[Bizarre] Gadgets & Gizmos [Julius]

[Hadrian]

34th Winter, 510 A.V. Hadrian ghosted about the Bizarre from merchant to merchant looking for anything that caught his fancy, both objects and people. After all, in a similar place in Zeltiva he had happened upon a rather special book-seller... Alvadas was new and strange, and he was sure he would find something worth his while here. His days had been full of discovery since arriving on the Azure Lady with gold from the Scholars and a healthy sense of caution where illusions were concerned, although he was still set on discovering a new level of reality while here, of understanding the idea of illusion on a deeper level. At the same time, he was happy just to be in and among a new culture, the anthropologist in him stopping and staring at people and events, knick knacks and clothes. Later he would likely take notes in his journal, notes to study on the voyage back to Syliras and beyond. But for now it was simply an experience. He paused in front of a merchant selling odds and ends, his mind returning to lessons in Animation with Jilitse, which required a bit of ingenuity -- which he had -- and gadgeteering knowledge -- which he did not. Despite his lack of skill, he had managed a simple golem, his little butterfly. He had assisted with Hopstop, the "defective" frog golem. But he was determined now to purchase things with which to play while on the ship back to his childhood home. There was no sense in wasting all that time, unless he ended up in recovery from another near bout of overgiving.

[Julius Aldoid]

He was worried that the dust from the floor might ruin his pants. Julius had just washed them, and the various scrubbing had been an ‘all-day thing’. Rubbing his hands together, he almost got the sense that his fingers were still pruney, but had dismissed it to be more mindful of his display.

He had laid out his crafts quite plainly, just resting them upon the ground before him, and he sat in a bunch, eyes peering over his knees. He had enthusiasm before, but two hours without a sale had left him rather bored. Still, enough sense to preoccupy the time by going off and buying a long, narrow stemmed pipe. It was one of the ones he had always admired being used by his distant uncle Shiro, always seen in his mouth as he quite sternly watched as he and Berty and Shimbu would run around town. He hadn't seen him since the incident. Hadn't seen any of his relatives since then. As he blew a gentle stream of violet smoke out from his mouth, he sighed, and remembered his youth.

He then nibbled the nub of his pipe, the lacquered wood clattering against his teeth as he stared down at his wares. They were somewhat crudely made, small but noticeable bubbles marring the finish of the metal. He had to pay to cover the metal he used, but tin had been fairly easy to forge. he used bronze for the gears though, but it had left them heavy, the movements sluggish. He had made a simple wine-up dandy, one Master Maycroft had him commonly make. It was a really simple device- the hard part was getting the metal fine enough so you could make the wind-up spring. It was all a nightmare without a gadgeteering set. It was a shame Mycroft had racked up those debts that he did; Julius would have very much of liked to have his master's gadgeteering set. Or portable forge. Or everything amazing that he did. In the end, it all was sold, and Mycroft now rested with the Queen upon the Black Isle.

"Berty always used to talk of the Queen."

In the end, Julius sat before six little men, there forms very simple, but all obviously held a little hat. He grasped the chest of one and started to turn the key, letting the mainspring tighten. when he released it, his little device clattered, all that motion transmitted though his form, little mechanical feet making it bobble along, the little dandy lifting his hat to all the titans that walked before him. Eventually, the life faded from his little dandy, and Julius was left again to the wordless clamor of the market.

Secret :

expenditures

5gm	-	Kiseru pipe; common finish
5sm	-	bag of tobacco; high grade. 1/4 lb
x	-	y units Tin
x	-	z units Bronze

[Hadrian]

Eventually his wanderings took him to the display of clockwork men, which fascinated his eyes and drew him closer. Pulling his winterbane coat close about his lanky frame, he leaned down for a better look, his brain instantly calculating all manner of mathematics that would go into such a little device. He wanted to take one apart and put it back together again, then fashion a sort of soul for it that it might live. In a manner of speaking. It had been some time since his lessons with Jilitse, and he didn't want to lose what little mastery of the craft of Animation he possessed. When he looked up, he saw the strange pipe-smoking man, and stood up to make conversation. That wasn't the easiest thing to do unless he was talking shop, or having a tangential conversation with another overly educated person. "This is fine work," he said, trying to show admiration without sounding fatuous. Of course, it might be a simple old model to the merchant, but it was certainly beyond Hadrian's simplistic skills with engineering anything that wasn't magical.

