Leafing an Impression |
Summary: | Dominick has An Idea for a new field weapon to show Tommas. Tommas thinks it's punny. |
Date: | 06/Feb/2012 |
Related Logs: | All the Ironborn stuff. You've read it. |
Players: |
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Groves Camp - Seagard |
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It's a tent. In a camp. It's muddy. |
Feb 06, 289 |
In the drying muddy wasteland inside Seagard, most of the Groves contingent waits for its next move. Rumors of plans for an upcoming offensive strike have filtered as easily through the ranks as water through cotton, dominating the idle waiting chatter in the smallish grouping of dirty tents.
In one of those tents in particular, Dominick is slouched on a cot with his booted feet up on a rickety stool, the heavier bits of his armor unstrapped and put aside. They're annoying, you know. Across his legs is a broken wood board, there to serve the sole purpose of being a makeshift table to let him brace a large bound (slightly muddy) book of sketches.
Thick set footsteps sound along the edge of the tent, large oxen-like shadow cast against its walls like a puppet show as Tommas moves towards the entrance. The big man has to duck to enter, gentle pushing back the flap with a squint. He scans the tent, possibly looking for a feral wildcat that is not in residence with a low sigh. "Good day Dom," he greets, dragging a stool over and joining the engineer near his cot.
Dominick's green eyes flicker up and back down. "Good day, Tom." The echoed greeting comes from behind the paper that mostly hides the lower half of his face. "How's the local muck today?"
"Bit dusty, easy to get lost in as the previous days," Tommas admits, dragging a hand over his brow. "It's always the part of war they don't tell ya about, isn't it? When you're not nearly dying, you do an awful lot of sitting around."
"Which doesn't always lessen your chances of dying." Dominick mutters drily. "Just of your seeing it coming." He flips a page and folds both his calloused hands over his waist, shifting his feet. "You haven't seen Bryn lately, have you? I keep thinking he's here and he isn't, and that makes me worry that he's facedown somewhere he shouldn't be."
"Fair enough. Perk of being on the inside ring of a camp though, ain't it? You'd hear the others dying before you went," Tommas half-jokes, stretching his long legs out. "Nah. I haven't seen him nor my founderling, so long as they aren't both off and up to mischief…it'll be fine. A boy needs to run off some trouble."
"Founderling." Dominick's eyes flicker up again, narrowed in the same manner that cats prick their ears. "What founderling?"
"Scarce and skittish as a wildcat that one," Tommas mumbles, scratching lightly at his nose. His brows rise slightly as Dominick looks at him in that cattish manner, broad shoulders shuddering in a shrug. "I went for a ride the other day, found a wee thing living in the woods dead scared and spritely. Names Merel."
Dominick pulls his feet off the stool and lets his elbows down onto the board and open book. The wildly imaginative sketches on the paper seem to be of some kind of crossbow at first glance, but attached to some kind of larger contraption that's fairly bizarre to look at. "A Merel? Interesting. Is it like Bryn's age then?"
The drawings get a curious glance from Tommas, it's so rare that Dominick renders something that he even vaguely undestands. It earns a moment in curious contemplation, blue eyes flitting back towards Dominick with a nod. "Aye. Or within spitting distance at least, got a little bit of hellfire in her," he replies with a grin.
"Long as she doesn't bite. Don't think Bryn's quite ready for that yet." Dominick smirks. "Takes some fire in the boots to get up a good tree. Maybe she'll demonstrate. I might be able to use someone to go climbing after things in not long…say. Would you like to see something, Tom?"
"Nah. She might try to hit him with something if he doesn't behave himself though," Tommas replies brightly, scratching his fingers along the line of his jaw. "She climbs like a damn cat. I'm sure she'd be glad to be help." Fingers drumming against his knee, the big man looks towards Dominick with something flavored mildly with suspicion. "Sure," he drawls, pausing to add, "Is it the kind of something that I ought to be putting my armor on for beforehand?"
"Pff, it's just a drawing." Dominick points the end of his quill at the much larger man's face. "And look, I apologized for that chain breaking that time, didn't I. Just because it broke the joist doesn't mean it would have hurt you."
"Between you and Day, I have just long accepted that one of you will end me by the way of a surprise." Laughing easily, Tommas pulls his stool closer, so that he can get a better look at the drawing. Dominick's pointed quill is gently brushed away from his face with a wave of his large paw of a hand. "Aye. You did. Show me this drawing then?"
Dominick still looks miffed for all of half a second before he turns the sketchbook around on his knees. "There. Look." His finger pops the page, making the book flop. And it is a crossbow. A…large one. A Tommas of crossbows, if the lone humanoid figure drawn to scale beside it is any indication. Curved bow arms and a twisted rope hold a pointed bolt in place that by best guess is slightly over two feet long. "Tell me what you see." His long hands tent, tapping fingertips together.
