Yes, I missed the bus again.
MOSTALI ARMS DEVELOPMENT Some humans live in the illusion that the races of Mostal are constantly inventing and refining their artificiery and alchemy, creating new and horrible inventions every year or so. They are, of course, wrong.
Other humans lull themselves with the lie that the Mostali are incapable of making anything new and that what they have is what they've always had, since they fear change som much. They are, of course, also deluded.
But who would expect anything else from humans? Short-sighted and short-lived as they are, they have failed to realize the extreme _slowness_ with which the Mostali do _anything_. There is, in fact, an extensive arms development program closely monitored by the Decamony and the various notified bodies of the project, which is part of the general War Machine agenda. The responsibility for this project, nicknamed 'Whetstone U56785+' by the Golds, ultimately rests with the Iron Diamond of the Nidan High Decamonic Council.
The program has been running since before Dawn, and so far it is on schedule - one of the few things which seems to always be on schedule. The other mineralic bodies often gruff about the way the Iron seems to hog the necessary resources for the Reconstruction, but in the end the Decamonic Council always seems to favor the Iron Diamond's actions.
Think of the beauty of it: in just 876^2 Iron work shifts (1) the breechloaded musket will be introduced on a full scale; in 564^2 Quicksilver work shifts will the tear gas grenade be perfected and and become a common part of the gear of the average Dwarven constructive destruction unit.
There are several pieces of wargear currently field-tested; there are also several pieces of incredibly dangerous booby-trapped things made to look like war-gear being paraded about to fool human spies and the may-they-rust Heretics.
Two of them will be described below. Tin programming prevents me from telling which is war-gear in testing and which is just a decoy, unfortuneately.
THE MARK 56 SELF-IGNITING AND SORT OF SELF-LOADING ORGAN GUN (aka 'Iron Man's Alarm Clock', or 'IMAC' for short) This piece of artillery consists of a large wheel made from rock, bound with enchanted iron. Around its circumference are bored ten dwarf-long tubular holes, which serves as pipes. In its midst is a well-oiled horizontal axle, which allows the wheel to rotate. Each pipe has an adamantium ocular hatch in the end, which opens like the pupil of a human eye when the pipe is lowest in its 'orbit' around the nave, and closes when it is at it's highest, almost mostalically(2).
The wheel rests in a cylindrical frame, also made from iron-bound stone. When in use, the wheel rotates, alternately blasting off the guns as they take the topmost position. When at their lowest position, the ball is inserted by special nilmergs clutching little handles along the frame; slightly higher, powder is added; then the short fuse; then the hatch closes completely except for the space made for the fuse, which is lighted by the sparks struck when the hatch closes around it, as the edges of the hatch are clad by flint pieces.
To cool the stone, an aetheric water entity crawls around it in the frame, bound by runes around the edge. Anyone breaking the gun will free this liquid blob, who, as most aetheric entitities, lack any reasoning capacity whatsoever and will mindlessly attack anything around, including the ones who freed it. It cannot remain stable for long close to the heat of the gun, however, so water is constantly added through a earthstuff tube attached to a vent at the bottom of the frame, while steam boils off through a small pipe at the top of it.
This steam can be channeled into a steam-wheel, which powers a cogwheel contraption which allows the organ gun to be moved and aimed, sometimes even while firing. This aiming is done from a small chair attached to the frame and protected from the worst vibrations and shakings by springs and gyroscopes. The gunner is strapped to the chair with a trollskin belt, and snapped down on his head is a visor helmet incorporating a strong cross-haired telescope(3). To help him maneuver the heavy gun (often the force of the steam is not enough) he has a set of pedals linked to the abovementioned cogwheel contraption.
He aims the gun; the loading is performed by eighteen specially-trained nilmergs egged on by a nilmergmaster (4). The gun wheel rotates through the channeled exhaust smoke from the guns theselves. The water for the water entity is pumped by by a jolanti in a standard type 45 bronze water pump from the common complex water system, or a special gigantic ceramic tank when this is not possible. The same jolanti moves the gun when necessary, helped by two bottom-half-jolanti (5), and in one instance a jolanti succeeded in carrying it, using it in a similar manner to a musket, for several heartbeats. Then it, the crew, and the gun was smashed to very small pieces as the jolanti fell over from the recoil and the gun exploded.
The gun fires caliber 4c stone or bronze balls at the speed of an average non-dwarven crossbowman. It uses up enormous amounts of ammunition in a short time(6), which makes it fairly useless abroad in the field, but Mostali forces seldom venture there anyway.
THE MULTI-PURPOSE ALL-AROUND DEFENSE JOLANTI FIELD PIECE (aka 'The Big Gr*wing Gemborg Army Knife' aka 'Biggak')
Light cannon-armed jolanti have occasionally been seen on the field; this is an attempt to develop that concept. Normally, these cannon jolanti was simply cannons with legs and slender arms on top to load themselves with. They had the normal dwarven drawback: They were only suited for one thing, although they did that very well.
The first idea was simply to develop larger versions of the weapons carried by normal dwarven constructive destruction units, and make the normal MRS-MP-jolanti (7) carry them after reprogramming for war. However, after some centuries of pondering, the 'Gemborg Army Knife' approach was adopted instead, and most of the originators of the original concept were recycled.
Named after the multi-purpose tool used by Gemborg Irons, which can be a knife, a smaller knife, a can-opener, an awl, etc, this weapon is a heavy-calibre blunderbuss-sniping musket-flamethrower-bayonet.
The basic design is a large, four-piped blunderbuss, but only the two side pipes are normal blunderbuss pipes. On top, where normally the third pipe would be, is placed a long, straight sniper musket. Below, where the fourth pipe should be, is a bayonet long as a spearstick with a wicked jagged edge. From the bayonet hangs a segmented copper tube carrying a flammable mixture (heavily based on refined earthblood(8)) from the large copper jar hanging at the jolanti's hip to its squirt nozzle.
The jolanti is assisted or, more closely, inhabited by nine nilmergs - - two for each of the three guns and the flame-thrower, and one for general upkeep. The jolanti is guided by a single dwarf perched in its crown-like helmet, since use of such a complex weapon is far beyond the normal programming capacity of most jolanti. One perceived problem is that it is so easy for the enemy to hit the so called 'helmsman'; experiments are currently made on a laboratory scale with carving out a space within the jolanti's chest for the dwarf to sit. This has been tested on hauling jolanti before, with a 54.6 success rate on the Yoggle Scale.
"The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea, in a beautiful pea-green boat..."
>From "The Owl and the Pussycat" by Edward Lear
Erik Sieurin
bv9521_at_bhs.utb.hb.se
Bodagatan 39, 2 tr
50742 Bor=E5s
Sweden
033/141731
End of The Glorantha Digest V5 #633
Powered by hypermail