Marithine
Once, a motarch desired a sandship: those vast engine-fortresses of the desert, ploughing like inevitability across the endless sands.
She did not have one. Though from time to time Rust Banner possessed several (and from time to time lost them through trade or sudden abandonment), her particular clan did not.
Never in a hundred lifetimes could she afford one - a poor clan from an (occasionally) poor tribe would not buy a product of the great eastern shipyards. And more to the point, she was unlikely to steal one. Her clan had numbers and supplies enough for small raids - enough to sustain themselves, and perhaps save a little away for the lean times - but hardly enough to seize a well-crewed Eternal Nomad, or a Solarnought.
Still, she dreamed. And one night, after the lucky capture of a sturdy wurming-rig that had strayed too far from its companions, she began to scheme.
More wurming expeditions where targeted, and more rigs where seized. Then a macrohauler, whose convoy was not quite large enough. Then a fine corvette of Iron Sun. And then a warsail...
Each theft enabled the others. Each made her more bold. But was she to somehow maintain this chequered and battle-beaten armada? Was she to somehow fuel it, piloting it all with skeleton crews as she stretched her clan thin amongst them? No. Her dream was... bigger.
Bringing her ragtag assemblage of powerful machines inland, she docked them at the secret tribal holds in Korash's centre, a place of retreat and repair that enterprising motarchs where usually too proud to journey back to. And she built.
What her clan created in the months and months that followed was the thundering amalgamation of all she had captured - a mighty colossus with the finest pieces from a half-dozen tribes, and the engines of no less than 9 ill-gotten heavy vehicles rigged and fused together to power a single, rumbling behemoth. And as she leaned grinning into the accelerator, breathing fuel into its monstrous heart of noise and combustion for the first time, it roared to life.
And it sang. Oh how it sang.
And that is how the first marithine was born.
Image by Bagus Adi Iradwan
Rust Banner
She did not have one. Though from time to time Rust Banner possessed several (and from time to time lost them through trade or sudden abandonment), her particular clan did not.
Never in a hundred lifetimes could she afford one - a poor clan from an (occasionally) poor tribe would not buy a product of the great eastern shipyards. And more to the point, she was unlikely to steal one. Her clan had numbers and supplies enough for small raids - enough to sustain themselves, and perhaps save a little away for the lean times - but hardly enough to seize a well-crewed Eternal Nomad, or a Solarnought.
Still, she dreamed. And one night, after the lucky capture of a sturdy wurming-rig that had strayed too far from its companions, she began to scheme.
More wurming expeditions where targeted, and more rigs where seized. Then a macrohauler, whose convoy was not quite large enough. Then a fine corvette of Iron Sun. And then a warsail...
Each theft enabled the others. Each made her more bold. But was she to somehow maintain this chequered and battle-beaten armada? Was she to somehow fuel it, piloting it all with skeleton crews as she stretched her clan thin amongst them? No. Her dream was... bigger.
Bringing her ragtag assemblage of powerful machines inland, she docked them at the secret tribal holds in Korash's centre, a place of retreat and repair that enterprising motarchs where usually too proud to journey back to. And she built.
What her clan created in the months and months that followed was the thundering amalgamation of all she had captured - a mighty colossus with the finest pieces from a half-dozen tribes, and the engines of no less than 9 ill-gotten heavy vehicles rigged and fused together to power a single, rumbling behemoth. And as she leaned grinning into the accelerator, breathing fuel into its monstrous heart of noise and combustion for the first time, it roared to life.
And it sang. Oh how it sang.
And that is how the first marithine was born.
Rust Banner
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