NationStates Jolt Archive


Largely Boring Things...

Tnechat
27-08-2004, 15:27
The Move of Tnechat

The queen looked out from her balcony with a smile, breathing in the clean air with a smile on her lips. This was another new gift from the star-gods that she’d been given, a replacement for her old palace. When they’d moved. She reflected once again on the move, they’d only completed it a few months ago; she still couldn’t quite believe it. They’d been preparing for years of course; for they’d been told long ago that it would happen seven years in advance. She didn’t quite understand the science of it, but a ship of the Star-gods, one that sailed between worlds, or so she had been told, had been the first to discover this world, uninhabited.

The world was entirely theirs, or so they had been told at least, though they had only been sent to a relatively small part of it. The lands they’d taken so far were very fertile, more so than the lands they had occupied before, and the Tnechati had discovered many strange beasts upon the land, most numerous and useful the rhynadon, a large beast with the build of a rhinoceros, and a furry mane upon its back. Four muscular legs propelled it and the beast sported a long, fleshy tail. They were rather good to eat actually, the tail meat being especially good. Another creature that had come as a great surprise was the “Kakaru,” a flying creature that was reminiscent of a pterodactyl, perhaps even a small dragon, though mercifully they were not as fearsome as that comparison would suggest, and rare.

This wasn’t to say that they hadn’t brought their own animals and plants to their new home, for from her balcony Aceratzu could see several riders on horseback going this way and that around the city that was growing in the bay. They’d started building that quickly too. It had been an ideal opportunity to have it designed to a simple but effective grid plan, which was precisely what they did. The new city had sanitation tat was vastly superior to anything that had been in existence before, at the prompting of Arshaw Miriel, the representative of the star-gods who had visited them most often, she was of a type of elf, or so the Tnechati thought, called the necrontyr, tall and graceful, blue tinted skin – much the same as that of some humans (and of other elves) was a subtle pink colour due to their red blood, necrontyr blue blood made their skin a blue grey colour. Such subtle promptings were wise, if unclear in the reason for their wisdom, for full understanding of the need for such sanitation was quite beyond the Tnechati so far, but eventually they would learn.

A Mind of Metal, and Wheels

And so, days later, she was especially delighted in seeing a new invention that had been devised by much cunning and interest. An inventor known as Erantu had devised a machine that propelled itself. He’d been inspired by certain foreign contraptions he’d seen recently. This thing was made of wood and iron. Burning coal propelled it and using that burning to heat water to steam, and drive something called a steam-engine – another entirely new innovation – which drove wheels, and made the entire contraption move on a set of iron rails. This had proved to be a most interesting device. At this news, Arshaw had simply smiled…
The Ctan
19-09-2004, 18:23
((Damned disobedient machine won't log me out!))

Aceratzu felt the wind in her hair as she rode with a smile of almost carefree joy, leaning into the wind a little as her horse – Marangen, a loyal white horse, of a powerful breed, from the south, or rather what used to be the south. It was up north now – carried her up the hill. This part of the coast was quite far from the city, and her guards (from a cavalry unit of some description) managed to keep a discrete distance from her. There it was, in all its beauty, the ocean.

Looking out with her usual curiosity and love over the endless carpet of blue waves – gentler here than in the old country, due to the lessened gravitational pull of the Tnechati world’s primary moon – she saw something rather unusual. It was a ship, moving without sails. A brief moment of thought brought to mind that this was odd – the wind was blowing directly against it. Taking an ornate spyglass from her picket the queen pulled the telescoping cylinder of brass and silver filigree open and looked out across the sea through it.

The telescoped view showed it in much greater detail. While smaller than the (few) warships the Tnechati maintained, which were proportionately smaller than the colossal Menelmacari ships she had been privileged to see in her lifetime it was still of a moderate size. Perhaps it was a fishing ship – yes, what was definitely what it appeared to be. It did indeed still sport a pair of masts from which to mount sails, but that wasn’t what interested her. There was amidships, a partly metallic partly wooden cylinder, painted a bright red. From the top of the cylinder came smoke.

Putting the telescope down a moment, the queen reflected. It looked like the chimney of a more elaborate version of a steam engine. If that were what it was, she could imagine why someone might want an engine aboard a ship. Using it to drive something like a water wheel in order to move the ship. She looked again for such a construction at the back or the sides, but found nothing. Perhaps below the waterline, something akin to Archimedes’ Screw. Yes, that would work quite effectively. She resolved to look up the inventor of this… steamer… and find out more about it. Folding the telescope inward, she galloped off swiftly on Marengen to the town she thought that ship had been headed to.