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[Zero Ziat]

Actually Fale's son running from home in a raid remembered Scarface(Game, not movie) to me.

[Armok]

As always Beyond Quality!

[AlanL]

Thanks  

I've never played scarface the game, but if it's the same kind of thing as the movie... then again, I only know what I've heard about the movie. *goes to look it up*

[AlanL]

Yep, I do see a few parallels, although the characters involved are on two opposite ends of the spectrum it looks like      

[ November 28, 2007: Message edited by: AlanL ]

[Reign on your Parade]

Quite right Blitikus. You don't need gods, much as they want you to think that,

[Armok]

Absolutely amazing!
Beyond Quality!
KA-POWWWWW!

[AlanL]

Thanks  

Getting home and checking up on this thread tends to be one of the better parts of my day  :p

[Armok]

Getting home and checking up on this thread tends to be THE best part of my day.

   

[AlanL]

For me it usually is. Glad I could help  :p

[AlanL]

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Blitukus continued smiling. what had formerly been considered the realm of the divine had been done by a mere mortal... perhaps mortals weren't mere at all. If one kobold could do so much.... what could millions, perhaps billions of them do? The vast civilizations of the future may be beyond the need for gods... because they collectively will be gods. In the spirit of the chaotic nature of the universe... the possibilities were infinite. His smile faded. He was but one kobold standing against vast forces, standing against the odds. His mother also was but one kobold, who stood against vast forces, against the odds... and won. He took in a deep breath, then sighed it out. Civilization had its agenda, and Blitukus realized... what he was doing might cost him his presence among civilization. He was acting against the will of demons and the will of gods... the only reason he still stood was that they were all unaware. He may save his mother... but perhaps he would never be able to return.

If I am stranded, displaced in time, never to return home... it will be an insignificant price to pay. I will still save my mother, and meet my mother again, and that is much more important. My mother had said she was all but destined to die a violent death the day she had confronted the tyrant Gustem... and yet she stood victorious. In her honor and for the sake of our existence, I stand against my own destiny. Even if I am somehow victorious... what happens after... I do not know. Until then, may your memory, mother, give me the strength and luck to be victorious as you once were, those now nearly 35 years ago.

He took in a deep breath, and looked up. For a moment, he felt as though the time machine, the lightning and particles and fields, the unified equation, all of it... was a mere step towards a much larger goal.

Still, I can only hope that my intervention may truly set it all right once again. If only the assassination had never happened....

