passage of his title, and his three daughters.”

  Job frowns, remembering the desperate fight in the caverns of Mevada, “he was an elf I presume?”

  “Of course he was. Althiem has only had non-elven Lords for the past three hundred or so years.”

  “I think two of those girls are now banshees, and the third might be a ghost.”

  “That complicates things and also simplifies them. Last I checked Althiem does not allow the undead or the immortal to hold a Lordship or inherit one. But if one of them were to be reincarnated...”

  Job shook his head, “I doubt it. Baar Min put the banshees into the afterlife for good, or wherever undead spirits go when re-killed, leaving only the last unaccounted for. Index mentioned something about an 'Arara' but I can't recall what she said.”

  “Arara 'Mya' Bera?”

  “That was the name, yeah.”

  Candle shrugged, “I guess I'll start with this 'Index' before prying into Althiem politics in general.”

  Job stands and stretches feeling his muscles groan in protest and not caring in the slightest. “for now, Lead me up on deck would you? I have a need to taste the salt air and feel the wind on my face.”

  “Yma fod dov. For a brass-blood, you sure do like the sea.”

  “The sea? No, not that. The wind on my face at these speeds is the closest I'll ever get to flight in my lifetime. I wonder if a steam turbine can push a boat through the sky...”

  - - . - - . . . - - -

  + FINIS +

  A/N3 : The End

  The Arisverse will continue to spin, but it's time for Job to become an NPC. I was considering a 'make an airship' arc, but in doing so I ran into a number of (magi)tech jumps that would have to be made. Paralleling real-world development, I'd pretty much have to jump from the early 19th to early to mid 20th century, winding up in either the interwar period or mid WWII tech. Let's look at firearms in Arisverse as an example.

  Aris Cretu (and The Westmarch War) took place in a roughly Renaissance-era level of firearms development. Propellant was limited to crude 'meal' black powder, the firing mechanism was a hot iron or burning piece of 'slow match', barrel material was either brass, iron, or very crude steel, and projectiles were stone or iron. Man-portable firearms were known to be a thing but the high likelihood of one of them blowing up and taking your face off was significant so the bow/crossbow was overwhelmingly preferred. In the absence of specialist Battlemages, the catapult was still a viable siege weapon that traded striking power for safety of operation.

  By the time of Job Arseoth things are a lot different. Propellant is crude 'corned' black powder, heavy on the fouling and handling issues, and is the seriously limiting factor. The common firing mechanism is now the flintlock, with percussion caps in the prototype phase. Good barrels etc. are made out of good steel, with brass being a heavier but slightly cheaper option. Man-portable arms are now possible, with a common hunting arm being a flintlock muzzle-loading rifle. Breach-loading is limited to artillery installations, but the concept is now only an engineering effort away from small arms use. In short, rifles are about at the 1800-1820s level of tech (minus the propellant) and are not the standard military small arm solely because of the propellant issues and the prevalence of mages on the battlefield making Napoleonic-era line-firing suicidal. Artillery is at about an 1890s era of tech, minus firing mechanisms and propellant.

  In short, Arisverse is about one or two inventors ( for IRL firearms, see: Johann Nicolaus von Dreyse and Jean Samuel Pauly) short of going full-bore steampunk and I want that to happen before the next 'generation' of characters takes the stage. Given that y'all picked 'Black Silk - Blood and Iron' the next generation is going full bore steampunk. I'll see you all there!

  In the mean time, please check out the reacent additons to my , as that is wehre I put bits that may one day become stories. Leave a coment on any chapters that you would like to see extended into an actual story!