92nd of Vhalar
Cuau had stumbled across a brilliant beyond brilliant idea. He wanted to study Engineering, but he couldn't afford the classes? He could just practice it right here in the library! He'd amassed a large amount of pens, paperweights, paper, books, rulers, and bits of rock he'd found around the lobby. He had everything he needed to study the principles of engineering right here, didn't he? That was what physics was all about, building things on a small scale! He looked at his hoard with a grin on his face. There might be a few frustrated students and librarians scrabbling around asking where all their damned pens had gone, but he didn't exactly have a laboratory or a classroom to learn in now did he? All he had was books and his wits. He clapped his hands together and smirked. Alright, now to read and construct little models of what he was reading. This was going to be fun!
He cracked open the book on engineering and began to read. About A frames specifically. Named for their shape, they were an exceedingly stable structure, and could hold different loads and support different things based on the angle of the V and the positioning of the crossbar. Well, time to put that to the test. He aligned two rulers up, facing one another, with the holes in the rulers aligned. He slid a lead pencil between them. There. Now he had a somewhat stable V. The width of the rulers helped stabilize the structure, and he made a mental note of it. A squat V, according to the book, provided more strength than a taller one. It was difficult to maintain solidarity the higher one went, sort of like how a stack of coins became more unstable the higher it went. Cuau nodded. That made complete sense. A squat tree was technically more stable than a larger one, especially if the tall tree was thin and liable to be pushed over by the wind. That principle was easy enough to follow.
Cuau looked at his V and added another next to it. He had to snap a few pencils in half to make the A frames work, but he now had two of them facing one another. According to the book, lashing them together with a cross bar in the middle was one of the simplest and most stable starting structures. He settled them close together, and wrapped twine he'd found from a book repair area around each cross bar. The pencil he laid across them and lashed to the A frames' crossbars made the structure....decent. He pushed at it with a claw, watching it scoot across the floor. He put a little weight on it....gently. He actually found that when he pressed down, the weight redistributed across the A frames and put pressure on the feet of the A frames. The rulers were taking all of the strain, not the pencil between them. That was the strength of it! Redistributing the weight you wanted to push around, kind of like how heavier animals had stouter legs and were rarely two-legged.
This could work. He took a longer ruler and settled it on the flat end, propping it up with the A frames and the little structure he'd made. Now, that was essentially a ramp now wasn't it? Or...now that he was looking at it...it looked like a cannon. He'd seen pictures of them in his engineering texts and now he'd stumbled on the basic formula for one. It looked very similar! All one had to do was attach little supports to the bottoms of the A-frames V's, and give it wheels, and that could essentially support the basic massive black powder weapon! It was so simple, and yet so complex. He smiled at his little structure. The A frame in some sort or another was the source for most basic structures. The triangle, he was reading, was one of the strongest natural structures. Mountains, for instance, were one long series of triangles in various forms. The strongest crystals in the world grew to pyramidal points made of several triangles.
Cuau laid on the floor for a moment, head laying to the side and looking at what he'd just made. He desperately wanted working models of his own. Not things made out of pencils. But he'd have to do what he could in order to explore the magic of engineering. He wondered, could Abrogation help him? Usually the shields were just made to turn blows aside to protect the mage. Or at least that was what his mother had taught him. Maybe he could make something that would marry the two together. A siege engine protected by magic.
"Speech"
