The Smokeless Robe
"And in here, Sir, is my conflagration laboratory," Knobble said,
genuflecting again in the presence of the new high speaker of knowledge.
Knobble had a reputation for loud bangs and bad smells wafting out of his
laboratory. He was being very reverential as he was well aware that the new
High Speaker was a bit conservative. The new High Speaker had criticised
several of the sages for the excessive recording of facts instead of
remembering them. Even worse, as far as Knobble was concerned, he looked
down his nose at empiricism. As far as the High Speaker was concerned, there
wasn't enough sagacity in the traditional sense. He was a great believer in
the idea that if you thought about Orlanthi lore long enough you could
discover anything you needed to know. If it wasn't covered by the Law, then
why bother with it?
Both the High Speaker and Knobble were fairly sure that Orlanthi lore (or Law) said nothing about studying those things usually practised by Dwarfs. Knobble's work had been popular but underground during the occupation as he'd been attempting to make weapons of mass destruction. However, since the Lunars had been booted out, there was less political will to let him blow his hands off every couple of months trying. As the High Speaker walked slowly and gingerly into the laboratory Knobble uttered a prayer to the Lightbringer with the Grey Beard to enlighten the man in front of him.
The High Speaker tried to relax Knobble, try to get him to see the error of his ways. "This is it then?" He surveyed the mass of strange appliances, some even made of glass, and he couldn't make sense of any it. "Bit different to standing in front of your peers on a Law rock speaking to the tribe," he observed.
"And thank Orlanth for that," Knobble muttered under his breath. The couple
of times he'd been forced to stand on a Law rock he'd been ravished by some
wandering disease spirit looking for someone with a weak constitution.
"Sorry, did you say something?" the High Speaker said, still surveying the
equipment. His accountants eyes noticed something made out of a tinny,
silvery metal. It was dumped under one of the benches in the lab, clamps on
the side looking like small hands. He suspected it was of Dwarf manufacture.
It must have cost a pretty penny to send a raiding party to beat that out of
some tunnel dwellers.
Knobble didn't bother follow the old man's gaze. The old skin flint was probably selling the equipment and installing new law rocks in his mind. He just replied: "Nothing, Sir. Would you like me to explain what everything does in here?"
"Hell below! We haven't got all day," The High Speaker explained. He wanted
to see enough to convince himself that Knobble was so off the wall he needed
to be forced into using his time more productively. He had suspicions that
it had been people like Knobble that had become the God Learners. Always
taking things apart and fiddling. Essentially he wanted to give Knobble just
enough rope to hang himself. "Just show me how this blasting powder of yours
works and how you make it."
Knobble's eye's gleamed and he looked excited at this chance to shine in front of the one man who could allow him to continue his work. He stretched his fingers out, cracking his knuckles like a Pelorian virginals player about to rattle the ivories and marched purposefully over to one of the benches.
Originally, Knobble had bought a sample of black powder off an Adventurer. This Adventurer had obtained it, quite literally, over an Iron Dwarf's dead body. Knobble had used a variety of techniques to analyse the powder, and had quickly realised it was a mixture of three other things. Admittedly it had been no easy analysis: His stomach had been a bit dicey for a few weeks after the taste test and the hairs in his nose had still not grown back after smelling the combustion products. Two of the three substances were relatively easy to obtain: Sulphur was used by various darkness religions in their rituals and while not cheap, you could easily obtain it and Charcoal was as cheap as trees if Elves didn't stick their oars in it's production. The third thing he had never seen before, nor had anyone else that practised alchemy around Sartar and the Holy Country.
He'd discovered the final component after many a divinations and experiments. Finally, by luck, he'd found that by pouring earth acids over a certain type of rock he could extract a solution of the last component. As soon as he had the solution it was a simple process to boil off the liquid. He called it Knobble's Salt, hoping to preserve his name in it forever. After all, he felt he deserved it: Ever since word got around about his research, he'd had to take special precautions to keep Nilmergs from sniffing out his lab and twice Dwarf hired mercenaries had tried to kill him.
The High Speaker followed Knobble over to the bench. Knobble opened three copper jars of fine ground powder. "These are the three components, a Sulphur, Charcoal and an extract of an earth." He tipped a fair sized amount of the earth extract into the beaker, fetched a steaming kettle and tipped a small amount of water onto the powder to wet it. After he replaced the kettle Knobble poured, measuring by eye equal amounts of the Sulphur and Charcoal. He grabbed a wooden spoon and began stirring.
The final mixture was a black mush. Knobble poured it out onto a blackened bronze plate. "Now," he explained, "We have to dry the mixture. Er, this can be a bit hazardous, so I usually leave the room." He walked to the corner of the room where a large barrel sat. He opened it, pulled out a scoop filled with a dry black powder, bringing it back to the bench.
