faderift | closed / tall tales

After the airship leaves Wysteria's mouth, she keeps talking, while Viktor's expression continues to hold on the one that appeared when she invoked that phrase. It's slowly evolving with the set of his brow, little flicks of his eyes, a sense of building, enforcing patience, waiting for his turn.

"I'm— not sure. We were still working out the rules when I," achieved the aforementioned extra-dimensional nap, "left. You'll have to explain what you mean by sympathetic." But she's left with no room to do so, because here it comes: "A-about the airship, though—"

The airship.

"They're a common form of transportation where I'm from. Aerostats. The Hexgates were designed for them, specifically, all shapes and sizes. So... if you find yourselves in need of insight..."

"Oh!" It's a pleased sort of exclamation; indeed, she is developing a habit of such utterances when in Viktor's company—he has such a fine way of making himself so convenient!

"How fine! Yes, that would be very good of you. Mister Stark and I have discussed the subject at length. And at beam and draft, as it were." Ha ha ha, ship puns. Wysteria slaps the reins at the mule's back as a sort of thoughtless punctuation to the joke, or perhaps out of simple instinct—the animal having begun to lapse back into a slightly more moderate and evidentially unacceptably less jostling pace.

"What a happy coincidence. No! I suppose we might actually use this as an illustration of that very intraphysical principle. That was the focus of my excursion to the dwarven city in the summer. The airship was. I was developing a prototype, which is obviously very secret, of a device designed to power it. I'm very pleased with it as it does something that Thedas mages seem to be entirely unable to accomplish, and I think the Venatori will find it very frustrating. When we return to Kirkwall, we must review it together and compare notes."

Ha ha. Ship puns.

Viktor's lips do actually tighten in amusement. Not a second after it appears, the cart gives them a noteworthy dip and bounce, wrought by a particularly ambitious puddle's crater and exaggerated by the refreshed speed; this promptly resets his focus.

"Absolutely. It would be my pleasure."

Can they turn around, go back and look at it now? Right now? Oh no, they'll say, we were unable to complete our assignment because of reasons. Please accept our deepest apologies. And then they'll huddle around the— whatever it is.

"In the meantime, provided it won't, eh, compromise the secrecy, would you mind describing it? What's this... something... it can do?"

"I wouldn't mind," she says, so promptly as to be entirely promising around the possibility that Viktor's curiosity may very soon be at least partially sated by a highly technical explanation. However—

"However, I only carry enough poison for myself. So if we were to be captured during our excursion, you must promise to me that you will find some alternate means of destroying yourself. Otherwise the Ambassador will be very displeased with me. Posthumously, I suppose. But it's the thought that counts."

She is all smiles as she says this.

She is all smiles, and Viktor is—despite all the time he's spent with Wysteria thus far and the gamut of little surprises that have sprung from her mouth like birds merrily leaving the roost—taken aback. Also faintly birdlike is the way his chin jerks in toward his neck. Not only is he absolutely not going to do that, even hypothetically, it can't possibly be expected of them—she's got to have conjured some funny romantic idea about it, he thinks.

But he wants to hear about the Something, so, easing out of his perturbed look,

"Ah... yes, of course."

If she notices this briefly appalled state of being, she makes no remark on it. But more likely that such looks are simply ordinary to Wysteria. Were she to investigate each time one appeared, there would hardly hours in the day left to accomplish anything else with.

"Very good," she declares, as if this is the answer she expected. "In that case, the prototype in question is a thing that creates wind and the expansion of air to create a sort of constant upward pressure. You can't use force enchantments to keep an airship up, obviously, as eventually you reach a position where there isn't anything substantial to push off of. So we must create something the exploits what is naturally there. Now, some time ago Riftwatch recovered a strange device from Orlais which the Venatori had been using to effect the weather there by generating a constant cold in the region. You of course need no more explanation as to how that would be useful."

Something something the thermodynamics of creating a current of hot and cold air.

"There is still some issue as to the scale of the thing, and obviously now that we have the device to power the concept, everything must now be tested extensively, but— well. I thought it was very clever, in any case."

"Artificial convection... that is clever."

Indeed, no explanation required. As Viktor's thoughts come spinning up his hand stills, poised in pre-gesture, then opens to movement.

"Multiple units positioned around the ship could enable precision control—for an aerostat, anyway. Plenty of room for improvement there. And that would of course depend upon the unit's size, as well as our ability to replicate the technology." His attention snaps from the middle distance of compulsive inspiration back to Wysteria herself. "Do you think it's possible? How much testing have you done so far?"

"Relatively little. But I'm confident in the work, and Mister Stark is supportive of the concept. Riftwatch may not be an entirely persuasive organization on all fronts, but I trust in its ability to persuade rich people to part with their money for novelty. And that's really what a great deal of this comes down to. Funding, I mean. To say nothing of the fact that I've yet to encounter a problem that Mister Stark and I couldn't solve with the correct amount of time and resources. Of which you yourself now are one," has the cheery air of a compliment by way of a joke rather than an insult, obviously.

She flashes Viktor a wide, unladylike grin.

closed / tall tales

performs double necromancy

https://youtu.be/sABdtEaKMYE

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