It had taken some time to convince Vinegar to worry about Byron's intentions, and in the end it wasn't even Eureka's words that did it, which he was quietly miffed about as he followed her up to the lab. She'd repeatedly told him that she fully expected Byron to cut and run within the week, but as time went on she became rather more concerned. What Byron might do neither of them could quite say, but Vinegar was uneasy about harboring someone under false pretenses for so long, and Eureka couldn't fault her.

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Also readable at lorerising WBW #1 post; see comment here.

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Vinegar didn't travel to the Cloudsong much; the clan had few dealings in Wind, particularly now, and she'd never been big on travel for travel's sake. In fact it was only for the clan's sake that she did it now. Lorenz had been in Fang's office nearly every day this week quietly freaking out about his new position and asking just what was he supposed to do with only one other engineer? The place was sure to fall apart! Only with less emphasis, of course.

Fang's attempts to calm him had only made things worse, and he had made several long and technical speeches about flooded maintenance tunnels that neither he nor Ilhadro could safely navigate, and eventually Fang had come to Vinegar and asked her to please find them a third engineer, preferably from Wind to avoid the breathing problem, and preferably as soon as possible. Which was why, while Fang dealt with a flock of uncooperative diplomats, Vinegar was accompanying Sylvester on one of his mercantile trips. She didn't have any particular insight into that process, but she didn't want to make the trip alone.

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They noticed the roc almost immediately. It would have been difficult not to. The creature’s size was not the cause—after its arrival it hardly left its nest—but rather its regular piercing screams, which had everyone in the canyon constantly on edge by the end of the first day.

“Can’t we get rid of it?” Fang said, pacing in the hallway.

“I could cite it for noise pollution if you like,” Eureka said.

The guards were not notably more helpful, much to Fang’s frustration. Darnell’s explanation was that the thing was “flipping enormous” and therefore posed a threat to even all three ‘Claws working together, and Fang was forced to concede this point. The only dragons close enough in size to even consider trying to scare it off were the Imperials, none of whom was especially inclined to do so either.

“I have all this filing…”

“I am in the middle of crafting a masterpiece.”

“Are you joking?”

Which meant enduring the constant noise until the roc decided to nest somewhere else, and no one had any idea how long that might be. After three days of screeching, a meeting was called.

“I did some reading on the subject,” said Anodyne, “and it may be trying to attract a mate. You know, it’s claimed a territory, and now it’s advertising that territory to other rocs. If it sufficiently impresses another—”

“There are going to be more of them?”

“Very likely! The screaming will stop once a mate is attracted, of course, but at some point they’re probably going to try eating us.” Anodyne looked down at her claws, as if this were her fault somehow.

“Did you find anything about strategies for fighting them?” Caldwell said.

“’Run away’ seems to be the main suggestion.”

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Hendricks said, and was ignored.

“Maybe if we brought in the twins…”

“Yes, that couldn’t possibly go wrong. Besides, they don’t even do magic. Do you want an entire harpy flock descending on us when they get eaten?”

“We don’t actually know—”

“Do you really want to find out?”

The debate continued for some time, and was only interrupted when the curtain over the doorway was flung aside with great force, revealing Asch, though considering how soot-smeared her goggles were everyone at first thought she’d come in by accident.

“Eh, sorry to interrupt.” She didn’t sound especially sorry. “There’s a Skydancer down in the smithy who says he wants to speak to someone in charge.”

“We’re having a meeting,” said Vinegar.

“He’s in my way and he won’t leave.”

Vinegar’s fins twitched as if she were restraining something rude, but she jumped down from the table and followed Asch back down to the smithy. The Skydancer was sprawled out across the floor, but he leapt to his feet as soon as they came in.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “I hear you have a roc problem.”

“I imagine everyone along the canyon has heard it by now,” Vinegar said. “Do you have a method for getting rid of it. No offense, but you don’t look particularly threatening.”

The Skydancer shifted slightly, as if trying to emphasize his height. “It doesn’t matter. I have experience in this area, although I’ve never seen a roc in person. But I assure you I can handle it, if you can find someone to take me to where it’s nesting.”

Vinegar looked at him. She was not, as a rule, in favor of sending anyone off to their death; but he wasn’t part of her clan, and the roc did pose a threat, and one must have one’s priorities in order. At the very least he might annoy the beast enough to convince it to leave before he was chomped out of the sky.

“All right,” she said. “What’s your name, so we can notify your family if you don’t come back.”

“Vermouth,” he said. “But I wouldn’t worry about that.”
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Eureka’s office was one of the largest chambers on the second floor, but you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, because all but a Tundra-sized space was occupied at all times. When the Room of Records was initially constructed a variety of cavities had been carved into the walls for storage purposes, but they had proven insufficient for the files of the entire clan, especially given the number of calamities they had weathered; most of the floor space contained wooden cabinets in a variety of sizes and styles, often with drawers left slightly open to accommodate the press of papers inside them. One or two of the now-hidden holes in the wall went through to the outside, and every so often wind howled through them, strewing loose papers about.

