>>53331204All that is said about Monroki is that he was the previous manager for the sim center, he's meant to be a part of the station's armed forces who got a promotion. Clearly not too particular about protocol or OSHA given he'd let Tuval do whatever he wanted with the simulators. He might appear later.
Ah, so I don't think this will get a big part in a chapter soon, so I'll explain it. First, note that "untracked faunanite" is of note here. Basically, the idea is that the wizard faction of /morig/ has more or less of a grasp on the various settlements, and on station Kira2 they have an interest getting their hands on all non-Morinium sources of vitubium they can. You can probably find Morinium in all sorts of places on the station (namely in all the Deadbeats' bones), but other types of chuubanite are mostly being funneled towards the research center.
Detection is done with a magical radiation detector of sorts, I'm imagining recycled refuse being dumped on a conveyor belt that gets scanned by them and the items that have an emission are picked out.
Plaiduaine is a sapling hive ship, which are basically enormous biological space colonies inhabited by saplings. In some war between this sapling faction and rampaging chumbuds, some devastating weapon was used on Plaiduaine, forcing Ailbhe out of his home. Note that Plaiduaine is missing, with no hints, not destroyed. How can a country-sized station go missing instead of being destroyed? Left as an exercise to the reader for now. This isn't a reference to a past story, it's based on Fauna declaring she will drain the ocean in a Bioshock stream kek.
Yeah, Tuval is walking a dark path... The source of his motivation is meant to be a mystery at this point, I expect that whether his obsession is justified or not will depend on how this source is perceived. Ailbhe is for sure fulfilling a "wise old man" role here, unable to prevent the folly of youth, kinda thing. Tuval definitely has an arc planned out!
I went hard on floweriness in that first chapter, because it was a dream, but it somehow doesn't feel right to be very prettily verbose with Tuval as the POV, he's just not a very flowery person. This isn't an excuse for my subpar writing, there would be a way to write him to be more evocative I think, I just haven't nailed down a way to do so without taking away from his "vibe". Maybe a future chapter with a different POV will be more expressive.
Biomech all the things!
Ohh, medals doc... That could be fun, I'll think about it. The Diamond Skull&Scythe is really just a stand-in for a great mark of honor.
In battlefields where I expect vitubium-based weaponry or equipment will feature a lot, I think this will be a feature you see a fair bit, even if the machine itself doesn't have any. I guess it wouldn't work too differently from the VT-meter already established, except particularly sensitive. The interesting part is that since it is integrated into the sensor suite of the Daemon, it isn't just a dial somewhere, instead it's one of it's senses. So what this does is that it exploits the fact most creatures have at least a small part of themselves in touch with the Vitium Field (sometimes called their soul). This can be repurposed to react to incoming magical radiation to communicate to the being the presence of the emission directly.
Injection of extra vitubium in some way can likely improve this sense, as would having a catalognaut pilot. In this chapter, this is used to detect the vitubium-powered weaponry used by the Nousagi pilot.
>chainswordfun fact, according to my calcs the teeth of this thing are probably moving at hypersonic speeds if it gets swung with any kind of velocity. I have no idea what that would sound like, the closest would be an helicopter with a supersonic rotor but I haven't found any recordings of that.
Thanks for the great review! Gave me a lot to think about and also some ideas to make future chapters better.
