Ashen - Chapter 5: Spelljamming

Part Two: The Void I

Chapter Five: Spelljamming

In the darkness of the crew quarters, below the galley, Ceru and Oquee were lounging on their palettes. A small chess board lay between them. Lost pieces were strewn about on either side of the board, but the white king - Ceru’s king - lay on its side.

    The game, now largely forgotten, had been the foundation on which they had built a conversation, and even though that the game was over, the conversation continued.

    “I like you, Oquee. I never had a chance to meet the wizards on my last voyage,” Ceru took a swig out of the bottle she'd swiped from the galley. “I have to admit, though, I don’t really understand how it all works.” She passed the bottle over.

    “Oh,” Oquee said, his long neck stretching to its full length in an unsettling way. “Spelljamming, you mean?” She nodded. “Well, the basics are the same. You know that. The magic makes the function of just about everything onboard work the same as it would at sea. Instead of wind or water, though, the ship is - um - driven by the will of the pilot.” He took a swig of rum. “Have you seen the Helm?”

    Ceru gave a chuckle. “No, I have not. It’s not exactly the sort of thing just anyone gets to see.”

    “Would you like to?”

    She wasn’t sure that she did. The Spelljamming Helm is a powerful piece of magic, and magic could be dangerous. She was nervous about the whole idea, which actually excited her. As dangerous as it might be, people interacted with it every day, and they were fine; and she was right, it wasn’t the sort of thing the likes of her generally got close to.

    With a motion of his head telling her to follow, Oquee ponderously made his way to his feet and led her through the ship to the Great Cabin. They’d been in the black for a few days now, and Ceru was getting more accustomed to the layout of the galleon, but Oquee took a circuitous route through the ship that brought them up through a hatch just inside the Officer's Cabins.

    She imagined the officers would see her and say something as they made their way through the passageway that connected their cabins, but they were all asleep, or somewhere else on the ship.

    The Great Cabin itself was opulent, for a ship - or for anything Ceru had seen, really. At the center of the cabin, commanding the attention of any who entered, stood the Great Helm - massive wooden throne, intricately carved with images of efreet, swirling clouds of smoke or wind, and various ships and sailors. On either side of the Helm stood two tables, each pushed back against the wall. On one lay maps and star charts, a celestial compass and various other tools necessary or useful for navigating between worlds.

    On the other were stacks of books and little mechanical tools and toys - all gnomish contraptions that make little sense to the non-gnomish mind. Above this table a pair of mounted bookshelves were tightly packed behind a collapsible railing meant to keep them in place when flying through particularly rough skies.

    Surrounded by five massive windows looking out into the void behind the ship, the Captain’s table might have dominated the room, if not for the Helm. Even empty of food, it was the most extravagant table Ceru had ever seen. All finery and linen with frilly little decorations and maybe a year’s sailing-worth of silver.

    “Who’s this then,” the gnome’s voice was high pitched and nasally - nothing like it sounded in her head when he was using the Helm’s magic. He was a little fellow - like all gnomes, she guessed - with wild, salt and pepper hair and an immaculately kept beard and mustache. The gray in his beard made a thick line down the front of his face, from below and just left of his nose to the tip of his beard, which was easily half as long as he was tall. He was reclining across the Helm, which was too big for him, really. His head rested on one arm and his feet were propped up over the other. He’d been playing with some kind of gnomish contraption, which he now rested on his little round belly, though he did not bother to look up at them.

    “This is my friend,” Oquee said, “one of the sailors who doesn’t have much experience in the void.”

    “We can go if we’re disturbing you,” Ceru said.

    “Oh gods, no,” the gnome said, tossing his mechanical whatzit to the deck and sitting up to look at them properly. “These long voyages can be dull, and the space between worlds can be really empty sometimes. Please, please, grab a chair from the table.”

    Ceru and Oquee each procured one of the wooden chairs from the Captain’s table, and set them facing the Helm, which was many times larger than the little chairs she and Oquee sat on, but most of that size was in the back of the throne. Umpip, the gnome illusionist, had stuffed the seat with cushions and pillows, but given his tiny stature, they were all more-or-less at eye level now.

    “Ceru and I were talking about spelljamming and how it works.” Oquee gave a side eye and a little smile at her, “she’d never seen a Helm, so I thought we’d pay you a visit.”