In the middle of all this was one fairly large desk, covered mostly by stacks of paper, writing implements, and folders. Behind the desk, or more usually on top of it, was Eureka.
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Sparkspell’s collective obsession with the combination of magic and technology to create sentient life began with Jillian, the eldest child of the clan’s founders, who built his own familiar and got into some slightly shady old magic books with interesting results.

During this time Jillian was running the lab with slightly excessive enthusiasm, with the result that everyone kind of had to work toward his sentient-life goal. He did a lot of shifty experiments and took a lot of notes. His notes were…not great, but since he was really the only one bothering to write anything down at this stage most of them were stashed in the library, and survived the storm. More on this later.

Happily, I wrote a compilation of Jillian’s work roughly a year ago when it was still relevant to anything I was doing, but basically the clan used to do robots in two ways: the layering of spells on a machine to give at least the appearance of sentience, though Jillian was never satisfied that this was true sentience; and summoning a wandering consciousness into a machine. Examples of successful applications of both of these methods were present in the lair for quite some time, but they’re both gone now, although I think they both had full bios and so they’re probably somewhere on my blog.

Eventually Jillian left, partly because there was no part of the lair he hadn’t blown up at least once and partly because of the first change in leadership. He was succeeded by Jacobin, who chilled the fuck out and mostly let everyone do what they wanted.

Jacobin did have a team working on magically-created life, however. Jillian took the books he’d used for the spell-layering with him when he left, so this team was using the method of attracting a wandering mind to a shell. And then a couple of apprentices accidentally summoned a demon and destroyed half the lab again, at which point the sentient-machine project was shelved indefinitely.

Wade joined the clan some time after the storm, during which the entire science department disappeared or died, because he heard they were in need of engineers to help with the rebuilding. He was already in the habit of making weird little automata, but while cleaning the rubble out of the library he found Jillian’s notes.

What Wade is doing is…something else. He is definitely imbuing his creations with sentience, and his methods are at least partially based on Jillian’s work. But they explode a lot less. More important: Jillian’s notes are written with the assumption of a background in magic, which Wade lacks, and the presence of a number of materials that were lost either when Jillian left or during the storm. Which means that Wade’s interpretations of Jillian’s instructions are rather more guesswork than anyone is comfortable with.

Whatever he’s doing is certainly working–he builds the machines such that they would be able to function regardless, and then points some really vague slightly related magic at them and hopes it produces the desired effect. This is the reason for Victoria’s minor personality inconsistencies and Samovar’s less independent behavior. [On the other hand, it seems likely that Samovar won’t remain that way. Wade found some older papers about something called accumulated life that seem like they might be important.]

Much has been made of Sparkspell’s amorphous territory, shifting around the lair as ruins are cleaned out and new ones are found. But the lair is not the only fixed point the clan holds.

Cassiodon’s affiliation with Sparkspell is…complicated. She was certainly brought here to be part of the clan—Ion had hoped she would be part of their defenses, though it’s hard to know now if her presence during the storm would have mattered. She doesn’t live in the lair, has only entered it once. There is a room set aside for her, but she has never set foot in it. She sometimes provides aid to the clan in times of bad hunting, and she comes to Murrel if she is injured severely enough that she cannot manage it herself. She has a certain respect for the Dapperclaws, and she has occasionally involved herself in clan politics, when they seem like they will affect her.

For the most part, however, she roams the desert, her activities a mystery to those living in the cliff. But there are other dragons out there, some seeking companionship, and one is far more effective if one has a pack. And a pack does occasionally need a place to rest.

The structure is one Sparkspell visited, some time ago, long since picked clean and abandoned to the wildlife. Cassiodon’s pack came upon it without any knowledge of this, and Sparkspell’s recordkeepers do not know it has been reclaimed. For now the clan is occupying an area close enough to it that Cassiodon need not worry about an invasion, though should the rest of the clan finish its looting it’s possible she will tell them to ensure better defenses. The pack may also move to a different base. Only time will tell.

Cassiodon’s pack is not large, and they occupy only a small part of the structure, when they occupy it at all. It’s some sort of sprawling underground temple, Sparkspell’s researchers think, and the pack stores their possessions and occasionally sleeps in the vestibule. There is only one way in as far as anyone can tell, and that’s easily blocked; an easily defensible position is important for such a small group, even if all of them have some skill in battle.

They do a very good job of hiding their things when they leave, and most of them can hide reasonably well themselves. Anyone stumbling on the building would think it empty. [And granted, they would mainly be right. Sparkspell is thorough.]

But mainly they roam. Cassiodon doesn’t like to stay put for long, and no one would dare challenge her.

The rearrangement of the guard had proven…troublesome. The Dapperclaws were still training their newest member, and no one was willing to go anywhere alone with the demon, and Gossamer had reassured her that the twins ran border patrol all the time with no trouble. Which was undoubtedly true. Fang just hadn’t considered the trouble it would cause for her.
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They rolled into the canyon at high noon, a pair of shadows blocking out the sun. Windfall was the first to spot them, on her way back from a delivery, and rushed to alert Bulletin.

“Are they dangerous?”

“I dunno.”
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