log 001 part 2

The situation has finally stabilised somewhat, enough that i do need to worry about dying in the next few weeks. The remaining two ships have slowed down, giving my propulsion formation a much needed rest. I don't even dare to look at the formation in fear of what I will find there. After all, there is chance that we might still end up falling, the lower the chance of that occuring the happier you shall find me.

Before introducing myself I want to be clear about what exactly is wrong with the thought logger. The head office tends to be quite liberal at blaming others. As you already must know the process of the device works in two main steps, one being the thought string generation and the other the broadcast of this string.

the creation of thought strings tend to work out pretty well. After all, you would not be reading this if I were to mess up that particular part.

It is the broadcasting part of the device that never works out for me. My thought string just seem to dissolve when they go beyond a certain distance from me. Even now I am not sure why exactly is thing working now all of a sudden, but as I said at the beginning, do not look at a gift horse in the mouth. Also, if my device is actually defective well then i should not be punished for the delay in the broadcast.( Seriously hoping it is a defective piece. The head office can be a pain in the ass for issues like this.)

While I certainly do not want this to be my last log, it is also true that I have to deal with the situation as they occur and at this moment when we are still at quite the risk of being boarded. We have already exhausted all of our hooks, so we honestly do not have any defenses left. the hooks were a surprise that even I did not expect and a ray of sunshine in what has been quite the miserable time. Good thing I spent the time to cook them up. It took quite the bit of time too.

Being on this airship is certainly not doing anything good to my peace of mind. Now airships are something of a fascination for me. It has always been my dream to own one of these, you know. Being responsible for this hunk of junk has been one of the single worst experience of my life. The black mountain is legendarily famous for our magics you know, and our nearly omniscient grasp of spells.

Sadly this omniscience does not extend to the field of building stuff you know. We are capable of casting magics that are capable of crushing mountains, evaporating rivers and lakes and conquering the largest mountain in the continen. Building good airships does not seem to be a part of the parcel though. Now, if I were to say to people that this airship was only five years old, most people would begin by laughing at what I said. These are things meant to last centuries you know. Heck, even the pirate ships that are chasing us should be centuries old and they are competing with my ship.

The propulsion formation and the steering formation always seem to have one issue or another, requiring my near constant presence to keep them in working order. The environment formation that is supposed to ensure that the atmosphere i am in is liveable breaks down every other day. You can say that it is my stupidity that has led to the present situation, otherwise I have been given nearly double the amount of time it will take to reach the destination.

This was most likely to account for the time we would have to spend on the ground because the formation that was meant to keep us afloat failed. Everything that I have been doing have only been stop gap measures. measures that lead to even more measures. It is only my magic and my emergency repair skills that has kept the damn thing going.

Don't even get me started on pirates, we have been sailing for a month and during that period we have had to face nearly ten attacks you know. Each is essentially a stressful game of cat and mouse where we push the ship as much as possible. Each time the propulsion formation takes a brutal beating, making me spend a couple of days at the very least to repair and hoping that those pirates do not find us in that period, because our fucking propulsion formation had failed. I could have taken longer, but I had no idea just how much half assed repairs would mess things for me.

Still, Whoever heard of the propulsion formation of a ship fail literally five years after it has been built. Sadly, that is what I am worried is about to happen if the damn bastards behind me don't stop chasing me.

While all of that is still manageable, the thing that makes me saddest about this airship is that It does not even look like a ship, this airship of mine, it resembles more a cylindrical piece of wood. It is meant to reduce the mana costs of running these formations, l think. What fucking airship, this was clearly meant to resemble a stupid arrow. A stupid arrow that was more likely to kill us than an actual arrow.

Now, it is not really a problem for the others but I have had dreams related to this you know. After all I am of the kin of greybeard at the end of the day. Now to get back to more important matters. I have to explain my identity and the mission that I have been sent on before I inevitably screw up and this log terminates again. I certainly did not expect that I will be doing this while being chased.

My name is Antonio sevenstars, a field captain of the black mountain, with three soldier level fighters escorting three captain level scholars. Normally I am supposed to give each person under my command the option to introduce themselves using my log for consistency during our introductions, but at the moment we are going at speeds where not being bound will have quite the disastrous result. I could call them up here now but there is a pretty significant risk that we might end up boarded if they are not there to remove any hooks as they appear, especially if the propulsion formation does begin to fail. For now, Their identities and their purposes shall be found in their respective mission logs, which I have to assume that everybody will be doing correctly. If they are not, well I honestly don't care. The head office can handle that. You want me to give a shit about protocol, give me a good ship or atleast a ship that won't end in my death.

Now, to describe what our mission is going to be. We are supposed to bring the scholars to documented ruin number 32, under our supervision and at the same time ensure that the folks who are in control of the ruin grant access to the ruin to us in accordance to the hexmountain treaty.

In our present case that is going to be the snowwind empire. Now the problem with the snowwind empire is that they are considered to be one of the bloodiest forces to exist in the continent who have literally built their empire in one of the most inhospitable regions of the continents while being surrounded by enemies on every side. They literally acquired each inch of their land by conducting bloody war. The main reason for this is also the fact that they consider themselves to be the kin of the draconians, incidentally whose ruin it is we are going to explore.

So we are essentially what they consider grave robbers. They fear the might of the black mountain and certainly don't want diplomatic relations to be strained but we still cannot be sure that they won't end up killing us the minute that they end up meeting us. From that perspective maybe the pirates make a bit more sense. While i am sure that the pirates have not been sent here intentionally, the fact that even i can clear these pirates with the correct crew says enough about the treatment we are going to be facing in this place. Nothing to the face but daggers to the back.

It is also a part of the reason that I am being sent over there. I am sure that my skills are going to be quite useful to the snowwinders especially now when it is the onset of winter for them. It is supposed to be a very harrowing experience based on what i have been hearing, though I do think quite little of my sources abilities. They are also pretty likely to kill anyone other than me especially since the time when a group of scholars ended up blowing up a draconian ruin because they were testing a spell in there.

That is why active logging is so important. Without it the head office could quite easily assume the worst and send in entire legions for me. They might not like me, but I still have to assume that they would send in somebody as a reinforcement. Can't have them coming here because I felt lazy. That would certainly not help my case at the very least.

Still, it does not make my work any less irritating you know. Anyway, it is about time that I stop this stupid thing. The pirates outside also seem to have finally started to fucking slow down. You know I can literally feel the ship breath a sigh of relief as I slow it down. This ship might just end up surviving this trip. I can't tell for certain though until I can slow this hunk of junk down and see just how many fires I have to exinguish in the ship, both literally and figuratively. Thankfully, the benefit of a skeleton crew is I do need to worry about the people atleast.