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Date Posted: 23:48:14 09/12/03 Fri
Author: Innis Dupoir Nachtsteltaffen
Subject: [NJ] Innis sets up his shop

The fog rose off the river like a great wall to either side, accentuating the abnormally tall beings that stood at its edge in their fine suits and derbies. All were tall and pale, their arms easily reaching their knees, their legs making up for over half of their overall height. Before them was a huge boat within which stood one of their number, quickly shifting between controls and checking to ensure that the various contents of the large boat were secured down.

Innis Dupoir Nachtsteltaffen turned from his work to look at the figures on the bank. He bowed deeply as the Guildmaster Nestor Sethus Demos Airenbrighter stepped forward. The elder Morlock's skin was as pale as the fog, his nose long and hooked, his clothing impeccable, and the incredible length of his limbs only serving to accentuate his growing arthiritc condition. "Well, my boy, this is where your apprenticeship takes you. We've cracked open the gateway for you, and found a suitable exit for it. The Interior Guild has already furnished your appartments, but it is now your place to represent the Engineer's Guild in this city. You go with the pride of the Morlock's, Innis Dupoir Nachtsteltaffen, son of Endar Horus Nachtsteltaffen, apprentice of Sorin Endrara Heleschenom...now get out of here, boy, before I find someone better suited than you are."

Innis nodded, spinning the wheels to release the steam engines, causing the wheels of the boat to begin spinning, activating the automatic oars that began poling the longboat out into the river and into the mists. There was a sense of growing darkness as a the gaslights failed to illuminate this far into the mists, and the darkness flared up around Innis until he was forced to turn on his boat's own gaslights to avoid sailing in total darkness.

Eventually there was a feeling immense distance being bridged, and the fog dissipated, leaving Innis and his boat slowly puffing through an enormous sewer tunnel. As he followed the directions given to him, Innis took his time to admire the architecture. The pipes were well designed, creaking and groaning at the right moments, offering human-like screams to accompany the spouts of steam that shot from them.

THe journey, as had been described to him, would take quite a ways. The Mist River led directly into the Sewer Ways, the underworld passage ways that the Morlocks transversed between cities across the length and breadth of the Dreaming. Sitting back in the plush velvet chair bolted into the boat, Innis wound the gramaphone and selected a recording disc, put the needle down, and let the soothing music play across the walls of the sewers while he composed his thoughts.

The city of Pedrimor didn't have Morlocks, unsurprising, really, considering that they were a kith native to Mist City, and were still in the process of branching outwards. It did, however, have an extensive sewer system, which was downright unpleasent but hardly frightening (as any good sewer system ought to be), and some of the major buildings were set up with boilers and furnaces. There were Nocker guilds, but as with the occasional Nockers who tried to introduce their own forms of "engineering" to Mist City, their works were inferior to those of the Morlocks, all posessing some flaw or another. Nocker pipes didn't scream, oh they were noisy but they sounded like songbirds. Their boilers didn't make horrible, hungry sounds in the night, no they kept one side of the house too hot, the other too cold. And to let a Nocker near a complicated piece of clockwork...why it was to invite disaster!

Of course, Innis had to admit that the Nockers did have a certain knack with fine machinery that the Morlocks lacked. But electricity was so impractical next to the perfect harmony of steam and clockwork! It was a small thing, not posessing a Nocker's pocket-sized "calculatron", when the Morlock Mathematics Engines could calculate an entire days wages for a full crew working from sun up to sun down and print them out on only half a dozen punchcards! And their other "inventions"! They spent their time in forges, making swords, or in remote laboratories, trying to build lightning guns and "auto-mobiles". They didn't do REAL work. The Nockers couldn't make the devices and engines that the City needed to run!

But ah, that was what the Morlocks were for! It was they who tended the secret machineries that ran the city! It was THEY that were the shadowy engineers in the night, the tall shadows that danced around the room to ensure that the boiler roared like a monster through the vents, that the pipes creaked and groaned like a chorus from hell, and the sewers let off gouts of steam at just the right time. The Morlocks built a perfect harmony of what a city SHOULD be. That was their job. A city SHOULD be a great, huge, overwhelming place, full of terrifying shadows, with houses full of little fears. And not the petty fears that the miscreant Halloweeners spread, but the unknown fears of the things that lived inside the walls, under the stairs, under the streets.

Innis mused to himself as the music played, absently replacing the disc on the gramaphone and rewinding...and then stopped. He had to ration himself on his music, he had brought a box of the recording discs with him full of music from the various clubs and establishments across all of Mist City...but still it was unlikley that he would be recieving another such box for at least a month or three yet. The Morlock engineer sighed and searched in a nearby trunk for a bottle of wine and a small amount of bread and cheese to pass the time until he exited the Sewer Ways.

...

Eventually the great morose pipes of the Sewer Ways ended, giving rise to slightly older, less kept, less well designed tunnels, signalling that Innis had reached his destiniation. After only a short while of rowing through the waters, Innis Dupoir Nachtsteltaffen reached the site of his new appartment, moored the boat, and began to unload. Tonight...tonight he would unload and rest, tomorrow he would carefully explore the sewers. And tomorrow night...tomorrow night he would begin the delivery of his monogrammed business letters to the various and sundry nobility across the city, offering the services of a skilled Morlock engineer in the management of their sewers, and the ducts, pipes, boilers, and furances of their households. And if he had some time left tomorrow...if he had some time left perhaps he would call up a fog and indulge himself a bit. Yes...yes that last thought held a most delightful quality to it. Oh yes.

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