He let the breath out, then continued down the hall. He went back to his room, and looked through the designs. The machine consisted of 3 main components, the power core, the particle cannon, and the gravity control. The power core was complete and functioned beautifully. The particle cannon could be made fairly straight-forward, since despite using advanced concepts, the basic idea behind manipulating them was simple. The gravity control, on the other hand... he had sketched out the portal, the silver spheres, where to put them.... as the ring of the portal spun up, it should actually levitate, centering on a point of anti-gravity. In many ways it seemed more like magic than technology. It was actually a combination of both. The ring would have to spin ridiculously fast... anything other than adamantine would simply fly apart. Pure adamantine though was simply too light to act as a proper mass. He had intended the ring to be conventional metal at least partially encased in adamantine. He looked at his sketches and designs for the gravity control. Each silver sphere would need 3 stacks of silver bars in total, coil and all. He would need 6 of them... and adding silver wire for wiring them up, a total of 21 stacks of silver bars would be needed. Luckily, he had an enormous amount of galena he had dug from the chamber. The base and parts under the portal would be placed under considerable strain, and must be made of steel. Luckily, it was just a base, and mechanisms with which to secure the ring. 4 stacks of steel bars would be needed. Where it was relevant, wires could already be spaced far enough apart. No glass would be needed. The mechanisms that would link all of the electrical equipment to the console would be stone, otherwise tremendous voltages would be induced in a metal linkage. Luckily, since it was moving small wires rather than huge floodgates, the simple mechanisms needed could be much smaller, allowing sufficient ones to be created from a single stone. The lever on the console would be connected to the switch by cave spider silk threads. It seemed rather ironic that one of the most conceptually advanced parts of the machine would operate using some of the most basic materials and devices. Still, each sphere needed its own linkage; they would have to function independently to steer the portal. Blitukus stopped to drink, then went back to his room, opening his books, and using his new tools, compass working like a pencil using coal dust in a small bowl, began to sketch out a concrete design for the device. This device was simpler and less intensive than the power generator, but had to be more precise at the scales involved. He spend a long time thinking through it, then finding himself exhausted, lay on his bed and let himself fall asleep. He spent part of his dream that day working out the design of the portal, and the rest of the dream was given to his subconscious, finally. His subconscious placed him in a barren, ash filled wasteland, ruined buildings of enormous proportions all around. He stood on a ruined road... all around him was dead, still, and silent. All of a sudden, he felt a sharp, intense pain in his back, and yelled. He jumped away, and looked behind himself. There was the female kobold demon again, grinning sadistically, holding a bloodied dagger up, ready to strike again. Blitukus felt blood running down his back. He backed away, noticing his blood on the ground, then ran. He left a trail of blood behind, and found he was quickly out of breath, unable to properly breathe. The demon chased, slashing at him and laughing, and finally knocking him down. She rolled him onto his back, then stabbed him in the chest and gut multiple times. She then slashed his throat out, stabbed him through the heart, turning the blade in the wound, then drew it back up, blood dripping down from the dagger, grinning with the depths of darkness, and finally sent the dagger plummeting down into Blitukus' forehead. Blitukus woke up from the nightmare, nearly jumping from his bed, feeling his chest and abdomen for wounds and finding none. He fell from his bed, then stood up. He spoke, "Demon! Why do you torture me in my dreams? I swear upon existence itself that should you break our contract you will never feed upon another soul again!" He sensed no great force of evil was present or had been present recently.

Then why, my subconscious, do you play such cruel games with my conscious?

He sensed his subconscious had not intended to be cruel at all. It was a conventional nightmare... but why did it happen? Blitukus sighed.

I will NEVER allow the demon to take my life, for if she does, it will mean my mothers soul would be next. No force will stop me from preventing that.

He tried to put it behind him, and continued his design work. In total, he spent a while transferring his thoughts and sketches to a concrete plan, but eventually formed one. The ring would be adamantine on the outer layer, bronze in the middle, and magnetite in the inner layer, allowing the magnetic field of the adamantine coil around it to spin it up. It would rest on an adamantine roller set-up, set on a steel base. The silver spheres would be placed slightly lopsided to compensate for the beam from the particle cannon, and would be linked to the console via buttons rather than levers for the sake of better reaction time. He had his designs, now he needed to put it together. The total requirements would be 21 stacks of silver bars, 4 stacks of steel bars, 2 stacks of bronze bars, a set of stone mechanisms, a set of magnetite blocks, and a few stacks of adamantine wafers bent into various shapes. First, he started with the silver, bringing the galena back from the chamber, smelting it into lead and silver. He stopped for a drink, then continued, finding the shorter hauling distances made it a much more efficient and rapid task. After pouring the last of the bars, he forged the silver into silver spheres, in essence a hollow silver ball with a dense coil leading up to it, held up by a nonconductive material. Stone sufficed. When he finished forging them, he brought them to the chamber and placed them one by one. Next was the steel... only 4 stacks of bars were needed. First, he needed the coal and hematite for it. He walked down to the depths of the tunnel, proceeding to dig out the needed 4 lumps of hematite, then the needed 2 lumps of coal. He found he had exhausted that branch of the hematite vein, and proceeded further down the tunnel to dig out the rest. Coal though seemed still in ample supply... maybe the glacier had once been a thriving, life-filled continent, then over the millenia since those days drifted to the poles? First, he brought the coal back and refined it into coke. Then, he smelted 2 large lumps of hematite down into iron, dumping the slag out and letting the molten metal sit. He had limestone left over from digging out the cavern. He used it along with coke to turn the iron into pig iron. Leaving the pig iron molten, he walked back down the tunnels to retrieve more hematite... but found he was fresh out of limestone. He had dug some out but it apparantly wasn't much. He stopped to drink, then continued with his work, digging out limestone. He was further down the river, as he had already dug out a lot of limestone. After he was done with that, he proceeded to dwindle the carbon content of the pig iron down until it was suitable steel. Finishing that, he stopped to eat. As he ate, he reflected on his efforts, and realized an interesting effect. Although the mountain contained enough material for a lifetime of projects, for each bit of ore he dug out, he had to go further to reach the next. As material was exhausted, it became ever harder to efficiently extract and use, despite still being present. Luckily, this should be the last large undertaking he would do on his own... unluckily, it might cause problems for an evolving civilization. He put the notion aside, and continued working, smelting the needed bronze. To finish, he gathered a stone, chiseled it to the needed mechanisms, gathered magnetite, chiseled it down to the needed blocks, then wove a cave spider web into silk cloth. Having finished making the needed materials, he moved them into the chamber. Then, he stood in the middle, and surveyed the chamber for what he would have to put where.

