The Owlchemist - A Rimworm story

[polarpotato]

Taylor's Tinker fugue faded, she'd felt her mind racing with the possibilities she could come up with. Ships to travel the stars, power armor, plasma weapons. All her pain, all the suffering the trio had inflicted upon her had pushed her so far she had triggered, becoming the holy grail of triggers, a Tinker.
Looking down at her work of half a day, Taylor's heart sank. Her awesome Tinker power made a pair of socks. Worse, they were a pretty Poor pair of socks. She could feel her left eye begin to twitch.

***​

Several days later she still felt the cathartic feeling from just letting herself feel her emotions. As she was taking a walk in the park near her house, she felt her old flip phone light up. On it was a text message that read.

Quest: 'Praetor in Peril.' (Y/N)​

Taylor looked at her old flip phone as though it had grown a second head. Her dad had gotten it for her after the incident, and he was the only person who should have her number. Unsure if it was some text message based game, and kinda curious, Taylor hesitantly texted back a (Y).
There were several long moments where nothing happened. Just as she was starting to feel kinda dumb she felt a blaring warning in her head. Glancing around for a moment she saw what she could only describe as a blue skinned cape with cat ears, wearing the reddest outfit she'd ever seen.
The woman ran towards her, with a fluffy little bunny in hot pursuit. The odd cape ran past and Taylor felt like she was on autopilot. Grabbing a stick and rushing to do battle with the terrible beast. The bunny lept, and Taylor did battle with the beast of Caerbannog.

***​

Battered, bruised and bleeding, Taylor stood victorious over her fierce foe. She glanced over at the odd looking cape who she'd rescued. The woman gave her a dismissive huff before tutting at Taylor's tattered outfit.

Before Taylor could so much as say anything, some kind of reddish tinkertech shuttle touched down before both of them. The blue skinned cape stepped on, the doors closed and moments later the shuttle flew off.

Slumping to the ground, Taylor watched where the shuttle flew off to in total disbelief. She'd almost missed her phone dinging again. When Taylor eventually gathered her wits about her, she pulled her phone and glanced at it.

'Taylor Hebert Novice Nobilitauce Ceremony' (Y/Y)​

Blinking at the message a few times, she muttered to herself. "An offer you can't refuse huh?" With a sigh Taylor texted back a. (Y)

Less than thirty seconds later another red shuttle, looking exactly like the first, swooped down from the sky and touched down thirty feet before her. She'd half expected that same blue skin to be getting off the shuttle. Instead a tactical team of four odd looking humanoids emerged. All of them wore some manner of tinkertech, range from futuristic rifles to a range of power armor. They moved out quickly securing the area before a masked man in a prestigious looking red robe emerged.

The masked figure approached Taylor and held out his scepter. In a loud official tone pulled from some knighting ceremony, the man declared. "Taylor Hebert, by the powers invested in me, I pronounce you a Freeholder Nobilitauce of the Orphan Empire!"

Accompanying this pronouncement reality bent and twisted around them. The air itself was visibly rippled and distorted. For the briefest of moments Taylor saw the whole of the earth, an infinite realm of possibilities. Even as she saw them, she saw many possible futures cut simply because she saw them. Others shifted, paths changed, reality resettled on its new course.

The world was her oyster, and in that moment she felt she could crack it. After that moment however the feeling passed. She could still feel that she'd changed, more attuned with the world around her, but without the feeling of being able to solo an Endbringer.

As she finally came back to herself, Taylor noticed one of the guards standing over her. A lupine humanoid with a small booklet in his hand. She hesitantly took it with a nod. The figure nodded back and moved to join the retreating figure of the red robed oddball and his guards.

As she looked at the booklet with dull, tired eyes she heard something that didn't sound like English, followed by harsh words in the same language. Taylor glanced up just in time to see the figure that handed her the booklet take a bone shattering punch from a power armored fist. It said something about her state of mental exhaustion that she watched the pair of non-human bodyguards punching it out in power armor with barely any more interest than some ad for toothpaste.

Judging from the lack of reaction from the other two guards, this kind of thing wasn't unexpected. Personally Taylor felt like the guards were being unprofessional but what she'd read online told her this wasn't uncommon with cape groups over a certain size.

Feeling as though her ability to feel dumbfounded was on cooldown as she watched the two heavily armored brawl she glanced away from them and to the booklet in her hands. To her surprise she was able to read the odd vaguely Latin characters. 'The Art of Thinking in Spirals, an Imperial Beginner's Guide to Cultivation.' The cover depicts a crepuscular sky, with stars visible. A figure sitting seemingly contemplating a swirling blackhole star.

