Prototype Heart [9/2] Esh Heart Dev

[12:22] Ardith Hirai says, "Hff...Mornin', Lam."
[12:23] Lam exclaims, "Morning!"
[12:23] Ardith Hirai asks, "Ready to get to work?"
[12:23] Lam is as bright and chipper as always, of course. Why wouldn't she be? "Always. To stop working is to die, if only for awhile."
(Lam)
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[12:23] Ardith Hirai says, "...Somethin' like that. C'mon. Let's get to it."
[12:23] Ardith Hirai says, "Don't mind Fritz here. He's a buddy."
[12:23] Ardith Hirai says, "Made a real important donation..."
[12:23] Lam asks, "Oh?"
[12:24] The Accursed sits down at the large work table in the center of the room, reaching into one of the cubby holes beneath it. She retrieves a partially melted block of ice. It's a little opaque, but not opaque enough to hide what's in it.

A human heart.

"He gave us some real important materials...so we oughta' be thankful."
(Ardith Hirai)
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[12:27] "uh"

It's a little exhalation, lacking any real indication of punctuation or tone. More like an outward gasp of surprise than an intentional word or anything similar.

She blinks a few times, but nervously ehehehs.

"I won't ask. Uh... what's the plan with it? Learning how hearts work in practice?"
(Lam)
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[12:29] Ardith stares at the block of ice. She's...actually not sure how to go about this just yet. Her mind is still waking up, working and churning. The Accursed's not at her best.

"Sorta. We can take a small tissue sample for Elyon's greater one to sorta' latch onto for the mutation. The right kinda' muscle cells. Then attach it all to the Illyothium framework.

"But also, since this one ain't attached to anyone, I can figure out where to attach the runes to get the electrical pulses to make it beat proper. Maybe...maybe even better."

Even at her worst, at her lowest, she's dead set on making this as best as possible, given the time allotted.
(Ardith Hirai)
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[12:35] "Well, see - I can set up some... one moment, I need to make this stuff anyways. I'll get you something to hook it up to."

Not at all because she's working on forgetting that there's some dead guy's heart just chilling here in that block of ice, Lam fires up her forge and starts melting down some scrap metals with mythril to make semiflexible tubing. It's difficult to actually make long, flexible tubing with hollows in it, so her first action is to make a bar she can press through the center of the tubing - a kind of drill for the liquid metal, even if she doesn't actually need to drill very hard with it due to the combination of her time and magma magics.

She's constantly making references to the notes on the various tubings to which the heart typically connects (thanks Loretta), assisting her in figuring out some of the specifics, though she certainly needs to work on the volume and shape of the vast majority of this stuff over time. Little tweaks that can easily be done according to medical advice.

This leaves Ardith with more than enough time to practice runes on either prosthetic, if she likes, but ultimately there's nothing stopping her from just waiting the hour or so it'll take Lam, anyways.
(Lam)
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[12:40] The Accursed pushes aside the ice block heart, pulling the mithril prosthetic in front of her. The former can thaw properly for a little while, since it's still firmly encased in what she can assume is Famfrit's magic.

She's got her own set of notes to reference, diligently taken over a serious of long sleepless nights.

Ardith has the heart, her inks, her brushes, her notes all strewn out on her little island of the work desk. Time to take some practical steps towards this project's completion.

Already she's worked out roughly where to place what runes. Runes for transfer of energy, to make the chambers of the heart constrict, to regulate the flow with electrical impulses. Loretta and Caira's guidance factored greatly into this.

Thankfully the ink she uses is not permanent, but holds closely enough to the metal for these trials. Ardith begins sketching out small, disgustingly intricate circles of runes onto the mithril casing.

It takes time, and time right now is one of her greatest enemies. That and the workings of cruel Fortune.
(Ardith Hirai)
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[12:49] Fortune, thankfully, has no place in this workshop. If fortune's sacred places depend upon the serendipity of the universe for their successes, then the concept is certainly unwelcome in a place of creation.

After Lam manages to make most of the necessary tubing to connect up to either of the hearts, it's also necessary to have a reservoir to contain the stores of "blood" typically held in the body. Thankfully, she also has a reference for that; making a few steel tanks to represent different parts of the body that might have a certain amount of blood flowing through them at any particular time is trivial, though getting the right amount and making all the right connections is another thing that's going to take some tweaking.

