Protecting the Wall

[Vega]

14th Cylus 720

Vega was exhausted.

Not a little bit tired, just plain, old fashioned, absolutely exhausted. She had not slept for she didn't know how many trials, and she had finally started to understand the meaning of the word "power nap" - she caught a half-break here, or twenty bits there and that was enough. It had to be. What really annoyed her, though was that she was grubby. Now, Vega had never been bothered about being fashionable, or even particularly worried about how others thought of how she looked. She wore what she wanted, what she was comfortable in. But she loathed being dirty. "Clean dirt is different," she grumbled to Isobella and the Thunder Priestess who had initiated her smiled. "Why so, Eva?"

"You an' my Papa are the only two who call me that, you know," she shot back, and Isobella shook her head. "I don't think we are. I think you think of yourself that way. When you play, when you fight, when you are at peace. Eva Creede." Vega narrowed her eyes and wiped her forehead, smearing more dirt over it. "Now is not the time for navel-gazin', my nonny-nonny chum. Cop ahold o'that, would ya?" That said, she handed Isobella a bag with supplies in it for shoring up and strengthening the wall. "I reckon, if we stop thinkin' about this as a wall, that will help."

Isobella looked at Vega in some surprise, and pointed out what seemed to her to be the obvious thing. "But it is a wall, isn't it?"

"No," Vega said, stubbornly. "It's a perimeter. That's what it is. It is a wall, obviously, but it could be a fence or a piece o'string. The point is the purpose it serves. It keeps things out an' warns us when somethin' or someone tries to get in." Isobella nodded and Vega gave her a (gentle) companionable thump on the arm. "Except this don't do that. It just sits there. So we need to stop thinkin' of it as a wall an' start thinking of it like a perimeter in a camp." Isobella regarded the young mortalborn seriously and said, quietly. "You are a most peculiar person with an odd way of thinking of the world."

Vega considered that for a moment, and then nodded. "Yeah, and?" The pair of them laughed and Isobella gestured.

"So, how are we going to accomplish this, then?" the Thunder Priestess asked of her mentee and Vega looked at her with a grin.

"I already told you, didn't I?" She knew she hadn't. "We're gonna stop thinkin' about it as a wall an' start thinkin' about it as a tool - an' come to that, a weapon. It's not jus' sittin' there no more. Now, it's an early warnin' system an' a deterrent." Grabbing the bag back, she gestured for the group they were working with to gather around, shouting to any that didn't. "Or at least," she added to Isobella, "It will be."

[Vega]

14th Cylus 720

"There's two bits to this," Vega said quietly but firmly. "First of all, we've got to stop thinkin' of it as a wall, an' start thinkin' of it as somethin' what keeps things out. Right?" Isobella nodded, looking at Vega with interest. "Right. So that means, it's a wall, an' that's good. But how do you get past a wall? How do you break it so that it no longer keeps you out?" Isobella frowned slightly and considered what Vega was saying.

"Well," her companion said, quietly, "I suppose you climb it. So we have to make it more difficult to climb." Vega nodded. "That, my friend, is exactly right. More difficult to climb is the first thing. An' so, we know that these creatures are fiery, yeah? So, we need to make sure that there's not a lot of heat. That's easy enough, it's cold enough to freeze a goats gonads. So, " if Vega noticed the guffaw from Isobella, she didn't say anything, "what I'm thinkin' is that we keep the walls wet." Isobella looked in surprise at that, but then realised the sense of it. "Either, it'll be wet an' they're fiery, or it'll be ice, an' they're physical." Isobella nodded.

"The trick will be how to do it. If we can rig up a system, that's the trick. I mean, we could have people comin' out twice a day an' flingin' water at the walls. That would do if it was all we could do, but honestly, there's got to be a better way." Vega looked at the wall and considered it. "An' I think there is. So, what we've got to do here is to soak the wall, an' then top it up. I figure, also, what we do is get..." Frowning slightly, she looked at Isobella. "Do we have any engineer-types among the Knights?" Isobella nodded. "Some. Not many."

Vega considered it. "Thats alright. Actually, I don't think it'll take a lot. Ijust' want a system of gettin' water here so'that people can douse the walls. Like a ... I dunno." Like a Doman bag for water, she supposed. Isobella nodded. "I'll see what I can do. But if not, we can have the guards who patrol do it?" Vega nodded. "We do that too. They pour water down the front of the wall, down the outside. An' that way, it becomes more dangerous, an' more difficult to climb. Now then," the redhead frowned at the wall and considered it. It was like, Isobella thought, Vega was watching it and sizing it up as though it were an enemy. In a way, she supposed that was exactly what the redhaired woman was doing.

"The other way that the wall ceases to function as a means o' keepin' them out is when it's breached. When there are holes in it. So we make them tryin' to do that into a weapon. I want ..." She considered it and tried to explain it. "I want traps in the wall. Explodin' glass jars o' nails, which will shoot outward, an' ..." Looking down at the floor, Vega suddenly smiled. "Water. We've already got water. So we protect the inside from it, an' we have one o' you Ilaren-marked folks on hand." Isobella frowned and then, as Vega explained, the Thunder Priestess' expression mirrored Vega's own.

"If they start to attack the wall, we hit it with lightnin'. Focused lightnin', what travels across the wall. We need to be clear, though, an' the people need to be not touchin' it. It needs to be an attack against the outside, not a means by which we turn our own people into crispy corn." Isobella nodded.

"I think," the Thunder Priestess who was Vega's mentor said, softly, "I think we can make it work."

Vega grinned. "Good. I knew you weren't here for your looks."

Isobella smiled. "So, that's the first bit. What's the second?"

Vega had to replay the conversation in her head for a moment and then nodded. "We've got to start thinkin' of it now as a means of keepin' us safe. As a weapon." Again, she looked at the wall as though she was telepathing with it and she considered. "I think we could have traps, you know, further out. An' maybe have them trigger or somethin' on the wall. Be an early warnin' system." Vega wasn't entirely sure how to do that, but she was fairly confident that it could be done. "I dunno. We need some engineers, but traps, pits, those kinds o' thing outside the wall. They've got to be the thing to do. We need to make the wall our go-to place for knowin' what's happenin' out there. An' we need to not just go." Vega glared, balefully, at the wall itself.

"It needs to tell us. So, yeah. Trapmakers. Diggers. It don't need to be a lot. Deep holes filled with cold water what is full of ice - that'll douse their passions. An' it jus' needs to .... oh thin ice! That's what we need! Thin ice!" Isobella looked at Vega without understanding. "Thin ice pools - the ones we all avoid? The things what we'd fall in an' die? Get those covered over an' looking safe to walk on. Map them, for the sake of Tio's toes, but yeah. That too. Traps. "

Isobella nodded. "I think we're good to go. I'll go get the people we need?"

Vega nodded, grimly. "Yeah. Lets get goin'. We don't know how much time we've got."

[Doran]

Vega:

Knowledge:
Tactics x3
Leadership x3

Loot:
Wealth: -
Injuries: -
Renown: 10, for finding a way to protect the wall.
Magic XP: -
Skill Review: Appropriate to level.
Points: 10

- - -

Comments: Your Vega threads are always entertaining to read, and all those expressions that she uses make me smirk. She has such an interesting vocabulary! I wonder what the difference between clean dirt and dirty dirt is though. I found it quite interesting that your PC seems to make a distinction in that regard. Soaking the wall in order to make it more difficult for people to climb it is quite clever in my opinion, by the way!

Enjoy your rewards!