Thaumatech Kit Bag
The simplest way to tell if someone is a Thaumatech Engineer is often to ask to see his kit bag...
Full Item Description
Kit bags tend to vary in appearance, on the surface; ranging from rude sacks of burlap slung over an engineer's shoulder all the way up to elegantly designed cases of polished metal with multiple sliding drawers and a carrying handle, these are nevertheless the very heart of the engineer's trade in Kuramen. A given kit will invariably contain all the basic tools of thaumatechnology, including pieces of chalk, small spools of wire made from copper, silver, and gold, levels and measured lengths of string, and dozens of other oddments that seem bizarre and outlandish to those not familiar with the trade. A given kit is also likely to contain a handful of personal 'widgets' designed by the engineer who carries it, often little more than small runes or perhaps a script to help enhance his particular field of expertise, or ensure the kit's safety, or any of a hundred other things.
History
Almost as long as goblin thaumatechnology has been around, there have been kit bags for the engineers. It is, after all, far simpler to carry the common tools around than it is to have to go and fetch what you need, particularly if you're trying to deal with a runaway thaumaturgic process that will most likely explode and leave a terrible case of fallout if you have to take the time to go retrieve things.
Each engineer carries the common tools of the trade, supplementing the basic kit bag with specialized gear for his personal range of work and the occasional widget or ten of his own devising; sometimes the widgets even work as intended, but more often owners of a thaumatech plant tolerate them only as good luck charms to keep up the morale of the engineers, since each such widget increase the local thaumaturgic pressure and makes a case of fallout more likely to occur.
The very prevalence of the kit bags, and the near invisibility of those carrying them around such factories, has made for a few cases of what amounts to industrial sabotage by some nefarious individuals, slipping 'widgets' into places where they won't be found until the whole factory is about to overload.
Other Notes
Among those who distrust goblin thaumatechnology, anyone carrying a kit bag tends to provoke a suspicious response at the very least, if not outright hostility. In places where thaumatechnology has taken hold, however - such as the grand city of Kuramen - these kit bags are common enough to serve as a helpful disguise for those wanting to blend in without being noticed - particularly if the individual in question happens to be a goblin.
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? Responses (7)
Very nice! Simple but oh so useful, especially for us (me) thaumatechnology-challenged folks.
Heh. I can just picture a MacGuyver-style goblin PC now, using some soot and a few frayed threads to patch up and damaged thaumatech facility until it can be done properly...
I think we have a tools of the trade freetext somewhere. (Speaking of freetext, will there be more to Kuramn? I wouldn't mind!)
As Muro said, both very simple and useful. Gotta have one with this kind of technology.
*fixes the freetext on both 'Kuramn' and the Tools of the Trade* There will be more to Kuramen, yes. I currently have a 'Races of Kuramen' overview in draft, which I'll use to help me detail races beyond the Whisps. There's also the Dark Templars of Nurmel, who are an order of (un)holy warriors dedicated to the Fallen Lost God, Goge the Slaughterer, a post on the city of Tarra-Lin, which is organized around an incredibly massive series of huge waterfalls (which will no doubt get a 'WTF' from someone due to 'unbelievability'...), some more of the various deities, the nature of the divided world (True Kuramen and Far Kuramen are very different places, despite being the same world), and some of the stranger locales (such as the Flying Sea and the Citadel of Light). Anything in particular you want to learn about the world?
Now, I _would_ expect very different places on one world. :)
Them, and the stranger locales sound particularly interesting.
How about 'stranger than you would expect', then? Their natures are distinct, largely because the Calamity split the world along a metaphysical divide as much as shunting chunks of it between the two dimensions. True Kuramen, as the Dragons refer to it, is the 'rational' portion of the world, with the ability of logic to understand and devise solutions for most things. Far Kuramen is more twisted and irrational; where you have a forest growing on the True side of the divide, you'll likely have a forest on the Far side - but it might be a forest of glass, giant fungi, or something equally abnormal that *could* follow through as a possibility. Probability is less reigned-in with Far Kuramen; were it to be set in the D20 ruleset, it would be the world where aberrations and outsiders hail from, as possibilities that just don't happen on True Kuramen.
As for the locales, a teaser or two: the Flying Sea is a sphere of ocean suspended above the Yawning Gulf; this is due to how matter interacts between True and Far Kuramen, with the material staying where it *would* be if the world were intact. So the Flying Ocean is really a portion of the complete ocean, with the area around and below it on the other side, in Far Kuramen. Since the two sides don't interact in other ways, though, the Flying Ocean has some odd ecology as a result of being isolated...
As for the Citadel of Light, it's the result of 'old-school' thaumatechnology being applied over generations to a massive temple dedicated to the primal god of Light... A very old and sacred place, indeed.
Very useful. 4/5