When all is said and done, what she actually has is a mess of steel and mythril wiring, but she's already working on connecting everything up. With the fleshy heart, it's going to be a bit of a bitch to get the thing to actually fit right, but she can really weld metal into the flesh if she needs to.
(Lam)
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[12:56] Fortune. Gods. The Great Spirits. They are everywhere, except here in this little workshop where the Accursed and her now-treasured accomplices work long, arduous hours to undo a great wrong.

With her smallest brush she begins writing the tiny runes on the prosthetics interior, for the regulation of blood flow. She wills her weary hand to be steady. All must be perfection when you're spitting in the face of the divine forces that will good men to be dead.

When one of the chambers is lined with symbols she brushes her fingertips along them, when dry, to test the circuitry she's implemented. The mithril monstrosity hums to life and that single chamber pulses. Far too slowly.

The Accursed snarls, at the prosthetic, at her own lacking work, and cleans some of the lines as she curses violently and vitriolically. Were her words an acid this heart would be in serious trouble.
(Ardith Hirai)
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[13:02] Just one last connection of tubing, and...

"All righty, Ardith. Bring it over here. I've got the connections ready, I think. This should work as our 'body' for right now."

Lam grabs the water barrels and starts filling the various reservoirs with the approximate blood content of the human body. Approximate, of course, because her measurements for those aren't quite right, and even then, it depends somewhat on how large the person in question is to begin with.

However, it's close enough to their needs for now. They've got time to eliminate the margin of error.

At the eight normal connections to the human body, clusters of tubing hang, ready to be attached. To and from each "lung," to and from the "upper" and "lower" reservoirs... perhaps a great degree less organic and malleable than a fleshier system, but a good enough facsimile for their purposes.
(Lam)
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[13:05] The Accursed smooths her lines, refines the shapes of the Illyothian runes laid into the heart. Precious symbols, bitter sweet, that the two of them had delved into unknown reaches to collect together. Were she any less firm of purpose that might've caused her to fall back to sobs.

Instead she picks up the rune-lined mithril prosthetic. The real McCoy will be next once she's more sure the symbols will work in close approximation with what they need.

Ardith cradles it, a precious child of all their efforts, and brings it over to Lam's contraption. She passes it off and begins helping the young smith and budding magi-scientist with hooking it up to the strange construct she's crafted for this purpose.

"Like...this?"
(Ardith Hirai)
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[13:11] "Mostly, just one sec..."

It's not actually Ardith's fault, at all, that the flexible metal tubing and the prosthetic don't perfectly match up. Lam has to manually heat and adjust the connections to make it fit, and then make small little...

Ah, wait. Before she welds it, Lam covers the whole thing in a sphere of time magic, taking in each and every inch of its form. It'll be necessary in case she makes mistakes.

Little tweaks here and there fit the parts closer together, with tiny welds to cover up the intentional gaps made from the capacity to dismantle it. Those welds will have to be undone, of course, but it's just a little easier to have done this in the sphere because, of course...

less time has technically passed that way! Genius.

Regardless, after she makes some adjustments, the heart is generally attached to the contraption. Whatever runes Ardith has applied are likely inactive, but upon activation, they'd be operating on a relatively closed system.
(Lam)
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[13:15] Ardith does not have the magic nor the metallurgical expertise needed for this part, but she does survey the progress with a weary eye. Every inch of this project must be up to snuff, be more than adequate. Meticulous even, in spite of her furious impatience. Somehow the two desires have managed to balance each other out.

Once Lam gives her the go ahead her fingertips brush against the rune-lined mithril once more. They glow and spark to life in the contraption it's rigged to.

Sluggish. It begins to pump liquid through the tubing. A maddening yet somehow hopeful gleam shines in her eye as she watches their combined work lurch into horrific life.

"That's it...That's fuckin' it!"

It needs refinement. Fine tuning, tweaking, the pace still far too slow for a creature that's not entirely lethargic.

But it's progress, and progress is what they're here for.

"...Wanna tryit with the real deal?"
(Ardith Hirai)
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[13:24] To say that this is something horrifically impressive would be an understatement. Lam watches the machine pumping with eyes wide, more than a little surprised at her own, likely faulty, creation. The runes aren't particularly the only issue, here...