((OOC For the curious, it's the Roman Scorpio. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ballista-quadrirotis.jpeg or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpio_(weapon) ))
A finger traces over the drawing, not touching it but hovering over it in the air as Tommas examines the lines rendered lovingly on the page. "That looks…like a really large crossbow, Dom. I've never seen one of that size though, that bolt would have to be about —" He breaks off, guessing the measure of the bolt against his arm. "Would that work?"
"Why not?" Dominick waves a hand over the page. "It's all just draw weight and draw length, Tom. Could one man draw this back? No and not even you could, my friend. But one man hasn't got to, you see." He points to the back of the weapon, drawing a circle around it in the air. "I'll put a spring system back here. Wound with a lever, it'll handle the draw and provide the force. Torsion, you see."
Tommas takes a moment to chew that over, staring at the drawing as if trying to make Dominick's words make sense to him. "Like…a catapult?" That has a lever. "The size of that bolt, could go clean through a man's horse."
"Well, like a catapult," Dominick says, sounding impatient with the comparison. "But much better. You don't aim a catapult — well, sort of. In the way you aim a charging elephant. But this, yes, exactly. I suppose it'd be heavy…but a horse could pull it or something. Now just imagine." He pushes the drawing to the side and scoots even further forward so he can use both hands to cut a swathe across the air. "Coming up on a field of Ironborn. They're clanging their pikes and shields and screaming and then there's us. On the other side. Infantry at the ready. And a whole line of these bows stretched across the grass. Can you see it now, Tom?"
A low breath sucked through his teeth, Tommas watches Dominick as he explains his vision of the weapon — clean and fierce as a dagger through the heart. "Hells. You could decimate and demoralize their whole front line," he whispers, wide-eyed.
"Yes!" Dominick's hand abruptly slams down on the splintered board, which creaks in protest. His green eyes fixed on Tommas, his jaw tightens there's a long second before the next sound. "Ow." He peels his hand off the board, a large splinter having lodged right into his palm, and makes a face at the blood. "Actually, kind of like that."
The big man jumps a little as Dominick's hand slams down into the board, flinching before he is startled into a laugh. "Your vision is so clear that you bring it to life, my friend," Tommas says, reaching out to turn Dominick's wrist so that the splinter might be removed. If so allowed to turn it, he'll pull it out sharply and without warning to remove it cleanly.
"Well, not exactly. It'd be the wood travelling, not the fles…-ouch!" Dominick's expression of pain is accompanied by a fairly childish grimace at something that no doubt didn't hurt that bad. "…flesh. Details. But you understand. And you see what I might need your little treehugger for, shortly. If the bolts don't split the tree down the middle first, that is."
"Near enough." Tommass waves the splinter, now torn free of Dominick's flesh, back and forth like the ticking of a pendulum. Details, indeed. "Aye. I see, they might go far of the mark — if they split the tree, you'll need me on hand, though. I assume I can watch?" Please.
"My friend." Dominick's face splits into a bright grin. "Make sure I'm behind you first? And you can shoot the bloody thing for me. Hell, you're better at it than I am…" He lifts a finger quickly. "And I don't just say that to anybody."
"Really?" Tommas brightens in return, then pauses somewhat thoughtfully before ceeding into a lopsided grin. If that seems like the kind of thing that might bite him in the ass, oh well. "Knight's honor," he swears, a cocky salute in hand.
Bite people in the ass? Dominick's contraptions? NEVER, kind of. "Excellent." He absently wipes drying blood off his hand onto the cot edge and re-settles the book back into place securely across his knees. "I've just got to find a carpenter and bowyer that have sticks in hand rather than up their arses and we'll be set." The optimistic understatements come naturally to him, not a hint of irony anywhere in sight.
Mostly. Kind of. Shaking his head with a low laugh, Tommas drops the splinter onto the ground, casually sweeping it under the bed with his food. "That sounds like a plan to me. Although might be rather hard to get them to come out of the woodwork, considering," he notes wryly.
"That's not even funny," Dominick observes with faint approval in his voice nonetheless. "But yes, I know. Perhaps I can talk Lord Kitt into some coin to ease their paths. Or something. Ask around for me, would you? We may have to wait and see if we're to move out soon."
"It was. You're just too deep into pining for your contraption to see it," Tommas replies, a slight curl to his lip. Rising slowly he gives Dominick a solid pat on the shoulder. "I'll do so. I'll keep an eye out for both the Lord Kitt and answers to your questions."
"Pine," Dominick brushes another splinter away, kicking his feet back up on the stool. "That's not funny either." He grabs his quill, starting to make a bunch of new excitable scribbles on the page. "Oh, and tell your squirrel to expect a job. Thanks." By the end of that he's not even paying attention to anything but the page.
"I will leaf you alone," Tommas choruses cheerfully, lazily saluting as the other man returns to his work in a flurry. That was also hilarious. What? "Will do." And with that, the big man slips out of the tent as easily as he came.