Seeking out new worlds | Glowfic Constellation

The secrets of Delver technology could not resist decryption forever. While the tools they wielded are deeply weird, jealously guarded, and immensely complicated, living beings built the tools that brought aliens to the dragons' first world. The great calamity left ruins aplenty behind, and once grown the Seeker gathered these old tools as their very favorite sort of treasure. Dragons are not intelligent in quite the same way as a No-Tail, but they are far from stupid. They live forever and can be very determined if they set their mind to it.

The Seeker brought all its tools and treasure along with it when the world was evacuated ahead of the Tailless's relentless growth and hunger for resources. It studied under the great elder Darktooth on the new world, studied together with Darktooth (an arrangement not very common with dragons, as they are not particularly social), for a very long time. And eventually, by application of the hard claws of experiment and calculation and theorizing, the universe revealed its workings, cold and precise and mathematical. Creating more and more tools of the highest sophistication, and teaching others of its kind in exchange for wealth, and even spawning offspring and guiding them to adulthood, was all satisfying for a long while, but eventually... He got bored.

And so, the Seeker wondered if the long sleep for the journey between stars was really necessary, and got to work seeing about making it not. He managed it eventually, and built a starship, and went exploring. Stars come in a beautiful variety of kinds, and the worlds around them do too, but very, very few bear any sign of life. They are mostly barren and empty.

...Oh, this one is emitting curious amounts of low-frequency light. Worth investigating. Pushing a starship faster than light requires a touch of magic (at least for now), which he provides.

In the outer solar system of a certain star, well above the plane of the ecliptic, a black sphere the size of a city block appears and has a look around with powerful telescopes.

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I think in art where people are riding stuff with four legs and wings we sit on their backs? But maybe you could carry a harness or something.

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That sounds uncomfortable. My back moves a lot when I fly, the muscle is all there. I kind of want to try it but I'm also scared so maybe some other day.

Yeah, that's fine.

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River has more questions about boats now!

Boat questions can occupy them till they pull in to the naval base.

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Cities are big! And kind of ugly...

This isn't the city, the city's a bit farther along.

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What is it? There's tons of metal around here, I can almost taste it. Is this where you make boats?

No, it's where some boats that belong to Tapa are stored and trained with.

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Some of them are huge! Seeker said we Sapphires might do sea rescue if things work out okay, cold and storms and waves won't bother us at all, but I don't know if I could do much to help such a giant boat.

The boats are pretty good at storms and waves and cold, but you might be faster, or better at it in some other way.

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Bet I fly faster than a boat swims. Any boat. There's a challenging tone to this statement.

You might! How fast do you go?

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- This fast, comes the feeling. It seems pretty quick, trees zipping by just below.

- I'm not sure how to turn that into a number.

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Me neither! Amentans number and label everything, huh?

It makes it easier to compare things if you know the acceleration and top speed of a bunch of different boats or whatever in numbers.

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Well I'm fast. That's good enough for me.

All right! I'm not as fast, so getting into the city will take a while. I'd usually take the train but there's also a road, and it's not too far to walk.

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What are trains like? I want to try one maybe. I want to try basically everything.

Trains are pretty small and enclosed, and you could probably get into one but it might be awkward and claustrophobic. They go along rails very quickly to get people where we're going.

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I'd be scared but I still want to try it.

Are they still on the naval base? River is looking around at all the everything either way.

They have gotten off the boat and are going through the base to the exit! Okay, I can ask about having you on the train. They might want to run the train otherwise empty while you're on it.

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That would make me less scared but it seems inconvenient.

Fuel and boat stuff is really smelly, I hope the city is different.