Don't Take What You Can't Keep (Shield City, Solsmiths)
Title: Don’t Take What You Can’t Keep
Universe: SHIELD CITY
Possessiveness: Original fiction. Mine. *hugs it close*
Characters/Pairings: Jethro Donovan (the Solsmith Founder)
Rating: PG
Word count: 815
Summary: Jethro Donovan was a poor, second-rate mage who founded one of the strongest Families in Shield City. He didn’t do it by being a nice guy.
Beta Thanks: Erm, nope, nada, just me.
Author notes: This is a character study for an original character in an original universe. There’s more back-story than you can shake a Sequoia at, so I’m going to ramble at the end for the interested. Concrit welcome!
Most people knew that the Shield was going to go up, like the City knew what a plague felt like, rumors and warnings creeping through the streets long before a man saw his first bloody cough. Still, when the glowing sheet of power was raised, walling the denizens of the City off from the rest of the world, they felt it like a blow to the gut. Suddenly, their imprisonment wasn’t rumor, but truth and everyone knew.
Very few had a plan.
Jethro Donovan stood in the abandoned the electronics laboratory where, up until three days previous, he had been a janitor and sometimes research aid. Now, the equipment-non-functioning prototypes and machines too heavy for the academics and scientists to carry with them when they fled-was powered down and silent, draped in tarps against the dust and prying eyes.
Surrounded by the stillness of their outlines, breathing in the silence and old metallic tang of magic, Jethro was reminded of the fantastical stories of his childhood. How the six slumbering dragons had woken for a little child and put the Emperor and his kin on the thrown (forever and ever ‘til the Seventh rises, hail, hail and sing their praise). In those tales, dating from before the Empire’s founding, orphan children won the hearts of the Dragon King’s daughter, and fools stumbled, without effort or plan, upon endless treasures. Such people were smiled upon by gods and ancestors.
Jethro thought those stories were stupid. Insulting, even. In Jethro’s world, nothing was given away free, no treasure was unguarded, and the best a Donovan could get from a Dragon King-or a petty lordling-was a steady job and a roof over his head.
But standing there, staring at the graceful machines he had cleaned, cared for, and, in some cases, built-always without credit, usually without acknowledgment-Jethro wasn’t so sure. The researchers had known they wouldn’t come back, but they had carefully preserved each machine, kept copies of their schematics in the locked archive. It would have violated their most basic instincts as scientists and thinkers to destroy what they had spent a lifetime building, and many hoped that when the Shield came down- in decades, maybe, more likely centuries-what they had done would be of use to their intellectual descendents. They had believed their work secure, untouchable; because no one but themselves could understand the complexities they had created.
Jethro stepped up and pulled the sheet from one of the machines. He gently traced the external curves that funneled power from the environment to the machine’s heart, and the mostly decorative glass loops that flashed with bottled lightning during the process.
He wasn’t a great mage. He couldn’t have leveled so much as an outhouse with his magical might. But when it came to wires, to technology, to the line where magic became pure energy, and that energy could be made to submit to a human mind without regard to strength, his small amounts of power, carefully applied, became a force to be reckoned with. This technology, laid out before him like a maiden on her wedding night, like a purse of gold in the street, seemed like a blessing from the gods, a self-thinking sword flying to his receptive hands.
Jethro had never thought of himself as a hero-still didn’t-but he had always been a scavenger, a collector, a man who recognized opportunities when they fell into his lap and used them to the full extent of his abilities. He had won his wife that way, spying weakness in her suitors (all of them unworthy of the finest woman he had ever known) and ruthlessly exploiting them to his own gain. She was his, now, in ways more permanent than marriage, children or vows, fates cast together, her mind and will united to his own. The coat he wore, too, he’d taken off another man, a petty lordling drunk in the wrong side of town, the fine leather and craftsmanship too much to resist. He would dare anyone to take it from him now, with the spells he had stitched into the lining, the curses in the cuffs that purred against his skin when he shook another man’s hand.
He would be damned-and carry his family down, too, the failures of the fathers echoing down unending generations-before letting this these riches go to waste. What had his long-forgotten ancestors done to doom Jethro, his brothers, sisters, cousins, and kin to a life of poverty in the filthy City, surrounded by factories, monsters, radiation, corruption, and derision?
Jethro would not make the same mistake. With the knowledge he held, and the treasures these fools had left behind, he would build a paradise for his family amid the filth of lesser lives. And may the Ancestors help the fool who thought to try and take that away.
~*~
{Notes}
Shield City is a place in my head. It was a major manufacturing and magical research city on the edge of a Renaissance/Industrial Revolution, until the point when the pollution from its factories, and the side effects of the research (which often involved ripping holes in the fabric of the universe and seeing what came out) started having a negative and contagious effect on the citizens. Think zombies, cancer, giant Gila monsters and two-headed babies.
After they walled the place off, the various factions, socioeconomic classes and species (do you know Haylan? there’s a small community of his species in Shield City, and that’s about all the overlap between the two stories so far) fought it out, and the strongest rose to power.
The Solsmiths are inbred, crazy, mildly hive-minded, and kind of nasty (I have my favorites), but effectively provide electricity to the entire City and are the most feared/respected group of mages in a place crawling with magic and talent.
This story is hypothetically the first in a series designed to present several Solsmith moral and cultural values in a practical, concrete way (mainly to clear them up for myself, though hopefully they are enjoyable). Some examples: Family is Family; Keep your House Clean and If You Can’t Win the Game Change the Rules.