A heavy thunk pulled her from her examination. Glancing up Taylor watched as one of the guards got punched into the ground. With mild curiosity, Taylor watched as the one that had given her the book lightly dusted himself off before moving with the others, standing at attention.

The beaten soldier struggled for a moment before eventually slowly starting to stand. At first he limped towards the shuttle, but with each step his footing became easier and by the time he'd gotten to the shuttle the guard almost didn't seem hurt.

More than the fight, that caught Taylor's interest, her mind working through what little medical knowledge she knew. At the moment she didn't know how someone might go about that, but her power seemed to give a gentle tug, as if to offer a way she could learn.

When the injured guard rejoined the group the five of them filed onto the shuttlecraft. Taylor noticed that the compact Tinkertech weapon of one of the brawling guards was dropped to the ground. For a brief moment, Taylor wanted to do the right and heroic thing, call out to them about their forgotten weapon. That moment passed as a more tired, mercenary side of her waited to see if they'd notice.

Not long after that the shuttle took off and Taylor was left alone in the park with a dead rabbit, and an interesting piece of tinkertech. As much as Taylor wanted to have a mental break, and just let the emotions currently battering at her mental dam free, she had a job to do. Following her tried and tested coping method of repressing herself, Taylor went about grabbing the tinkertech and putting both it and the book into her backpack.

Walking home as inconspicuous as she could, Taylor watched as Armsmaster zipped past her on his trademarked 'ArmCycle.' The tinkertech engine purring in an alien way that made her want to get into its guts and see what made it tick. As it was, however, Taylor just watched it drive on past. She'd just struggled with a bunny, the idea of trying anything with an experienced hero like Armsmaster was just absurd.

The thought hadn't left her as she rode the bus home. To distract herself from her kleptic thoughts, she pulled out the cultivation book and began to read. Had it come from any other place, Taylor would have written it off as one more of the many many new-age religious groups that tried to find religious or mystical means of gaining power. Only this guide had been given to her by a group of possibly aliens, or capes, or something.

That and her power seemed to approve of what she was reading, as if it was telling her that what she was reading was correct. It was something she'd noticed before when she was looking up things on the internet. She got small nudges towards looking up certain things. It was like having a word at the tip of her tongue. She both knew things and didn't know them, but had an idea on how to figure it out.

As she walked towards the empty house she called home, she looked at the broken step as though it was an overly examined metaphor for the world. If her mother, an English teacher, would tell her students that the broken step symbolized the tired apathy in a decaying world. How small, fixable problems were often ignored because eventually something else would break. That only great things needed attention, why fix the first step if the house was already broken.

As Taylor stared at the broken step, anger bubbled within her. Marching forward she pulled out the rotting remains of the original steps before she began measuring how large a replacement needed to be. Like a helpful companion, Taylor could feel the faint bits of knowledge like crumbs in her mind. Her power filled in the gaps of knowledge with the experience she was getting from hands-on learning. The rough measurements turned into looking at where the rotting wood connected to the steps. She looked at the old rusty nails that held the stairs together.

There was nothing profound in the knowledge her power gave her, no grand revelation to the secrets of step repair. Instead, she simply had hints and nudges, thoughts on things she hadn't considered before. Like taking a drill and cleaning out the hole where the screws had been and replacing it with wooden plugs. Using wood screws that were made to be exposed to the elements.

She took a step back and looked at the missing step, and in her mind's eye she slowly saw a metaphor she thought her mother might have liked. If the stairs were a metaphor for her power; then it was that she needed to understand what each step needed, and if she put in the effort, she could build herself a staircase to heaven.

Authors note: much of this will be based on Rimworld + mods, that said I'm not going to be doing dice rolls, rather what fits or is funny for the story. I am not going to follow the mods rules to the letter, but mostly will go off of what vibes together. If there is interest I can give my mod list but for the most part it will be just Vanilla expanded.


Special thanks to Melsa for beta work and to El Cuervo for doing a great job on the cover art.

El Cuervo Links and Social Media

Everywhere you may find me

elcuervo.carrd.co



Beast of Caerbannog is the murder rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail​

 

[polarpotato]

After disinfecting and dressing the scratches from her battle with the beast of Caerbannog, Taylor looked over her loot. On her bed lay a genuine piece of advanced technology. Unless her, admittedly limited understanding of weapon design was mistaken, it was a close quarters gun. Something like a high tech equivalent of an uzi.

Part of her felt like it was too good to be true, a mistake, or an odd chance. however the karmic balance turned out, she had something that would boost her start massively. Instead of having to scrape together bits and bobs to make something to protect herself, she had something that could put the hurt on even someone like Hookwolf. Moreover it was something compact that she could hide, she wouldn't be walking down the street with an assault rifle looking thing.

