You are Summoned

Back inside the cave, I was given a more thorough tour. There was almost a whole city in here. The gnomes had a small mining operation going on, along with smiths and tinkers to make whatever they might need. Lumpy said that their village exported a lot of finished goods to several other villages nearby.

The farms and the village on the surface kept them fed, but most of their efforts were focused underground where they cobbled together machines that ran on mana. A population size nearly equal to that of the village lived and worked down here. The shop that Lumpy took me to was inside a massive cavern where they built their harvest machines.

A few dozen gnomes were at work, and a half-finished MESS was being modified to test out the new design. There was one completed harvester mech that I got to take a look at. It had an open cockpit and no armor, not something you’d bring into combat. Like the mech I piloted, the harvesters had four legs and a humanoid torso. The arms of the mech could be switched out for different farming implements, giving them real versatility.

I suspected one of these harvesters would give our modern farming machines a run for their money. A score of large worktables held various parts for the gnomes to work on, and as I watched, a mage approached the harvester and began to channel mana into it. I was curious how the powering of the machines occurred, so I asked Lumpy, who was distracted with some new widget he found on the table nearest us.

“Lumpy, how much mana does it take to power one of these?”

“Ah, for the harvesters, it takes quite a bit, and MESS takes even more. For every two hours a mage spends charging a harvester, you’ll get around an hour of work out of the machine. Usually, we have more than one mage working here, but most of them are out helping the army and re-charging the MESS’s,” Lumpy answered.

“How many mages do you have here?” I asked.

“Between the village and the folks living in the cavern we’ve got about twenty, but I think we lost one in the fighting, so nineteen now. Every gnome can tinker, but not every tinker can be a mage. A tinker has a small mana pool, like eight to ten points, enough to link with and operate our machines, but not enough to charge things efficiently like the mages do,” Lumpy advised.

“How much mana does a mage typically have?” I asked. My mana pool seemed on par or a bit better than the average gnome tinker and it was going up a single point with each rank I gained.

“They usually get a base pool of around twenty-five mana when they are chosen for the class. From what I understand, depending on their specialty, they also get between three and five more points for each rank after that. They also get additional ways to regenerate their mana at a faster rate,” Lumpy said.

“How do people get a class?” I asked, excited to see if I could unlock a class or if a summoned being was a class all its own.

“It’s different for everyone, but typically, a gnome will unlock their class anywhere between tier zero, rank five and tier one rank five. The system will assign you a class, and you’ll start along the path. I’ve got the Master Engineer class if you’re curious, but it’s considered poor manners to ask someone their class, just so you know,” Lumpy advised.

“Thanks, Lumpy, I haven’t received a class yet, but things might work differently with a summoned being,” I said. Minerva would have to explain how the class system applied to summoned beings. The fact that she hadn’t explained it in detail yet led me to believe that it was a bit further in the future for me.

“Aye, it sounds like your situation is a bit unique,” Lumpy admitted.

“Before I forget, can you, or one of the other gnomes teach me a bit about smelting? Back in my world I’m going to have to melt down some silver, and hopefully gold coins. I’ve never done anything like it before,” I asked.

“Aye, that shouldn’t be a problem, why don’t you head back into the other cavern and ask for Zizzleniz, he’ll show you the basics. While you’re doing that, I’m going to pilot this harvester out to pick up Fitzfazzle’s MESS and what’s left of yours,” Lumpy said.

One of the other gnomes was kind enough to show me where Zizzleniz was working. The smelting cavern was hot as blazes, and not somewhere I wanted to spend the day, but if he could help me with my smelting, so much the better. Like most of the gnomes I’d met, Zizzleniz was friendly enough and rather excited to show someone the work he did.

I was sure the crucible I had at home was quite a bit different than the ones they used here, but the concept was the same. Generate enough heat to melt the metal, heat up the forms that you wanted to use, pour the liquid metal in, and then let them cool. I helped the gnomes melt scrap metal down into ingots, removed the slag, and then formed them into some of the various parts.