She puts her ear up to the pumping metal shell, listening to the mechanisms on the inside. The churning of water, not blood, throughout the device. The fact that the pump is sluggish isn't entirely Ardith's fault, all things considered; she can hear the telltale signs of rough craftsmanship clogging the process, ever so slightly.

Perhaps good enough runework could bypass that issue, though. The timing is the bigger issue of the two, more than likely; getting a heart's rhythms correct is a hard deal.

"We still have some work to do on this one, I think. Let's focus on getting the timing of the pumps right; I think that this might be an issue of pressure in the right places as well as an issue of how much we're utilizing."

She leans up, staring at the runed, metal organ.

"Can you power down the runes? I can detach it with ease."
(Lam)
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[13:30] The Accursed grunts, reaching up to take the metal heart once it's detached from the apparatus.

"It ain't too far off at least...Must've messed up some lines somewhere," she mumbles as she devolves swiftly into incoherent self chatter. She brings the organ to the work bench where she seats herself again.

There's a glimmer of hope though, no matter how distant. She will chase that glimmer down, beat its head in, and keep it here by force if she must. Her pursuit of this project has already changed her, second to only by the change his passing brought her.

She begins, more slowly this time, cleaning up the lattice of runework on the organs. It needs to pump faster, harder, capable of delivering lifeblood to where it's needed.
(Ardith Hirai)
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[13:33] Lam totally does what's necessary to detach and clean up the connection points once Ardith stops the damn thing from spraying water everywhere. Somewhat unfortunately, water from the tubing spills onto the ground but, well...

they're going to just have to deal with that. Not all too much was in the tubing itself, and not all too much was stuck in the heart when they took it off. It's as simple as boiling the water on the ground away.

Just the little things.
(Lam)
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[13:36] With a careful hand the lies are cleaned, retouched, and perfected as much as humanly (and Accursedly) possible. Once more she cradles the metallic organ in her mitts and brings it back over to their contrived circulatory system.

"Let's try...this. When you're ready. Oughta' beat a lil' harder now."

All it will take, as before, is a little energy charged into the runes, later to be attached to electrical signals in the body.
(Ardith Hirai)
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[13:38] Ready? She's ALWAYS ready.

Some more adjustment and re-welding the heart into place is as simple as pie, of course. Far, far simpler, actually, but nobody's exactly counting, are they?

"It's just going to be this process, over and over again, until we've got it perfect. Until we've got that forge, at any rate."
(Lam)
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[13:41] Ardith ain't counting at all. She starts getting ready to assist in plugging this bad boy up again to the machine, attaching hoses back to where they belong on the heart. It's up to Lam and her magic to attach them properly.

"Then that's what it takes," she says firmly.

"Once we got the prototype anyway, that's most of it...the forge is a wonder. I'm sure you and Lo can crank out the final product pretty easy."

It all sounds so simple, but there's a weight. She knows damn well there's still much to do. Progress is being made still and it keeps her from going mad.
(Ardith Hirai)
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[13:53] "It won't be easy, exactly. It will be extremely labor-intensive, and it will require more delicate and sensitive adjustments than anything that I have ever made in my life.

But my process is perfection through reiteration. Through taking twenty times the time to do it once, but in the process making a product that is forty times as perfect as it otherwise would have been."

Lam looks at their work in progress with a wide, bright grin on her features. To say the very least of her demeanor, she's excited and confident for what the future might hold.

Their "Mark Two" is just a little bit better than the first. So long as they can keep that progress going through adjusting and tweaking the runes and the individual pieces of the prosthetics day in and day out, this thing will be perfect in no time.

… at the very least, that's what her formulas tell her.
(Lam)
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[13:56] The Accursed nods her satisfaction. Another step on the long, long road. Only forward and never back.

"I'll work on perfectin' the runes. You got this well in hand. Then I need to make a few calls..."

Normally this was his job. Coordinating people, rubbing elbows. Always so much better with people than her, but now she's got to saddle up and get the job done. Human cattle won't get the jobs done on their own. They must be prodded, directed, whipped even.

"I'll be back later. You need me? Holler."

And off she goes, picking up her metaphorical whip on the way out.
(Ardith Hirai)