Putting her hands on the oddly inhuman ergonomic grip, she practiced getting a feel for it. As she aimed down the sights in the way her power nudged her into feeling comfortable holding the compact weapon, there was a solid sounding thunk from the gun. With a loud beep a voice that spoke in an odd way that was both understandable and clearly not english. "Biocode not recognized, firing mechanism locked."

Taylor stared at the weapon for a minute while her mind tried to comprehend the strange capricious nature of the universe. Her mental dam broke and Taylor's bottled up emotions flooded through her as she fell into a fit of mad laughter that would have certainly had her sent off to a padded room if her father was home.

Her laughter turned to tears, and when those ran their course, Taylor felt blissfully hollow. Staring at the ceiling Taylor thought of where her first step lay. Her mind drifted from the book on Cultivation, a path to gain new and strange powers. Another path was to research new and interesting topics, to build the technologies she would use to ascend to the heavens. Eventually, she made a decision, grabbing what little savings she had, she checked what power tools were stored in the basement. The first step, Taylor decided, was to fix her front step.

***​

Several months later found Taylor late one friday night, costumed up and driving a Mule of a truck that her power helped her scrape together. It wasn't a high tech thing, rather, her power helped her fix an old truck and put together an engine that ran on a substance she'd taken to call chemfuel. While it was a far cry from the cold-fusion or pocket sized nuclear reactors that other tinkers got, chemfuel was useful. She'd made a still, that converted biological matter into the energy dense liquid and from there was able to power her generators. It would have been great if she had easy access to trees or other vegetation, but unfortunately industrial districts rarely had any. She had to get creative, not particularly wanting to relive the memories of her early experiences; she ended the train of thought.

Pulling up to the front gate of the scrap yard, she mused that after her fishing trip tonight, she would probably need new transportation. Her trusty old Mule had served her well, but its limits were beginning to show.

She fixed her mask, making sure it was snuggly on her face. The mask was originally inspired by the ones worn by plague doctors, it didn't stay that way. It was a closer fit with owlish accents to fit her cape persona of the Owlchemist. The rest of her outfit was more mundane, a dark leather duster with a ballistic weave inner lining. Below that her dark outfit looked like something one of the sharper dressed capes might wear. While the outfit was meant to give off the impression of something stylish, it was geared more towards practicality. Her wool sweater-like shirt had pectoral padding, combined with her thick leathery pants having a masculine cut to them was intended to give some obfuscation to her identity. The leather corset-like number that came up just to her ribcage might have looked like something to emphasize her false pectorals, in reality it was made to be able to stop a knife to the gut. In the several months she'd had her power, she'd become a deft hand at tailoring, it was one of the cheaper things she could practice her hand eye coordination on.

Glancing to the camera's watching the gate, Taylor's eyes unfocused momentarily as a pulse of psionic energy emanated out from her. Taylor's psionic technomancy rewriting the harddrives with a loop of a painfully annoying earworm that was taking over Earth Aleph, some girl named Rebecca singing about Friday.

Her technomancy was the result of her cultivating the psionic power found in the booklet given to her. Rather than delving into the ways of Martial might or elemental fury, she had gotten into something that synergized more with her own power. Her psionic were more subtle then the great arcs of electricity she'd seen in the examples. Instead she had something out of a cyberpunk novel, able to touch technology with her mind.

With another psionic pulse, she triggered the electric gate to open for her as she pulled her Mule into the scrap yard. The large almost landfill-like junkyard was a familiar haunt for her at this point, she'd gone fishing here the two previous nights, and tonight she was feeling like she was going to get a bite. Pulling up to what was roughly the center of the scrapyard she pulled the parking break and began setting up shop.

Popping the tailgate off and replacing it with a ramp, Taylor began reviving her minions. First were her laborers, a dozen vaguely child-like chucks of semi-sentient stone constructs given life by her psionic power.

Following closely behind them were her Scraphounds. Made from scraps metal they had a werewolf-like appearance, though they were only the size of a chimp. While certainly viciously looking, they were not particularly great in a fight. The metal they were made from left them slow and cumbersome. The counterpoint to that is they could take a beating and keep going long after they should have otherwise expired.

Taylor watched as her minions poured forth, a small smile on her face. Her Scraphounds bounced back and forth like happy dogs let out to play, while her golems waddled off like children looking for anything interesting. She adjusted her Owlchemist mask again, partly out of nerves, partly because of how unused she was to wearing it.