Don’t they sound nice? :P
Universe: SHIELD CITY
Possessiveness: Original fiction. Mine. *hugs it close*
Characters/Pairings: Jethro Donovan (the Solsmith Founder)
Rating: PG
Word count: 815
Summary: Jethro Donovan was a poor, second-rate mage who founded one of the strongest Families in Shield City. He didn’t do it by being a nice guy.
Beta Thanks: Erm, nope, nada, just me.
Author notes: This is a character study for an original character in an original universe. There’s more back-story than you can shake a Sequoia at, so I’m going to ramble at the end for the interested. Concrit welcome!
Most people knew that the Shield was going to go up, like the City knew what a plague felt like, rumors and warnings creeping through the streets long before a man saw his first bloody cough. Still, when the glowing sheet of power was raised, walling the denizens of the City off from the rest of the world, they felt it like a blow to the gut. Suddenly, their imprisonment wasn’t rumor, but truth and everyone knew.
Very few had a plan.
Jethro Donovan stood in the abandoned the electronics laboratory where, up until three days previous, he had been a janitor and sometimes research aid. Now, the equipment-non-functioning prototypes and machines too heavy for the academics and scientists to carry with them when they fled-was powered down and silent, draped in tarps against the dust and prying eyes.
Surrounded by the stillness of their outlines, breathing in the silence and old metallic tang of magic, Jethro was reminded of the fantastical stories of his childhood. How the six slumbering dragons had woken for a little child and put the Emperor and his kin on the thrown (forever and ever ‘til the Seventh rises, hail, hail and sing their praise). In those tales, dating from before the Empire’s founding, orphan children won the hearts of the Dragon King’s daughter, and fools stumbled, without effort or plan, upon endless treasures. Such people were smiled upon by gods and ancestors.
Jethro thought those stories were stupid. Insulting, even. In Jethro’s world, nothing was given away free, no treasure was unguarded, and the best a Donovan could get from a Dragon King-or a petty lordling-was a steady job and a roof over his head.
But standing there, staring at the graceful machines he had cleaned, cared for, and, in some cases, built-always without credit, usually without acknowledgment-Jethro wasn’t so sure. The researchers had known they wouldn’t come back, but they had carefully preserved each machine, kept copies of their schematics in the locked archive. It would have violated their most basic instincts as scientists and thinkers to destroy what they had spent a lifetime building, and many hoped that when the Shield came down- in decades, maybe, more likely centuries-what they had done would be of use to their intellectual descendents. They had believed their work secure, untouchable; because no one but themselves could understand the complexities they had created.
Jethro stepped up and pulled the sheet from one of the machines. He gently traced the external curves that funneled power from the environment to the machine’s heart, and the mostly decorative glass loops that flashed with bottled lightning during the process.
He wasn’t a great mage. He couldn’t have leveled so much as an outhouse with his magical might. But when it came to wires, to technology, to the line where magic became pure energy, and that energy could be made to submit to a human mind without regard to strength, his small amounts of power, carefully applied, became a force to be reckoned with. This technology, laid out before him like a maiden on her wedding night, like a purse of gold in the street, seemed like a blessing from the gods, a self-thinking sword flying to his receptive hands.
Jethro had never thought of himself as a hero-still didn’t-but he had always been a scavenger, a collector, a man who recognized opportunities when they fell into his lap and used them to the full extent of his abilities. He had won his wife that way, spying weakness in her suitors (all of them unworthy of the finest woman he had ever known) and ruthlessly exploiting them to his own gain. She was his, now, in ways more permanent than marriage, children or vows, fates cast together, her mind and will united to his own. The coat he wore, too, he’d taken off another man, a petty lordling drunk in the wrong side of town, the fine leather and craftsmanship too much to resist. He would dare anyone to take it from him now, with the spells he had stitched into the lining, the curses in the cuffs that purred against his skin when he shook another man’s hand.
He would be damned-and carry his family down, too, the failures of the fathers echoing down unending generations-before letting this these riches go to waste. What had his long-forgotten ancestors done to doom Jethro, his brothers, sisters, cousins, and kin to a life of poverty in the filthy City, surrounded by factories, monsters, radiation, corruption, and derision?
Jethro would not make the same mistake. With the knowledge he held, and the treasures these fools had left behind, he would build a paradise for his family amid the filth of lesser lives. And may the Ancestors help the fool who thought to try and take that away.
~*~
{Notes}
Shield City is a place in my head. It was a major manufacturing and magical research city on the edge of a Renaissance/Industrial Revolution, until the point when the pollution from its factories, and the side effects of the research (which often involved ripping holes in the fabric of the universe and seeing what came out) started having a negative and contagious effect on the citizens. Think zombies, cancer, giant Gila monsters and two-headed babies.
After they walled the place off, the various factions, socioeconomic classes and species (do you know Haylan? there’s a small community of his species in Shield City, and that’s about all the overlap between the two stories so far) fought it out, and the strongest rose to power.
The Solsmiths are inbred, crazy, mildly hive-minded, and kind of nasty (I have my favorites), but effectively provide electricity to the entire City and are the most feared/respected group of mages in a place crawling with magic and talent.
This story is hypothetically the first in a series designed to present several Solsmith moral and cultural values in a practical, concrete way (mainly to clear them up for myself, though hopefully they are enjoyable). Some examples: Family is Family; Keep your House Clean and If You Can’t Win the Game Change the Rules.
Don’t they sound nice? :P