The gnomes used something they called flame stones to heat the forges. These were dense reddish-orange rocks that had a coarse texture. Once ignited, they would burn for a few minutes before being consumed completely. The stones were common in the mines where the gnomes worked and as an added benefit, they didn’t give off any harmful gases and consumed themselves as they burned, leaving little mess behind.

The parts we were working on weren’t for the mechs, but they were for the waste disposal machines that each gnomish home had. It eliminated the need for a sewer system, which the gnomes said were bad places where deadly creatures bred, and dungeons often formed. Hearing about dungeons was a bit exciting, but Zizzleniz wasn’t an expert on them, and the gnomes around these parts rarely formed or joined adventuring parties.

After an hour or so working with Zizzleniz and helping with the smelting, Lumpy came back to collect me. The war council was forming shortly, and he wanted my opinion on weapons upgrades for the newest MESS model they were working on. The magic missile wands had worked well, and everyone agreed to keep those, but melee and close-range defense was a bit of a weak point.

Against a single large foe, like the giant zombies, the oversized spears were fine. I’d dished out some impressive damage, but there were downsides to letting your foe get that close. The mechs were sturdy, but not as heavily armored as a tank from back home.

There was also the problem of smaller foes reaching the mech and climbing up to damage components or rip open the cockpit. To combat this, Lumpy was considering a flame dispenser of some sort on top of the mech, that would rain fire down over the mech and anything clinging onto it. Of course, they’d have to up the insulation on the mech to resist the heat, which would add weight and complexity, but it might be effective.

I was no military expert, but I did know that tanks usually worked alongside infantry when they went into battle. Lumpy seemed excited to hear about the tanks and how they were constructed and powered, but like with many things, I couldn’t give him all that much detail. From my perspective, if the mechs worked in pairs, they could use their magic missile tubes to sweep any attackers off their teammate.

Working in teams of two or three would be ideal, and maybe with some infantry support nearby. Lumpy made notes, and in case I was summoned back here for a similar task, I promised to read more into military history and tactics for my gnomish friends. There was one other weapon they were considering, but it would require swapping out some of the magic missile tubes to install it.

Lumpy had designed a massive tube that was packed with gravel-sized flame stones. When activated, an ignitor on the tube would get the flame stones going, then a pressurized tank, along with acceleration runes on the barrel, would shoot out the flaming stones like a shotgun. The downside to the new weapon was the weight.

They would have to remove one of the mech’s arms to mount the flame stone tubes, and even the newer mech chassis they were working on would only support a few of the large tubes. Lumpy was working on a reloading device, but it wasn’t going to be ready before the attack against the undead would kick off.

I did get a peek at the schematic for the new mech chassis. It was impressive how quickly the gnomes could design and start production of something of this scale. The new mech wasn’t much larger overall, but it had a bulkier, more armored look to it. There were fewer exposed critical parts of the mech, and the arms, which had proven a weak point, were better reinforced to resist being pulled from the mech.

The mech would have the ability to slowly walk on three legs if one was destroyed, and on even ground, it could stand and maintain its balance on two. The tubes for the magic missile wands were going to be placed inside an armored housing, making it more difficult for them to be bent out of place. Not forgetting the spear, Lumpy had designed a spike on the butt end of it, so even if the blade was damaged, it could still be useful.

The design was an improvement on the first mech I’d piloted, and after a few suggestions I made to tweak the control layout, Lumpy finalized the design and got his team to work. They were only going to have the time and resources to build two or three of the new mechs, and I was supposed to get one of them. Fitzfazzle’s mech was being repaired, and the other four existing mechs would get a refresh with a few easy to install things like some exterior armor panels, and a new cockpit with smaller gaps that should prevent it being torn open as easily as mine had.

We were going to have the tools to fight with, but would the gnomes be able to find our foe with the limited information we had on them? I was itching to try out my new mech, and deal with whoever it was that threatened my new friends.