[Julius Aldoid]

Julius looked up at the chap whom had his eyes on the dandies, breaking from his own stupor, eyes looking about as though he had been caught stealing. He had to admit, he wasn’t actually expecting someone to come up to him.

“Thank you, they are tougher to make then they look,” Julius rose, and had a small illusion shattered, as he had thought they were the same height, quickly realizing that his eyes only met to the man’s chin. He really wished he had caught his nemesis: the ever-resourceful and feral top-hat.

“Particularly without the right tools. Don’t worry, they are sturdy though. Outside is tin, but the inside is bronze. Don’t get any water in it and it will last you a quite a while. Get some oil, and two quite a whiles. Keep it safe, and you can have a whole pod of whiles, and maybe even a baby while. Hell of a thing to feed though, those whiles,” Julius went on, playing with his words.

“One gold miza and the dandy is yours. The puns were free though.” Julius tapping the ash out of his pipe.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian smiled faintly at the man's fast-talking. He enjoyed a good play on words rather more than most people, especially after all of his schooling. He looked over the dandies again and pulled two golden mizas from his person; though he was no illusionist, he had grown up in and spent most of his time in cities and knew how to keep his money hidden from the odd thief who might be watching. He wasn't sure how much the dandies were worth, but he didn't argue the price, wanting to keep the man happy and talking. "I'll take two if you don't mind parting with them," he said, holding the two coins splayed out in his fingers for the man to take. "One for me and one for me to take apart. I'm a bit of an amateur with such things, but I'd learn a thing or two from taking it apart. Don't worry, I intend to remain an amateur. I won't be any competition, and I will most likely be headed back for Syliras in a week or so."

[Julius Aldoid]

Julius laughed, he having been nonplussed by the man's whole display. 'Two Mizas? Competition?'

"Well, so much for a hard bargain," he snickered, looking down, "Syliras eh? I have a cousin in Syliras. Maybe you seen him? Tall chap, swarthy, answers to the name Bertrand? Last I heard he was a squire in the Knighthood there."

Julius waved away such a thought though. He had lived in Alvadas all his life, and even he didn't know everyone in town. Wasn't fair to thing everyone from a town.

"Listen, those little chaps you have there were hard to make. I'd much rather explain it to you then you bust one of them open. I haven't had a bite in a couple hours, if you wouldn't mine, how about you join me for lunch and I'll tell ya' what I know and where to look for more. How does that sound?"

[Hadrian]

Hadrian merely shook his head when asked if he knew such and such a person from Syliras, as he hadn't spent all that much time there since he was seventeen and ran for the University of Zeltiva with all his might. It seemed like practically everyone was a knight or related to a knight these days, but it didn't seem to bother the gizmo merchant. "Well, ah..." He blinked. "If you'd rather a bite to eat and a discussion about the making of such clockwork men, I'm amenable to that as well. I didn't think the magician would want to reveal his tricks." While he might normally have looked a gift horse in the mouth, he didn't trust his senses overly much in Alvadas so he just decided to go with his gut on this one. "Where to then? When I'm hungry, I tend to just keep the idea of food in the forefront of my mind and let my feet take me there, the way everything is always shifting." Perhaps this one had a secret to navigating the City of Illusions. "I'm Hadrian, by the bye. Hadrian Aelius. Pleased to meet you." He made to shake the man's hand.

[Julius Aldoid]

"Julius Aldoid," the novice tinkerer shaking his new acquaintance's hand, "pleasure to meet ya' Hadrian."

Julius rose from his spot, his legs creaking and popping from stiffness, as he looked about the bizaare, something already in mind.

"I find," his words somewhat distant as his focus was on the food, "that it is mainly hit or miss. So if you try to be clever when you think you are going to miss, you miss anyway because you would have hit. But you have to be clever, because when you have miss before you have thrown, it is the only way to hit."

His attention popped back to Hadrian, just to check he was still following.

"All in all, the best way to get there is to try and go everywhere else and miss."

He smiled, brimming with satisfaction.

"Fortunately," gathering up his Dandies into his backpack, "my favorite food cart is right over there," he pointing to a rather peculiar site.

