two kinds of mysterious floating rock

[rockeye_stonetoe]

Nick is minding his own business, collecting floatgrass and onions from a random island a fair bit south of the equator and wondering when it'll rain again, when someone rather rudely appears directly above him.

Comments

[greatestgift]

Sable decides that whatever else she might be able to do about the storm, not distracting Nick or interfering with his flying is probably the first thing to try.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

The ship keeps going up. Groundsense will be able to detect that there is a large ball of on-fire about a mile and a half above them by now.

Nick pulls some levers and the air starts to smell like rotten eggs. They stop going up so quickly, but they're still going up.

[greatestgift]

"...Would lots of weight help?" inquires Sable, pulling some Terraria-objects out of her pockets.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

Nick freezes for half a second - then back to the controls, shouting, "Yes! Preferably balanced! In the middle of the ship or on the bottom - we can't tip over or the engines will stop."

[greatestgift]

"Got it!"

She starts filling available space with inexplicably stable stacks of gold coins, preferring low central placement where possible. The coin-piles appear in, what else, exact two-foot cubes, and they stay firmly stuck in place regardless of the ship's movements.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

The ship very quickly stops going up. After a few piles, Nick yells, "Stop! Be ready to disappear them when we exit the stream!"

It might be obvious, about three minutes later, when they exit the stream. The ship starts going down so quickly that it feels exactly like free-fall for the first second or so.

[greatestgift]

Sable rapidly miniaturizes all the coin piles.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

And the ship comes to a shuddering (relative) halt.

"We should be safe for now," Nick says, "Firestorms suck up all the weather around them. All the same, I think we need to head back to safer parts of the world now."

[greatestgift]

"Agreed."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

Nick has to come and - carefully, carefully - restart one of the engines. Sable could help with this, groundsense gives her a clear enough idea of what it's doing and how it works.

[greatestgift]

Sable helps.

"I wish I had a bigger groundsense range. The storm was only a little too far to sense when it grabbed us. But I guess I can learn how to read the air currents if I'm here long enough."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"Cheer up, your magic sense is kicking mine out of the park. I only get weight information, you get much more, and I only get it for a range of about 500 meters. And yeah, reading the air currents is a valuable skill. It's hard to explain what kind of currents mean what, the whole thing is really intuitive."

[greatestgift]

"I guess I'm just annoyed that I almost had enough range to give us advance warning, but didn't quite. Oh well."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

Shrug. "We survived. If we'd gotten closer we probably could have bailed out and used the Terraria wings. I'd be much more upset if you could have warned me and didn't, or if you caused the storm. But your the weight thing saved my ship with only a little battering, for which I am grateful. Next time try not to take all the weight away again quite so suddenly, though - this much jerking around isn't good for a ship made of floatstone."

[greatestgift]

"Okay."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

So they start the engine. This takes about fifteen minutes, and then it's chugging along with a slow little huf-huf-huf-huf sound. "Great, now let's get as far north as possible before sunset and set down on an island. You don't fly at night, too easy to hit something."

[greatestgift]

"Makes sense."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"So far we've just been - you showing me cool weird things and me being confused by them. What do you want out of all this? How should I pay you?"

[greatestgift]

Sable shrugs.

"What I want, ultimately, is to go home. If I can manage to set up a functioning interdimensional transport network so I can go back and forth between home and Terraria and here, so much the better. While I'm stuck in this world, I might as well solve any interesting problems I happen to come across. You can help me figure out how my stuff works here, and help me do interesting things like build big islands, and let me eat your strawberries, but it seems like apart from food most of the material resources of this world are things I don't need so you might as well keep them."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"This kind of thing is so far outside the scope of what usually happens. I've spent twenty years growing plants, making things, flying a ship around, and I was prepared to do that for the rest of my life. Interesting problems, heh."

"Well... The first thing I'd do if you make me a big island is start a farm, or maybe sell some other people pieces of the island and get them to start a farm. Or we could try to add to existing islands - most big towns would rather have more space, we can help 'em out."

For now, though, it's dinnertime. There are still a couple of foods Sable hasn't tried yet, including mushrooms from the rooftop garden. At least they're not the same mushrooms.

[greatestgift]

They are not the same mushrooms! They are new, different, exciting mushrooms. Sable is so pleased about Cloudbank food.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"Wait until you try meat. Meat is delicious, just expensive."

The conversation dies down after dinner - Nick flies north for a couple more hours, but then carefully maneuvers the ship onto an uninhabited island, then asks Sable to deploy some heavy things to help keep it there. The island sinks a little from the extra weight, but it's pretty big and their destination is 'down' as well as north, anyway.

Then: Bedtime. Sable can have a hammock if she wants, though she probably has a Terraria-bed she can put down.

[greatestgift]

She does in fact put down a Terraria-bed. Terraria miniaturization: so handy.