Rolling a heavy lead box out of the back of her truck she deposited it a fair distance away from her operation. She then set up a stool with a geiger counter on it, then grabbed her large pair of blacksmithing tongs to take off the lid marked with the radioactive symbol. It had originally started on a lark, with a very expensive purchase, but the first night she was out here her geiger counter started crackling.

While she watched her minions move about her thoughts drifted a bit. She was unsure if it had been someone unscrupulous, dumping radioactive material from the Behemoth attack on New York almost 15 years ago. Though more Taylor learned, not just of sciences but of the world at large, she found the maxim 'Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence' to be correct more often or not. She doubted Kaiser, a literal nazi, would knowingly dump radioactive material, if only because of the knock on effects. Out of sight, out of mind only worked when your shower water didn't glow in the dark.

What she figured was more likely, was that during one of the New York cleanup there was some contracting to use Brockton bays many many warehouses during the slowdown and some fell through the cracks. A foreclosure here, merger there, and a pile of radioactive metal was left in the junkyard.

After the first night when her geiger counter started rattling Taylor decided she needed to do some cleanup. The day after she slept off her late night, she'd welded together her lead crate and painted her Owlchemist symbol on the lid along with a radioactive warning.

As the pile of usable components grew, Taylor started to worry that her fishing trip tonight was going to be a bust. This was the third week she'd shown up, and the thought of leaving the box of radioactive materials in her warehouse over another school week again was something she'd rather avoid. Combine that with the easy pickings here rapidly disappearing meant she'd need to move on soon anyways. There were rumors that the Protectorate as well as the Goose Steppers watched this place and a surprise meeting with Hookwolf was something she'd rather avoid.

The soft sound of an alien purr caught Taylor's attention, it would seem that her favorite hometown hero had arrived. Grinning behind her Owlchemist mask Taylor took a moment to focus herself. With a mental compulsion, she commanded her scraphounds to lie down and freeze. As they did, they looked like a dozen amature metalwork statues, each in a slightly different pose.

The ArmsCycle rumbled through the large scrapyard till it got to her spot. For Taylor it felt like a euphoric tide, her technomancy was only a feather touch on his tinkertech, but it felt so much more than normal technology, it felt almost alive.

Before her the ArmCycle came to the stop as the leader of the Brockton Bay Protectorate dismounted in the most heroic way possible. She could almost feel the sensors taking reads of the place, how his readings of her were thrown off by the crate that was nearly full of radioactive material. Armsmaster was already marching towards her, his signature weapon in hand, the man radiated heroic gumption, Taylor didn't need to fake her squeal of excitement. "Armsmaster! I'm wearing your underwear!"

She could almost see the line of text in his helmet that read that statement as 'true.' He froze, his expression one of a man with deep regret for agreeing to something. The consternation written on his face was a delight to behold as he visibly tried to work out a response to her statement.

Feeling magnanimous, Taylor pulled out a grenade launcher that had been resting on the small of her back and fired an EMP grenade at him. To his credit, even distracted as he was, Halbeard's weapon flashed out like lightning and bifurcated the grenade before it could detonate.

There was a pregnant pause as the two of them looked at each other, before they both sprung into action. As Armsmaster rushed forward, Taylor commanded her Scraphounds to attack before gathering her focus for a cyber attack.

The air around Taylor distorted in psionic waves as her will fought against the almost living machine essence of Armsmasters armor as his halberd cleaved through scraphound after scraphound as though they were paper mache and not steel constructs. Her hounds showed their true value however, even as they were cleaved in two, they still kept going so long as there was something attached to their heads.

It took Taylor three seconds to finish her hack of Armsmasters armor as the hero froze in place as his armor locked up on him. It might have been seen to others as a world record, but three seconds in the face of a whirlwind of steel cleaving terror was far far too long. There was a brief moment where the hero seemed to want to say something to her before Taylor pulled out her dart gun and shot him in his neck. Half a moment later a little light blinks green, showing that it had successfully delivered its payload. Taylor wasn't taking any chances.

"You." Armsmaster snarled. "You f-" Taylor sighed in disappointment as Armsmaster began a most unheroic rant, one really should never meet their heroes.

Sauntering up to him Taylor pulled out her stun baton, with a flick of her wrist it expanded like a nightstick. Taylor putting the stunner under his chin, Taylor tilted his head up slightly to stare into her mask. Seeing his rage in spite of the sedative coursing through him, Taylor gave him a disappointed tut before activating the stunner. Armsmaster's body involuntarily tensed up for a moment before relaxing, the sedative finally taking hold.

Turning to the ArmCycle, Taylor took a much more gentle approach to hacking it, like taming a wild beast with soft words and gentle pats instead of bludgeoning it into submission. She spent a moment admiring it, before remotely activating its engine and commanding it to drive itself onto the bed of her Mule.