 :p

[ November 29, 2007: Message edited by: AlanL ]

[Reign on your Parade]

This makes what... 3 first posts in a row? We is teh roxors.

So, I've decided that a worthy parade would exhaust the resources of the entire universe. I better start conquering the next on over.

[Armok]

You are simply awesome, Beyond Quality!

These construction descriptions are truly unique and one of the things that takes this story above all others, every book has fights and characters and tragedies, but I don't thing I have ever read this kind of construction anywhere else, you can claim down and relax but it is still interesting and exiting, even more so than the ordinary fights actually.

Great job!

[AlanL]

Thanks all  

[AlanL]

I've noticed now that all of my story posts tend to be double posts now  :p
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Blitukus breathed deeply, and pushed the levers forward, allowing the channels to once more fill with magma and water. The now sealed boilers began to pressurize. Blitukus opened the valves to the pistons, and waited for the dynamos to spin up to speed. He stared at the portal, breathing slowly, deep in thought.

My mother, I have performed a miracle and in a moment I shall perform another, all in the name of reaching you once again. May all components in unison allow me to perform another miracle, eventually... the miracle of your death being undone. It is a miracle that many would pray for... I do not pray, I build.

The lightning bolt could be produced with no special concepts... but the portal itself would show for the first time Blitukus' understanding of true unity, the binding between electromagnetism and gravity. He tilted his head down slightly, and gazed at the portal. He pulled back the lever, connecting the inductors of the adamantine coil back to the dynamos. Sparks shot out from the connector, and the ring jumped slightly, slowly rotating. Blitukus pulled the lever linking the adamantine coil to itself, allowing current to freely circulate within... the only thing keeping the current from skyrocketing being the drain of spinning the ring. The ring started rotating slowly, but began to rotate faster, slowly accelerating. As it sped up, Blitukus noticed the current meter rising. Its slow rotation became a faster rotation, and kept accelerating, becoming a rather swift rotation. It kept accelerating until eventually the details on the ring became a blur. The dynamos were pumping their full output into the portal, but since they were physically separate from the adamantine coil, they were not damaged by the ever escalating energies at work. A buzzing and zapping sound started to emanate from the coils, sparks occasionally jumping across the wires of the coil. The air within the coil began to exhibit strange properties. Sparks occasionally shot out... then as if they were on a rail, curved around the outside of the coil, and sunk back into the coil on the other side, tracing out the lines of magnetism produced in an incandescent blue. The outer edge of the ring began to take on a dull red glow, the ring spinning so fast its details left trails on Blitukus' vision. Blitukus felt that the entire room, including himself, was becoming charged, the magnetic fields emanated from the coils reaching out and embracing every object in the room. He felt himself slightly pulled toward the portal, the strands of his fur standing on end. He sensed the electric attraction between his fur and the coil... but also sensed a small but growing force of repulsion away from it. The inside of the coil began to glow blue, and the repulsive force intensified. Blitukus raised his head slowly, and took in a deep breath as he watched. The ring began to shift... then levitated off from the rollers, hovering within the coil. Lines of magnetic force throughout the room carried sparks, energy circulating through the air. The air seemed to change... the coil glowed as if it had surrounded itself with an aurora, then suddenly, the blue glow intensified to a bright sky-blue light. The intense magnetic fields within the coil had torn the electrons from their parent particles within the air, then cast the electrons away. A sky-blue plasma circulated within the coil, contained by magnetic fields. The zapping sound had died away, replaced by a forceful but steady hum. The ring, barely visible enveloped in plasma, was spinning so fast it all seemed uniform. Blitukus walked towards the portal, and was repulsed by a force exponentially increasing as he approached. This force was gravity, produced purely through energy, no large masses needed. His equations were true... he had produced anti-gravity, the force which would aim his portal as well as force it open. Blitukus felt his movement seriously impeded as he stood adjacent to the ring, a maelstrom of forces present around it. A small arc jumped from the inner coil and landed on Blitukus' ear. Blitukus looked up, feeling no pain. He smiled and reached up, small, tenuous aurora-like fibers of energy trailing gently from the coil into his fingertips. The current within the coil oscillated at such an enormous rate that although considerable energy passed through him, it did not harm him. He noticed the strands of his fur tugged gently by intense magnetic fields. The magnetic winds of the coil blew his fur around. He then reached for the very center of the anti-gravity field... and found that despite his great strength, he could not achieve close proximity to it. Luckily, when the portal was in true operation, it would be cought within the tunnel through space and wouldn't pose such a problem.

