The shack on the warwagon prep deck had been given to Grimpaw Grindgear by his legionnaire Dinky soon after Grimcrotch was made centurion, so that the engineer could have a place to work on the warband’s ‘special’ projects, such as the barrel bombs they used in the Fields of Ruin campaign. Dinky was no engineer, but he and many others believed he had missed his calling, so he took Grimpaw under his wing to bring many of his ideas to life, rather successfully.
Grimpaw focused and zoomed in with his eyepiece looking into the tiny square tube where he was attempting to solder a wire connection, but every time he reached in as far as he could, the wire slipped off from his fat claws bumping it. ‘Bah! I can’t get this, my paws are so big they won’t fit in here to do anything. Poppler, come solder this for me, will you?
Poppler Swizzlestix, an asura engineer who Grimpaw had met some months before, turned from his project on the table in front of him and set down his tool, then went toward the charr engineer, saying ‘You know, charr shouldn’t be educated like this. If they had stayed the big brutes they are instead of trying to learn, life would be much easier for you.’
Grimpaw handed him the tube with a sneer and raised eyebrow, saying ‘And if I didn’t need your little fingers for my projects, I’d eat you like a chicken leg.’ Poppler looked at Grimpaw nervously, gulping back the thought of becoming a snack for a charr and loosened his collar. ‘Yes, well. Hand it to me, I’ll take care of it for you.’
Thirty seconds later the wire was soldered on and the connection went live. ‘Thank you, Poppler.’ Grimpaw said smiling, patting him on the shoulder. The asura nodded and went back to his own work.
Poppler Swizzlestix, Asura engineer and Grimpaw Grindgear’s friend
Grimpaw met Poppler out on the Diessa Plateau, where the Asura was testing an electric chain gun he had developed. If working correctly, it was supposed to bind its target in chains, preventing their escape. There was already one on the market but it could be countered by some spells; Poppler was working on one that couldn’t be countered by anything, for the soldiers in the Mist War. But something wasn’t right, it was no better than the one already out.
The charr engineer was catching chickens to eat outside the town of Nagling when he found the asura engineer about to be overtaken by Ascalonian spirits near there while testing his gun. The charr dropped several turrets to hold them off as he helped move the little Poppler into town out of danger. Grimpaw asked what he was doing there and was told; the two gadget wizards became friends right then and there.
Afterwards Grimpaw brought Poppler and his gun to the warwagon prep deck shack to work on it, but after a couple of months of tweaking between the two they couldn’t get much further on it. That was about the time Legionnaire Dinky burst through the shack door while they worked, spouting off about an idea he had during a dream. He explained it to the engineers as best he could, they got the general idea, and set to work.
A few days later the two engineers rolled out the finished project, an oversized barrel. When Dinky arrived to see it, he stopped and said ‘What is that. It’s a barrel.’ Grimpaw explained that all of the excessive outer shell with iron and guages the legionnaire had described wasn’t needed, that the same and in fact a more powerful effect could be gotten from the simple wooden barrel he was looking at.
‘Got rid of the unneeded guages, what good will those do when they are blown to pieces? Instead of trying to make a complex bomb, simpler is better and in this case more effective.’ Grimpaw told his legionnaire. ‘ And making it from wood instead of iron makes it not only lighter but cheaper, and easier to mass produce if we ever need.’
Dinky examined it with left arm crossing his chest, right one propped on left tugging at his chin hair, while they described its inner workings. When they finished, Dinky looked over at them and said, ‘Good job soldier, and to you Poppler as well. Alright let’s see what this baby can do, shall we?’. They tested it on Flame Legion in Ashford Plain with expected results; a month later the Fields of Ruin campaign more than proved its worth.
——
Since they had met the two were always working on a suit of armor Grimpaw had begun long before. It sat on a shelf, a pile of iron intermeshed with leather. The charr had ideas of what he wanted to do, but being so large it was hard for him to do some things in small spaces on it, like wiring, tiny screws, basically anything that couldn’t be pounded into submission.
Grimpaw had some tools he used specifically for small things, but they couldn’t always be used for one reason or another on it, so he eventually drifted off to other things. When Poppler first saw it he examined the suit for a few moments, asked the charr what exactly he wanted to do, then the asura said he had to return to his college and would be back shortly.
Over the course of several months, when he got time Poppler would disappear to his college, then sit in the shack working on the armor, day and night. After a particularly long stretch of hours he set the armor down and went to the shack’s door to call Grimpaw in. The charr went in and took a look holding it up, strange unlit light panels of different shapes in strategic places were there that it didn’t have before.
‘Try it on, Grimpaw.’ Poppler said. The engineer began to slip into his iron and leather concoction, noting for all the additions the asura made the gear felt no heavier than before.
‘The eyepiece here can give you extra focus and zooms in on anything, from close up to far away, and gives you the exact distance to the target you focus on. It also shows your retina color, which on you is your, well, strange red. The boots have flexible steel bars in them, giving you more endurance.’
Grimpaw Grindgear in the Asura/Charr engineer collaboration, the CAT suit
‘The large light on your right forearm gyroscopically balances your rifle and pistol shots; in other words, it will be as if you are using a tree crotch to steady them, even when you fire while running. And the right shoulder pegs create a magnetic field that absorbs the rifle kickback.’
‘But none of this works if you don’t turn it on.’
The asura hopped down from his stool, stepped over to Grimpaw and pressed a small button on his chest. The armor lit up in various places as Poppler walked around him, then jumped up and hit his back once. The pack on the charr’s back lit up. ‘Had to bang that one into life, sorry. Looks good. Just have to make it solid enough for combat and you’ll be all set.’
Grimpaw kept stretching around in the armor, getting it to fit where he needed, though it was already snug yet not tight; very nice. And light for medium armor. Asura technology. ‘I don’t know what to say, Poppler. I have had this collecting dust for two years because I couldn’t think of anything more I could do with my fat paws. Thank you my friend. Anything you want for it, you name it.’
‘Just don’t die in it, Grimpaw, you’ll make me look bad. I have the Coaxial Amplitude Thermistor suit, or CAT suit, entered for the Snaff Prize. Normally particle beams are used for weapons, the Snaff Prize comes into the picture because I figured out how to use them as the shield that runs through your armor.’
The charr’s jaw dropped a little and eyebrows raised at the last part, then Grimpaw put his paws on hips and grinned, saying ‘Not a problem, little guy. No problem at all.’
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