She'd set up a baler, a simple set up used to bale hay, christmas trees, or in this case a Tinkertech motorcycle. Attached to the hopper was a faraday sack, cloth covering the wire mesh that could cut out any mundane signals. Hopefully, at least. Armsmaster could have created some quantum entanglement nonsense. If that was the case then Taylor would have to look forward to being the bay's newest Ward.

Looking from the baler and all the extra space around the ArmsCycle then back to Armsmaster. Her original plan had been to EMP then run, but he was down and she had full access to his systems, even his signal. She paused for a moment to consider.

Her power had played with her heartstrings and followed the rules of its little game to the letter. Her technomancer abilities had taught her exactly how to build the tinkertech gun she'd devoured. It also let know that she needed tinkertech to build the workbench needed to make it, as well as more advanced tinkertech components to make the gun.

Armsmaster was out cold, and there was no way she'd get a chance like this again. Her eyes rested on the halberd that cut through steel as though it wasn't even there, and made up her mind, it wasn't like he'd be any friendlier with her for only stealing his motorcycle.

Psionic energy pulsed out from her, the air distorting as though waves of heat rippled out from her. Within her mind she copied Armsmasters communication logs, his commanding monotone voice, already like a recording was easy to duplicate. She mentally stored as much information she could steal off his suits servers on a large harddrive she carried with her for future use before commanding his armor to begin its 'disembarkation' cycle. The back of the armor opened up and the still standing suit let the sedated Armsmaster flop onto the ground.

Underneath the muscle like cords of his armor, Armsmaster wore a skinsuit reminiscent of a surfers wetsuit but looked significantly more hightech. Part of Taylor wanted to take that as well, getting both the interface and the armor.

There was also the problem that his helmet was part of the whole, rather than a detachable element. Studiously avoiding looking at his face, Taylor marched to the passenger side of her Mule. She pulled out a ski mask before marching back like a teenage boy walking through the women's section straining to not see anything. Blindly she put the ski mask over Armsmasters face the best she could before turning to the armor.

With a series of commands that felt almost like she was inside the suit itself. Deactivating the halberd before collapsing it into a surprisingly compact size, Taylor puppeted the armor into the baler. Before she closed it up, she began spoofing the ArmCycle and armors various transponders, creating a signal ghost the moment she sealed up the tinkertech.

Feeling the sudden need to rush as she created a false chase out of the scrap yard and rapidly going deep into the nearby E88's area of 'controlled' territory. While she did that she also commanded all of her still living minions to drop what they had unless it was on her very small must have list and to load the Mule. After a minute of loading scrounged materials and the damaged remains of her loyal Scraphounds Taylor decided it was time to go. With a mental command she ordered everyone to load up.

Ten minutes later she sent a ping to the PRT servers to pick up Armsmaster from the scrap yard, along with a warning about the sealed box of radioactive waste. She was pretty sure the note she left for Armsmaster wasn't enough of an apology, but it would be impolite to not leave something.

A red blur zipped past her Mule, headed towards the scrap yard. Taylor could help cracking a smile, tonight had been a very successful fishing trip. The previously annoying earworm started bubbling up and Taylor found herself singing. "Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday!"

 

[Travisplo]

Pfffft. Fun, but cracky. Honestly, could probably feel more serious if it had been slow-rolled out. Gotta love seeing Rimworld out in the wild though.

Wonder which Psycaster Trees Taylor has unlocked- you know, besides Technomancer. Maybe Harmonist, since her cape name is Owlchemist, in reference to Alchemy, and Transmutation? Would be useful if so, for access to Heat Focus, not to mention Mind Control. Or Transmutation, when combined with Technomancer's Enchant Quality to boost the value of something first, before transmuting it.

Would be funny for her to go Nightstalker tree too, just to fuck with people making them think she can copy powers, considering Grue's Darkness is one of the most basic powers in that tree.


I wonder what the Shards think of their new neighbors, the Archotechs. Considering they do basically the same "job", linking cross-dimensionally/psychically to provide powers to individuals. ...Now I'm wondering what a Heat Pearl would do to a Parahuman.

 

[Polish_Polisher]

Looks fun

 

[Tili]

painfully annoying earworm that was taking over Earth Aleph, some girl named Rebecca singing about Friday.

Click to shrink...

You villain! You did not have to remind us of that travesty of a song!

 

[polarpotato]

You villain! You did not have to remind us of that travesty of a song!

Click to shrink...

XD

I will say, looking her up, Rebecca Black has some really good songs these days. It is not my first choice in music but if they popped up on my playlist I don't think I'd skip them.