He heard a familiar voice, "That's pretty!... I haven't seen anything like it since the... time travel experiment." Blitukus looked at Dracha and smiled at her. She continued, "You're a most remarkable kobold, Blitukus... it's beautiful!" She smiled back at him. Blitukus stood on his toes, and stuck his tongue out at the top of the coil. An aurora-like arc of energy touched down on his tongue, not even making him move, although it vaporized the spit on the tip of his tongue." Dracha seemed thoroughly impressed, indeed nearly in awe, at what she was witnessing. She laughed lightly and asked, "How does it taste?" Blitukus replied with a smile, "Fairly sour, yet satisfying." Blitukus stepped away from the portal, and went back to his console. One at a time he pressed different buttons, causing the silver spheres to fire. The firing of the spheres shifted the magnetic and gravitational fields throughout the room... and when it was really in operation, they would shift the portal as well. Blitukus noticed, very, very near the center of the anti-gravity field, light itself seemed to bend as if a puny invisible lens were there. In fact, light seemed to be cought up in various fields throughout the room, creating a surreal display of shifting glows. Dracha asked, "So yer makin' a technological portal machine?" Blitukus replied, "I will save my mother by ensuring she was never killed to begin with. I am building a time machine, Dracha." Dracha smiled, "Good luck, your technology is a fresh take on the idea and maybe it'll succeed where the ancients failed! Just be careful before you know for sure... I don't know about you but seein' you scattered all over the floor isn't exactly my idea of a good day!" Blitukus responded, "Do not worry yourself. You mentioned the ancients had problems with their solutions being too slow... technology can speed things up." Blitukus finished testing the second component, then cut off power to it. The aurora-like arcs permeating the room faded, and vanished. Next, the plasma within the coil faded then disappeared as puffs of gas. With a clank, the ring set back down on the adamantine rollers, and began gradually slowing to a stop. As the ring slowed, the humming faded. All of the forces had faded away, and the room seemed cold and solid once again. Blitukus shut down the dynamos, vented the steam from the boilers, then drained the channels. Dracha commented, "I've seen people live and die, I know what it's like to lose a loved one, to wish they were back again... unlike everyone else, you're not giving up on that wish or just tryin' to make it come true... yer really doin' it! This is truly unique!" Blitukus laughed, "Thank you!" Dracha continued, "Apart from this, the reason I showed up is to let you know I keep hearing this scratching out in the cosmos as if something from either heaven or hell is trying to break through. I'm not sure but it's not centered around us... prob'ly the gods picking fights with demons. Every now and then the demons try to punch through but it never works." Blitukus nodded, "I am glad to hear that something other than noise is out there... even though it has nothing to do with me, it does help keep my hopes alive. Dracha, the last piece of my machine requires extraordinary materials on the scale of adamantine but with different properties. Are such non-adamantine materials present within this mountain?" Dracha replied, "Not that I know of, but a trick the ancients used to use is giving normal materials strange properties by melting it, mixing adamantine powder into it, then letting it resolidify. Adamantine can change the properties of other materials too." Blitukus nodded, "Yes, I will keep that in mind. I must continue my work. Sorry that I have to cut our time together short so much but this is something that I must do." Dracha replied, "I understand. There will be plenty of time to hang around and have fun after you're done, and, heh, being 3000 years old, I'm about the most patient person you'll meet." Blitukus smiled, and nodded, "Thank you again." She replied, "No problem at all, friend!" They waved at eachother, then parted, Blitukus walking back to his room. He heard the thudding of Dracha walking through the tunnels, leaving through the chasm. To her, the chasm was a convenient route between her home and his home, although it was merely a hazard to Blitukus. He looked through his books... channeling the energy and particles was a combination of electromagnetism and optics. He flipped through the book "Glass Optics" and his materials index... most transparent materials had an index of refraction, describing the degree to which it bent light. These numbers varied, from nearly zero to in some cases fairly large. The indexes of gems and glass and liquids were listed... and a plethora of different properties were available. What Blitukus needed to eliminate improper energies from the stream was a material that bent standard energies in the opposite direction... a material with a refractive index less than zero. Such a negative index was never mentioned as being possible, although the books did break up the properties of the waves into electromagnetic details, mentioning permittivity and permeability of different materials... when both were positive, light could pass through an object, when their signs opposed, an object was opaque. But, if both were somehow negative... the product would be positive, and it would be transparent, but relevant properties would be inverted... perhaps including refraction. The books mentioned adamantine, noting "The numbers aren't precise at all because they hardly gave us a scrap to test on." It was determined that the permittivity of adamantine was very heavily negative, and the permeability was close to zero... It had also been determined that the permittivity of opaque elements in blue diamonds was close to zero, and its permeability was very heavily negative... perhaps if the two were mixed, the traits of adamantine would 'rub off' into the blue diamond, causing both to be negative.