"This is the dried product. All I have to do is touch a naked flame to the
powder and it will explode." With that, he picked up a tallow candle and lit
it from the fire. "Would you like to set it off?" he asked the High Speaker.
"No, please, you do it," the High Speaker replied, not really wanting to be
anywhere near the stuff. He'd never seen a Dwarf's weaponry but the mere
rumours he'd heard about them gave him the willies.
Knobble shrugged. "As you wish," he said, touching the flame to the powder. Nothing happened apart from a small spiral of white, acrid, smoke wafting up from the black mess and a nasty, sulphurous smell. "Shit," Knobble sighed.
"Impressive!" The High Speaker said, trying to keep sarcasm out of his
voice, fanning his hand to try and waft the stench away. The High Speaker
wandered over to a bench and sat down. "Now Alf," he continued, using the
Knobble's first name, trying to sound sagacious and fatherly but only
managing patronising and grating, "I think we should discuss exactly how
you're going to spend your time from now on."
Knobble was crushed. He saw the rest of his days in the market square doing cheap divinations and magic analyses for traders and punters. Either that or he'd be put in charge of memorising large chunks of the library, to get knowledge back where the High Speaker wanted it, between the ears of his sages. As he thought this he noticed that the High Speaker was wriggling a bit uncomfortably on the bench.
The High Speaker stood and touched his seat. "Careless, spilling something there," he admonished. "Have you any idea how much these clothes cost? They're Elf grown flax for Orlanth's sake!"
Knobble glanced at the shelf behind the bench and noticed that a jar of mineral acid was on its side. He thanked Orlanth he wasn't under that when it fell over. He wondered briefly how it had happened as he was usually paranoid about spillage. Oh well, he thought, the High Speaker's robe'll save me having to mop that lot up. He thought it was probably an inappropriate time to tell the him that after a soaking in acid most clothes tended to fall to pieces when washed. He had an evil grin to himself when he realised that the acid would probably give the High Speaker a nasty rash as well - he could be a pain in the arse one last time at least. The High Speaker went to the fire to dry out, sticking his arse out towards the flames. His bum looked soaked, a huge area of his flax cloak and robe had sucked up the acid like a sponge.
"The sooner we get you out of here the better," the High Speaker began. He
never finished. The back of his cloak and robe detonated with an almighty
bang, throwing him across the room, his arse ablaze. He was killed
instantly. Knobble had an instant to giggle insanely with the thought that
he was free of the man who'd tried to end his life's work until he saw the
barrel in the corner of the room smouldering. The barrel blew apart and this
secondary explosion tore the lab, it's occupants and a fair chunk of the
surrounding temple to pieces.
The local Ky Tora Tek High Priestess couldn't work out which bit of body belonged to whom. She also found some weird looking toothed and coiled pieces of metal in the rubble. She didn't mention them to anyone as they were probably something those weird sages had been playing with. Best left alone.
In the end she gave up trying to sort the body parts and just shared them out between the graves.
Two figures met far underground. No human eyes could have seen the exchange, even if there'd been one there to look as it was pitch dark.
"Has the remote returned?" the first asked.
"No," the second replied, "It was destroyed in the blast."
"Blast? There shouldn't have been a big enough blast to damage the remote.
It should have been a small, localised explosion to kill the meddling
human."
"No Sir. All we can conclude is that the human was finally successful and
managed to complete a large quantity of black powder which was set off by
the first explosion. It destroyed a large part of the Human's temple."
In the dark, the first speaker raised an eyebrow in surprise. "This could be embarrassing, if not dangerous," he mused.
"How so exalted Diamond?"
"If the humans are curious they could ask the spirit of the dead sage how he
died. He may have realised what happened and I'd rather they didn't work out
how to make gun cotton."
He sat back. Had he been human he'd have shuddered at the thought of the damage they could cause to the World Machine if they ever worked that out. As he wasn't, he started working out a contingency plan.
"We may have to bring forward our plans a bit. Please fetch me the
department heads of the weapon development working parties."
On the edge of the spirit plane two figures were arguing as they stumbled along, hampering each other. They were tangled up together, their spirit bodies twisted and enmeshed together. It was taking the pair a lot longer to reach the halls of the dead than it would have under normal circumstances.
"Bugger me!" Knobble exclaimed as they reeled along.
The High Speaker laughed evilly. "I can't help it. Had you not tried to kill me we wouldn't be stuck together like this. Anyway, I'm not buggering you, that's my hand you can feel."
They staggered a bit further on the way to the halls of the dead, Knobble cursing the incompetence of the senile old woman that had buried parts of him with the High Speaker and bound their spirits together for eternity.
Knobble's name achieved immortality before his spirit. Every year, Alchemists from Sartar and Holy Country award the Knobble In Pieces Prize to the alchemist that causes the largest explosion.
End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #393
Powered by hypermail