There was a coat-rack nearby the road. it was wearing a tie and a hat, but otherwise was a coat rack. It was standing beside a flame, embers singeing the feet and coating its lower half with soot. Over the flame, sat a big metal cauldron, with the words "Blue Curry" painted right on the blackened pig iron. The rub was, the cauldron was pointed downward, just hovering in midair over the flame.

"Salutations Merle," Julius blustering over, greeting the coat-rack a good twenty feet from where it stood, "How's the curry today?"

"Don't be fooled," Julius whispered to Hadrian, "Merle is mute. Human as you or maybe half of me. Quite a looker too; careful though, you don't want her catching you looking at her rack."

"Merle, I and my buddy here would like two bowls of your delicious blue curry."

Two bowls were pulled from somewhere behind the coat rack, a ladle following as the wooden structure turned, the tie now facing the cauldron. The ladle turned and dug under the cauldron, a thick liquid, the color of milk if you put it behind blue stained glass was strained into each bowl and handed to the two gentlemen in turn.

"Thanks ever so much Merle. See ya later!"

Julius turned, carrying his bowl.

"Hadrian, pay the dear girl then follow me and we'll get down to business."

[Hadrian]

Alvadas was strange and there was no getting around that, but Julius was more of a local than he was and so he didn't say anything about the coat rack named Merle, nor the blue soup. In his opinion, there wasn't enough blue food to be had, anyway. Blueberries and ... well, nothing else came to mind just then, but he left a coin and followed Julius away again. There wasn't enough time to mull over his philosophy of Alvadan travel, but later he would surely attempt to determine whether it was a workable theory or utter humbug. "Well, that was convenient," he said, "though if this wasn't here, we could always just walk, assuming that we would eventually get someplace... That's a given. There's no such thing as no-place, except theoretically. Even the Void has a sort of spatial geography." He kept a curious eye on the gadgeteer, wondering if he was in tune with the illusions of Alvadas or just a crackpot with a loose noodle.

[Julius Aldoid]

"Ah yes but of course," his looking off, trying to figure out just what Hadrian was talking about, the mentioning of any void having created one his head.

'What the hell is a void,' he thought, a shiver crawling up his spine, his imagination filling in a gap.

Looking about, he spotted two barrels sitting in an alleyway, and so leaned on one, setting his curry down for a moment, after having a heaping spoonful.

"Ther murst imperdrd thughg," his words a mush thanks to the curry in his mouth, which was promptly swallowed, "the most important thing as my teacher once said to me, is understanding one thing: power. Where is it going?" He waved the little clockwork at Hadrian.

"These guys live only when some form of power is taken from one place, and spent in another. In this case, the key."

He spun the little guy around, showing a little L-shaped bar jutting from his back.

"I twist the key with my hand. That key juts into space in a gear."

The metal of the dandy quickly turned translucent, showing a series of gears. the metal glistened with its bronze luster, the teeth of each looking shaking and ill-formed. The key quickly began to turn a blue color, and as he turned the gear it was set in, it turned blue too.

"The motion of this gear winds a mainspring. The mainspring is what allows us to store energy. If want to make other things, then say these dandies, you can alternatively use weights instead of springs. Weights are easier to make, easier to use, but springs can store more energy. Also, I am not quite sure how to work pulleys, but I am sure they work like gears. My old teacher also mentioned something about keeping the energy of a spring even, but I am still having a hard time grasping what he had been talking about."

"Ya see, springs have these little, well it would be best to show you."

The dandy grew in size until it was sitting in Juli's lap, this gear skeleton put on display. In it, it was quite evident that this little spring was a fairly complex thing. A razor-flat piece of metal that was coiled so it almost looked solid. in the center of it, sat a little cam, with the center of the spring feeding to it. this cam branched up to the center of a gear, and the other side of this gear is where the key was set. A little scythe-like arm extended to the side of this gear.

"With springs, you have to have something in place, otherwise energy will feed backwards, and you will never be able to wind your spring. It will untangle from both sides. So that little scythe acts as a catch, preventing the gear from turning backwards. As the energy can’t feed back, it instead pushes and rotates against the gear it is housed in, called a barrel. That is basically how they work. My teacher used to call the system a ‘mortal coil’. It is the soul of the thing, and with it, and the right transmission, you can make anything you want. In this case, it causes his feet to wiggle, making the dapper gentleman about town strut his stuff.”

And it a puff of smoke, there was just a simple, small dandy sitting in his hands.

“See, you didn’t have to break your dandy,” he chimed.