An afternoon with Shelmigarii, mistress of cables

It’s a crowded day. New groups from Fort Ooshar are coming, fleeing the Fox and Crow, they are rushed and harried. The journey is not long. The families are large, mixed with halflings, goliaths and humans.

Work gets harder with these large groups. The gondolas are large enough for a few horses, maybe a cart. These families are multigenerational, at times there are dozens of animal companions. One may have only geese, another family with dogs. There was one with oxen — they took ages. The mulgobs don’t like when they need to come up.

But seeing so many descend into a home without judgement, with an opportunity to build, with an opportunity to meet elves and dwarves with their magicks, with an opportunity to meet women from Mehmd and men from Crinth, the opportunity to meet the ratchets and the alchems and others from the Queen, the opportunity to meet Brewst Grisselle the ale drake and learn that not all dragons are Proctors hoarding knowledge with threats of violence — Brewst hoards alcohols and is getting along quite well with the alchems guild.

Every day there are new people. Every day another conversation.

Shelmigarii and Lukhchizh do not charge for their service. They’ve earned unfurled flags and banners from the Free City. This means the other goblins (all the Kon) in the area support them. Shel’s recent ratchets development and springwerks mean the mulgobs don’t work as hard. Lukh is working on employing some beasts rather than mulgobs, which is only possible because of the Free City empowers all thinkers rather than the caste system the Queen’s Lyfe demands.

At the top of the cliffs, summer heat bears down harsh on the Grand Entry. Those pilgrims working down the ramps and steps will be full of sweat, but not as much fear. These Kin don’t understand the sky-cables. Many shake in fear as they ride down the thousands of feet through the fog into the bog-city past and through the ruins over the brackish waters and abandoned orchards.

Shel never laughs.

She’s scored of all the beasts. The weather and the cables aren’t scary. These are knowable things. These are math.

Beasts and peoples don’t act according to math and strangers aren’t knowable, even known friends aren’t knowable. She loves Lukh, but calling him knowable isn’t accurate.

A long sip of cool coffee. The next gondola up from Chupmolea better bring more. That bean is a blessing, much better than the teas in the Queen’s Land (Tsavancoast). She once again ponders if there is a way that the bean can replace tar-tree pods as fuel — the switch of smells from oily smog to roast would be worth it. She doesn’t have the knowledge. But maybe the lesser power could be made up using gears and springs…

Her mind wanders sometimes. Operating the sky-cables is boring and routine.

Thoughts are for new things… maybe the fruits could become oils. Lukh’s been chatting with another hob freed from service to invention who won’t join the guilds, but is working on new ways to harvest steam.

There’s an unlatched safety bar she doesn’t notice.

Shel keeps thinking about this. Less power, more gearing, some springs, maybe using that fruit that’s waste now, then a steam box, could maybe the airxip props help the gondola and then we wouldn’t even need muls or beasts.

She sends the gondola with a halfling family and their dogs.

The windsock swings fast. An unexpected storm? She checks the broadsheet forecast section. Oh, no. This is on the schedule. It’s going to be a rocky ride for those hin.

She looks as they descend. Notices the safety bar free. Notices the sway. Notices the storm. Notices the danger.

Wandering thoughts are a blessing, except when they are a curse. She curses the queen. She curses herself. She curses the sky and for good measure she curses the gods of this land even though she doesn’t believe in them.

“Urp! Stop loading. See if you can bring that gondola back. Use everything you have.” She rushes to the head wheel to help.

There is a nasty screeching noise as the metal cables halt to change path. Then there is a scream of terror as the gondola rocks off the cables.

Another noise, this time a squawk, rises above the terrors and shouting, the breaking metals.

Panic. It’s all panic now.

Beasts and peoples all learning that their fears are real. The sky-cable isn’t safe (they’re wrong).

None feel empowered, none capable.

That squawk is a massive beast. A raptor the size of an airxip swoops overhead and dives at the sky-car. There’s a tiny man on the bird, hard to judge size at this distance with the massive bird unravelling understanding of perspective.

As the car jumps off the cables the bird rushes to it. The car starts to roll to a side dozens of feet under the cable.

A sharp command, sudden and cutting through the winds and terror is heard. There’s some Kirtin-ish to the tone with a bit of the Crinth rounding.

The immense bird grabs the cart, carries it up to Grand Entry.

Shel doesn’t want more coffee. She wants to hang out with Brewst after she fills out an after disaster report to establish a new checklist, one that involves two peoples in case her mind wanders again. That’ll start when she’s done shaking.

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This narrative slice of life was an attempt at Tuesday Afternoon, a technique to test world building to see if the created world makes sense for normal people.

The Free City of Sheljar was the result of my first campaign in the World of the Everflow.

Once a city destroyed by dragons and later an empire destroyed from within by The Necromancer with their zombies and Tunneling Nightmares, Sheljar is now a Free City, open to all thinking peoples who respect other thinking peoples. Its leadership is the first group of PCs. A bog-city of a thousand islands each little piece of land offers a place for a family to return, a neighborhood to emerge.

Shelmigarii is one of the Queen’s women, a member of the ratchet guild. She and her husband run the sky-cable gondolas at the Grand Entry with its faster path to the city center or to Chupmolea (the goblin neighborhood) than the thousand-year old steps and ramps down the cliff. Shel is a tiny goblin and her husband a large hobgoblin. They have no companions nor children. They hired mulgobs (bugbears) to operate the ratchets, declining to use alchem nor magicks. Her background would be a cabbie, if playing D&D.