Blitukus walked into the work room, and took up his pickaxe. Blue diamond was considered to be one of the rarest gems in the entire world... and this was as good of a time as any to start looking for it. He held his pickaxe, and went down the tunnels, digging exploratory tunnels far into unexplored stone. He found emeralds... a sight that warmed his gnomish blood. Unfortunately, he found himself exhausted, and walked back to his room, allowing himself to sleep after doing some design work regarding the particle cannon. That day, half of his dream was dedicated to refining his designs, but within the other half, he found himself digging... not very far from his home at all. Eventually, seemingly right next to his familiar halls, he broke through to the middle of a giant geode, and found within the treasures of gems unlike anything he had previously seen. He spent the rest of his dream happily dislodging gem after gem, waking up to find himself feeling confident and refreshed. He got up, then stretched. After allowing his body to fully wake, he continued back down the tunnel to his previous exploratory tunnels... the gems he were after were never seen to have formed above the deepest layers of rock. He dug out the cluster of emeralds, then continued, digging out a cluster of sapphires. He dug another exploratory tunnel, digging through veins of coal and ore, and finally striking gems... mere red spinel. Further along he found turquoises... the right color but the wrong gem. He found aquamarines mixed with the turquoises. He had previously exposed aquamarines, chrysoberyl, rock crystal, rubies... but no blue diamonds, no diamonds at all. It was known that blue diamonds have only been found on very rare occasions, mixed in with highly valuable gem clusters. A dwarven nation had once held a large blue diamond as a national symbol of wealth... unfortunately, it was lost in a cave-in after the capital fell to demons, as legend had it. He kept digging, more red spinel. He breached through to the magma flow once more, finding aquamarine gems embedded in the wall of the flow. He had dug tunnels, searching far and wide, finding gems that would make him very wealthy had that been his intent, but he cared nothing for wealth, what he wanted was far more valuable than any amount of wealth and getting it required a gem that despite his efforts he hadn't unearthed any of. Frustrated, he left his exploratory tunnels, and walked up his main tunnels... but as he passed between the mined out veins, he had a sudden feeling that he should dig an exploratory tunnel there, between the magma and the chasm. He began digging, and only 3 spaces in, found himself in sheer disbelief at what he saw... he dug all around it, then hugged the beautiful, glistening cluster, looking just like the inside of the geode in his dream.

