Library: Kara the tinkerer.

Once upon a time, in a village deep in a mountain valley, lived a tribe of elves. These were an industrious group of elves, long ago having been cut off from civilization by the high mountains surrounding them. A large lake high on the mountain top, spilled down in a long stream, providing fresh water and fish to the residents of the valley. This enabled the elves to maintain a completely self-sufficient society. Most of the elves, being a long-lived race, remembered the world outside the valley, and had no desire to ever leave. However, amongst the elves was a young orphan named Kara. This is her story. Kara had been a single child of a reclusive couple who lived at the far end of the valley. Her parents had the dubious honour of being the guardians of the irrigation system that directed the water from the lake to the crops throughout the rest of the valley. While this was an incredibly important job, as it almost never rained in the valley, it was also a fairly foul job. Living almost underneath the waterfall left everything covered in mold and mildew. Cloth would rot within weeks. Hanging the laundry out to dry was nigh impossible. The spray from the waterfall covered almost the entire back-end of the valley. Since the time the elves moved in, they had set up an enormous brass collector system at the bottom of the waterfall to provide water to the surrounding farms. Elves are not overly partial to mining per se, and as such, the collector system was created to last, in rust-proof brass. But, as with all things, nothing lasts forever. Over the years, the amount of copper sulphide and sheer erosion from the water falling on the brass works had taken its toll. The occasional breakage in the pipes would result in either flooding and ruin of crops, or the water flowing out of the valley through an underground river, causing massive drought, and the ruin of crops. After a few such incidents, it was decreed by the village elders, that one family must be stationed at the collector in order to instantiate instant repairs for the survival of all. It was to the couple chosen as the collector watchers, that Kara was born. Growing up, far in the valley from the rest of the elves her age, Kara spent her childhood years with her father, as he tinkered and repaired the collector, learning all there was to know about brass-works. One of the first things she learned, was that there was no more brass to be had. With all the passes in the mountains long closed up, there were no new materials for maintenance. Any time something went wrong, shortcuts had to be taken, making the infrastructure more and more precarious. Her father, seeing the end result of continuing down this road made a trip to the village to explain the situation to the elders. Kara had never left their house at the far end of the valley and was incredibly excited to see the rest of the valley. The trip took the better part of two days to get there. Arriving just as the sun rose, Kara was enthralled with the sights and sounds of the village. The villagers however, were less than enthralled with her. Whereas Kara knew only the life of working with brass, and constant water, the clothes of her family were thick ugly leathers, to withstand the heat of melting down old pipes and forming new ones. The thick leather typically was greenish in colour from the mold that grew with the combination of heat and water the so pervaded their existence. Her hair was tied back in two buns on top of her head to keep it from singing on molten brass. Her head, normally covered in a think leather hat to keep her hair from rotting, was removed for the outing, showing her almost black hair, caused from a lifetime of darkness, foreign amongst the fair-haired elves. Subjected to ridicule, not only from the youth of the village, but also from the careless housewives with no thought to the feelings of others, what should have been a visit from those who were entrusted with the safety of the village, were instead mocked and belittled. Treated at best as unwelcome curiosities, they made their way to the council chambers. The next few hours, while her father was in council, trying to convince the elders of the direness of their situation, she was left outside on a small wooden bench, the object of a village lacking in entertainment for decades. It was at this moment that Kara decided she had to leave this valley at any cost. The council heeded the words of her father, and magically contacted a gnomish village not too far distant. Beseeching the gnomes for aid, an agreement was met, whereby the gnomes, would visit in a flying machine, to deliver some brass, in exchange for various goods and services from the elves. Their business concluded, Kara and her father left the village to return home. Upon this return journey, Kara expressed her displeasure at the treatment and lack of respect given from the village to whom they worked daily to protect. She harangued her father incessantly until he finally spoke and explained to her that the good of the many out weighed the good of the one; that not all the villagers were mean or small minded, but should they fail in their task, all would suffer, even the innocent. He went on to say however, that as the gnomes were coming in a flying ship, if she was so unhappy here, she was more than welcome to leave with the gnomes. Seizing upon that idea, Kara was in fine spirits for the remainder of the trip and counted down the days till the arrival of the gnome airship. The day of the arrival of the airship, things turned from bad to worse. While she stood outside, scanning the skies for a sign of a majestic ship, she did not for even a moment, anticipate the sheer speed, with which a gnomish airship, caught on fire by a lightning strike, could plummet from the skies in a bee-line towards her house. Within moments, several tons of red-hot brass, several burning gnome-corpses, two dead parents, and some burning lumber were all that was left of her family, her home, and her ticket out of the valley. While Kara was reasonable distraught, and perhaps put out of sorts by the ordeal, she was not without focus. Without home or family, she had no reason to stay whatsoever. Although not familiar with the wood and cloth airships of the gnomes, she was quite familiar with water and hot brass, and the idea of making a steam powered vehicle to cross over the mountain range took hold of her mind. She knew she only had two days at most before somebody from the village was sent to bring the goods for the gnomes and find out what happened. She planned on being long gone by then. Using all the skill she learned from her father, she fashioned a simple brass boiler from the brass lying about in the wreckage. working without fail through the night, she salvaged a wooden propeller from the remains of the airship, creating hastily crafted gears from spare pipe pieces, she fashioned herself a serviceable craft. The craft consisted of an oven containing enchanted magma, forever burning hot, a tank of water suspended above, to store the water to generate the steam over the magma. This was then captured in an enclosure, and funneled out through pipes towards a fly-wheel, pushed by the steam pressure, turning the massive airship propeller, now mounted horizontally above a chair attached to two skids. Unfortunately for Kara, she was quite good with brass and steam, but not so good with aerodynamics or aeronautical engineering. Although the craft didn't have to travel far to cross the mountains, it did have to get enough power to break inertia and gain enough momentum to pass over the mountain range. Two aborted test flights quickly made her realize, that the amount of water necessary to power her craft over the mountains, was also so heavy, that she would need more water to fuel her craft enough to lift the sheer weight of the heavy brass and copious amounts of water. Thoroughly disappointed and dejected, she sat upon her erstwhile flying machine and stared in disgust at the village water collector and reservoir, contemplating her future as a thrall to village she didn't care for, nor them for her. When she struck upon an idea most fine. By running a few hoses from the reservoir to her craft, she would be able to break the inertial barrier with her initial load of water, and have a few moments to drain more water into her tank as she gained altitude, giving her the extra needed fuel to reach the crest of the mountains. Putting her plan into action, though risky, she was able to successfully raise her craft to the edge of the mountain peaks, before landing heavily onto the snow capped mountain top. Her craft, now useless resting before her, she leaned over it, staring down into the valley as the sun rose on the 2nd day, lighting the arrival of the elves from the village. Having witnessed the flight upwards of the strange brass craft, the elves were scanning the mountain tops looking for it. She quickly backed away, pushing backwards off her craft, accidentally causing the craft to slide over the side of the mountain. Watching in horror, she saw her craft tumble downwards, careening off the sides of the mountain, smashing to pieces, until the main boiler tank crashed into the reservoir, obliterating the walls of the cistern, and causing a torrential flood, that quickly washed away the elven delegates and all they had with them. Kara watched in growing joy as the tide of water spread outwards, flooding the valley and destroying all the crops of those she'd come to dislike. Turning her back on the now extinct elven village, she adjusted her welding goggles on her forehead, tossed her leather cap aside, and started her walk down the mountain to see the world outside the valley for the first time.

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Library: Kara the tinkerer.