    Umpip nodded thoughtfully, then moved his beard to one side so he could scratch himself. “Dreadful sorry,” he said, when he realized what he’d just done. “Except for Cap’n’s table, I don’t spend much time around people. Er… what did you want to know? How it works, I guess. Or maybe where they come from. Now that’s a story, and probably a lie. I suppose we could tell you what it’s like to pilot a spelljammer (there really is nothing like it), but I don’t know if there are words in Elvish to describe it fully.”

    Oquee leaned over and spoke quietly in Ceru’s ear, “I forgot to warn you, he does get to talking.”

    For his own part, the gnome was still going. He hadn’t even noticed the comment. He was still rattling off all the possible things they could talk about, and the list was getting ever more ludicrous.

    “How does it work,” Ceru interrupted him. “I mean… You have to be a magic-user of some sort to pilot a ship, does that mean you cast spells to make it go?”

    “No, no, no,” the gnome replied.

    “A mage,” Oquee added, “and I suppose a miracle-worker from one of the churches, has a reserve of power. Think of it as a mixture of the magic they have within them, and the mental and physical fortitude to work their will upon the world.”

    Ceru’s eyes narrowed, and her brow tight. She was pretty sure she understood what the tortle was saying, but didn’t want to make assumptions.

    “It’s like a lantern,” Umpip said, seeing what he thought might be confusion on her face, “so long as it’s got oil in it, it can burn, see? But when it runs out of oil, it runs out of fire.”

    “A mage is like that,” Oquee said, seeming to pick up the thread Umpip was weaving. “We have to use that metaphorical oil to fuel the spells we cast; but it’s the same fuel that makes the Helm work.”

    “Indeed. One part magical essence, or maybe you can look at it like a connection to the magical weave that ties us all together, and the rest of it is willpower, and the stamina to make a thing happen.”

    “It can be quite taxing to pilot a ship, even though it can appear that the mage is only sitting and relaxing.”

    “Just so,” Umpip said.

    Ceru nodded in understanding. “So you’re not using magic to make the ship go, but you are using your ability to do magic?”

    “Basically,” Oquee replied. Umpip added that there was a little more to it than that, and Oquee said, “a spellcaster always has a tie to the magic, and there are some simple spells that require almost no effort at all. Even the most exhausted sorcerer or wizard could cast these spells - and even after operating a spelljamming helm; but yes, the effort of connecting with the Helm, with the ship, is quite taxing.”

    “Does it feel tiring to do it? I mean, is it like work?”

    “Not while you’re doing it,” Umpip said, “no.” He took on a wistful expression, his face slack. As he spoke he seemed to be looking out past them, at the bulkhead, or beyond it. His large, brown eyes glazed over, and Ceru imagined she could see all the stars in the void reflected in them. “When I’m in the seat,” he said, and now his expression was one of calm satisfaction, but with that same slackness to him - as if perhaps he wasn’t all there at the moment. “I am more than just a gnome. More than any one illusionist. I am the Black Ophelia. I can turn my intent in any direction and see the stars around us. I can feel the astral wind upon my bow. I can hear a pod of star whales at the very edge of perception, off to starboard. I can feel the faint warmth of the Pyre upon the wood of my hull.

    “And within, I can turn that intention to the sleeping crew in their bunks, to Mookee up in his crow’s nest, pretending to be awake, or to any of a dozen crewmen hard at work across the mid-watch. I can see lovers in their -"

    The gnomes eyes snapped alert. There was a flush in his cheeks and a wry smile. He was fully present in the room with them again. “Nope,” he said chuckling, “that’s rude.”

    Someone was tumbling with another crewman, Ceru thought. She wondered who it was, but would never ask. They’d make it her business if they wanted to. She kind of respected the gnome for his reaction to finding himself suddenly a voyeur in their tryst - an unsuspecting third; but she reminded herself not to let her passions get the better of her while onboard.

    “You can see all that from here,” she asked, half changing the subject.

    “Indeed,” Umpip said.

    Oquee shifted in his shell as he sat forward. “Or,” he said, “not so much see as sense.”

    “S’truth. And when you first start out it can be a little overwhelming. You’ve got all this information coming at you from senses you never had before and body parts you never knew existed. You turn your intent toward ‘em and you can understand ‘em a little better, but they’re always there. Like when you turn your attention to your breathing. It’s always there, and you’re always doing it, but now you’re thinking about it.”

    And, of course, she was thinking about it. They talked about the strange sensation of having people moving around in what essentially felt like your own body, about the pull of the planets and the raw speed of a spelljammer hurtling through the black untethered and untouched by anything but the light of the Pyre.