He shed tears due to the sheer beauty of the gems, and the relief they brought him. He embraced the cluster, the tips of the gems gently poking him. He stepped back, and smiled. Those 5 years ago when he had first arrived, he had virtually no experience with digging at all... and now his skill with the pick was the stuff of legends. He dug through the cluster, his skill allowing him to preserve the large gems... but unfortunately, diamond was a very delicate gem. The very last cluster had the large gem within shattered as Blitukus broke through it. This brought his feelings of relief back down slightly, but not much. He had 3 large gems to work with, and only needed 1 lens. Such clusters of pure, rare gems were entirely unheard of. It served Armok no purpose to put them there, either. They existed there not by the will of the gods, but by pure, chaotic chance. Blitukus smiled. Such was the nature of the universe. Blitukus brought the gems back to his workshop, cutting them into lenses as precise as he could manage, following the specifications he had outlined in his design. When he had finished cutting the diamonds, he thought about how he would apply the adamantine onto them... he couldn't melt the diamond, for it burned before it melted... the temperatures needed to melt adamantine were too high even for a magma furnace. He thought about using the amulet, and attempting to use magic to melt it... but he would need an enormous amount of energy to do so, and it would kill him to absorb that much. Then, a thought occurred to him. He didn't need to melt either of them. It would still be effective if only the surface of the lens had these special properties... and perhaps by heating adamantine, he could fuse it to the surface of the lens. He took some adamantine strands and, using large weights and a smooth corner, bit by bit wore the strands down into a powder. He then heated the powder in the magma smelter until it glew the color of the magma. It did not melt, though. Blitukus took one of his three beautiful gem lenses, and set it down. He sprinkled some of the superheated adamantine onto it, and the surface of the gem promptly began to combust. Blitukus quickly put it out... but much to his dismay, he had ruined the gem. Some of the surface was blackened, and if it were to be used, it would cause the particle cannon to ruin itself. He grunted and growled slightly in frustration and set the ruined lens aside. The adamantine was much too hot. He let it cool for a bit, its glow diminishing, then proceeded to apply it to the surface of the second lens. For a moment, the surface turned unnaturally transparent, exhibiting the strangest of properties... but Blitukus only got a glimpse of it. It then took on a dull sky-blue as the properties of pure adamantine took over. He had used too much. He sighed, and then set that aside... the adamantine was cooling further, and he was down to the last one, his last chance. He carefully applied the adamantine to the surface in an even coat... the adamantine bonded to the chemical structure of the diamond, and the properties were balanced. Gradually, the diamond lens turned from a dark blue to a sky-blue, far more transparent than had been previously seen. Blitukus looked into it... it seemed as if he gazed into an infinite number of semi-transparent mirrors positioned one over another, rather than a lens. Indeed, it seemed every familiar property was inverted when viewed through the lens. Blitukus held it up. Light behaved in such exotic manners that it produced a surreal sight from any mundane object. Blitukus held it up to his eye, and looked into it. He had produced the exotic materials he needed. Everything seemed contrary to the familiar through the lens. Even ones perception of space and time were inverted by the lens. Indeed... he felt the longer he gazed through it, the further he gazed back through time.

[Reign on your Parade]

AWESOME!
This is as awesome as winning the lottery... twice
As awesome as having the IRS call to say THEY owe YOU 50000 dollars.