    “Who makes the Helms?” Ceru asked during a lull in the conversation, where Oquee was fetching cups from the galley and Umpip was retrieving a bottle from a cabinet beneath the book table. Before he could answer, something else occurred to her. “Wait a minute,” she said, “I thought you had to stay in the seat for the magic to work.”

    Umpip turned with a grin, flipped the black bottle in his hand and leaned against the table. “Oh, you do,” he said, “you do. But you can move a little ways away. Not far - mind. Right now, I might as well be tied to this great wooden throne. But the rope has some slack.”

    He walked back to where her chair and Oquee’s were drawn up near the Helm, and then past her just a bit. He had his hand up in the air, as if feeling for a wall in the dark, not quite six feet from the Helm. “Here it is,” he said, though Ceru could see nothing but air. “I know you can’t see it, but I can feel it. Not a barrier, really, but a definite border. Any farther and my connection to the helm gets cut. The ship drifts to a halt and we have to wait for the next pilot to slip into the seat and get us underway.”

    As he was hopping back up into the seat, he said, “it’s much more comfortable to stay in the seat, but it isn’t always practical.

    “And as to your question, who makes ‘em? No one makes ‘em. Not any more. The official Alliance history tells us the Elves crafted the first Helms from their great trees on Perianth. There’s some that disagrees with that version of history, but don’t let an Elf hear you say so. There’s dragons that traverse the void without the need of a ship or its Helm, maybe the dragons helped create the first spelljammers, I don’t know.”

    “Maybe it was the gnomes,” Oquee said returning to his seat with a trio of wooden cups in hand; but Umpip gave a derisive snort.

    “Maybe it was the Tabaxi, or the Faceless Men,” he said sarcastically. “I don’t think we’ll ever really know. Myself, I think it was the Arcane - those ancient folk the Archeologist is looking for on Ashen. The way I understand it, they’ve left ruins across the Many Worlds, and we know that Spelljamming predates the Alliance, even if it has some connection to the old Elven Kingdoms. But I’m just spinning the cogs.

    “Unless Adovar finds some miraculous ancient proof that the Arcane even really existed, and assuming the Elves don’t swoop in and shut him up, or take all his interesting history back with them to Perianth, ‘to study’ or hide; I think it’s best just to focus on the how and the why and not worry too much about the ‘where from’.”

    The gnome poured a measure of whiskey into each of their glasses and stoppered the bottle again, slipping it into the corner of the seat behind him. “Don’t be running your mouth about sitting up here and having drinks with the pilots,” he said. “It don’t make you special, and it won’t be something that happens with any kind of regularity, if it ever happens again.”

    Ceru nodded, “Of course not,” she said. “And thank you.” She lifted her cup in his favor, “to your health, and the health of the crew.”

    Oquee and Umpip both followed suit.

    “To the Ophelia,” the Tortle said.

    “To finding hoards of gold and ancient secrets.”

    They clinked their cups together and drank, then Umpip gave them each another pour.

    Ceru held her cup in one hand. Her arms resting on her crossed legs. Her eyes were trailing over the charts and maps on the table beside them, and pinned to the bulkhead. “Is there no way to get a ship into the void without a Helm,” she asked.

    “Not really,” Oquee said.

    “There’s talk of Helms that draw upon the life force rather than magic to power a ship,” Umpip said. His face had grown dark. “You wouldn’t want to use one. I’ve heard that it can be quite painful.”

    “Okay,” Ceru said, “but if the pilot is using magic to make the ship go, why does the crew have to run the sails and steer with the wheel and all the other things we’d have to do if we were in the water? So much of what we do seems pointless out here in space.”

    Neither Oquee nor Umpip had an answer for that. “It’s just part of the magic,” the gnome said. “But don’t think there are no winds in the Black, or currents in the void. The sails and the rigging and the rudder are far from useless.”

     Oquee added, “we have some influence over the ship and how it functions, and we have the ability to sense the ship and its surroundings, but it’s what the crew does that makes everything work.”

    “What’ll really bake your noodle,” Umpip said, “is this one. Gnomish ships use wheels and steam and water clocks, cogs, and levers. I’ve seen Reaver ships that use oars - Oars! In space! It’s ridiculous! Dwarven ships are just big mountains of rock, powered by magical forges. No sails, no wheel. You steer it the way you’d steer a mountain - by which I mean, I have absolutely no understanding of how it works.

    “If I can't be on a gnomish ship, I like these human vessels, or the elegant designs of the Elves, though they’d never let me fly one.”