If I could, I’d be grinning from ear to ear as I settle in to work on a speaker spawner. First thing I try is to try to pretzel the null elemental spawner into giving me what I want, but it stubbornly refuses to cooperate. Maybe if I was trying to make a speaker elemental, but I’m working on a construct of some flavor. I know it, the spawner knows it, Order probably knows it, too.

Still, it was worth a shot.

My next try is to see if I can’t adjust any of the current constructs to do what I want. I’d need electricity and sound, or lightning and thunder as they would call it here. There’s a lot of current designs for those elements, but they don’t do what I want. Offense is a major theme among them, with the melee and arcane specializations focusing on a lightning-powered strike with a thunderous followup. Even support options are more for disorientating than communicating. I could probably convince a scion to train the denizens to do what I want, but the cost becomes a major problem.

I’m not thunder or lightning affinity. I am fate and gravity affinity. Having all four, especially with the base being neither of my innate elements, is stupidly expensive. Like, ‘embarrassing the dragon spawners’ kind of expensive. And that’s just the initial cost. Just looking at the upkeep has me wincing. So… not an option.

But I’m not discouraged. I didn’t fail making a speaker spawner twice, I’ve eliminated two wrong ways to make them. I’m just hoping I won’t have to eliminate thousands like they say it took to invent the lightbulb. Still, I’m pretty confident, because there is a spawner I know I can design to my heart’s content, and Order can’t stop me.

I still need to design gravity affinity… everything really. I try plopping in my base affinities, then adding on electricity and sonic, and have to cross off another way to not make them. It’s cheaper with my actual affinities as the base, but it’s still a lot more than I want to spend.

Alright, fine. I wanted electricity as the ‘power’ for the construct, but this will probably work better. Electrical engineering is witchcraft, what with all the inductions making resistances with imaginary values that still impact the circuit. I’m not an electrical engineer, I’m a mechanical engineer, so I really should focus on a more mechanical power source.

Traditionally, that’d be clockwork. You wind a spring and that acts like a kinetic battery. But that’d be kinetic affinity, which I don’t have. What I do have is gravity, and maybe a sprinkle of fate to make sure the laws of thermodynamics don’t come and break my kneecaps.

So I need to make a gravity battery, preferably one that doesn’t involve singularities. Thankfully, things can have a deep gravity well without needing to be an infinitesimal point of infinite mass, despite how much pop culture demands otherwise. There are a lot of options before the nuclear option, and that requires that I think small. Really small. Not quite quantum small, but I’m pretty sure a microscope would be required to take a look.

Making the battery small is going to be vital. Gravitic force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, which means it falls off sharply as you move away. This also means it increases drastically at small scale. Now, I don’t technically make mass with my affinity, but making two small gravity wells gets me a lot of the effect. The designer has a pretty robust simulation aspect, so I can see if the designs are going to break, and I go through quite a few iterations before I get to a configuration that’s nice and stable, while also producing a lot of rotational energy.

In effect, I make a short squat cylinder that acts a lot like a bearing that rotates itself. Fate really helps keep it stable, in a way that’s hard to explain. It’s like it’s arguing with entropy that energy is definitely being used and some wasted, trust me bro. Taking a look inside will definitely break it, which is fine by me. It looks like most of the construct power sources are essentially designed to break if delvers get too curious. Either way, thermodynamics are probably not happy, but are mostly satisfied.

With the power source finished, it's pretty simple to basically plug it into the established clockwork designs, and I could easily lose myself just toying around with all the linkages. Now I need to add sound.

I hit a block for a few minutes as I try to make a speaker without electricity, before I mentally facepalm at myself. I need to think with portals. A scientific approach is all well and good, but I can’t forget I’m still playing with magic. I try to make a larynx, before remembering I don’t know what one looks like, and I don’t want to go looking down someone’s throat to figure it out. I do know how a speaker works, though.

Sound comes down to just pressure waves in the end, so all you need to make it is something that can change pressure. A person, and basically anything else biological, does that by messing with air flow. Changing the diameter of a pipe while keeping the same volume of flow will change the speed of the flow, and therefore the pressure. Stick your thumb over a hose and the water will speed up, but the amount of water coming from the hose stays the same. Faster flow, higher pitch.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

A speaker takes a more direct approach and ignores airflow… mostly. Sound has a bit of trouble without air, but a speaker is a pretty poor replacement for a fan when it’s hot. The speaker is basically just a flap with a magnet in the middle, which will wiggle around and drag along the flap. The flap will move air, and hey, moving air is a pressure change. So all I need to do is replace the magnet with an adjustable gravity source. Or more simply, something heavy, and just like a real speaker, move the power source out of the way so the wiggling thing can make the air move and produce music.

Honestly, I still prefer the singing teslacoils of Slash’s hat, but the system is pretty firm on this part. If it makes deliberate sound, it’s thunder affinity, and I have to pay up. Even if it’s a product of a lightning strike, I still have to pay. Well, that’s fine. I got to make a gravity speaker instead, so there.

Even better, it’s not breaking the bank. The initial spawn I create even seems weak enough to be a baseline option for dungeons that somehow have access to these affinities. I call them poppers, and they look like little beetles about the size of a mouse. They attack by unleashing a strong repulsing field and a loud bang. They have a little chamber inside to build up the potential energy, so they’ll need time to recharge between attacks, but I think they should work just fine. Against people, they’ll be annoying and distracting, not even as disruptive as a flashbang. Still, it’ll stagger and surprise people, I’d wager. Against small invaders, they should easily be able to kill several, if they’re close enough.

I think I’ll need to get them up to their third spawn and specialize them to get actual communication, but that should be very doable. I just need space to put them. I could temporarily put them down in the roots along with the null spawner. I’ll be eventually moving that one out once I get my proper dinosaurs to unleash in the Forest. For now, though… it wouldn’t be the worst idea to add the poppers in there.

I also need to design the scion, which has a bit more pressure on me. A denizen can have their little niche, but my scions tend to be pretty versatile. My first idea is to make it somehow modular, letting my other scions make parts to easily swap out. But the complexity of even the poppers is a lot more than what my scions can currently build. It’s one of the reasons I’m exploring a denizen for the speaker project. So trying to make spare parts is probably not going to work very well.

Hmm. I go back to the popper and adjust a few things. I have to make them self-destruct for their attack, but the extra feature is definitely worth it. It’ll take the scion a bit of time to get used to it, but with making them a swarm instead of a normal spawner, there’ll be plenty to learn with. It’ll be a lot more parts than Voltron ever had, but that just means a lot more versatility! It even makes the upgrade options simple to conceptualize, with each variety focusing on utilizing the swarm of poppers differently. It feels a little like the least and that whole line, which is a bit gross. But bad people can still have good ideas, I’m not going to abandon it just because someone else was using it in a bad way.

The scion is pretty simple to design, as it’s basically a little sphere with a ton of small wiry tendrils. They’re designed to be able to link with the poppers and allow for the energy to be safely siphoned, instead of just letting them always pop. I figure it’ll give it enough energy to do whatever needs doing, and probably allow for some more basic communication before getting to the speaker unit. It does look kinda creepy on its own, like a nervous system glued to a metal ball, but I can’t think of any way to make it look friendlier. Even trying bright colors makes it look like it’s wildly poisonous on top of being creepy.

I sigh and go for one last pass for the look of the poppers and the scion, using a lot of brass and glass. I think the tendrils looking like fibreoptics looks cooler, but I dunno if the locals will think the semi-transparent wires are more or less disturbing.

Either way, I think I will make them. The speaker project is one I’ve been stalled on for a while, and I really like the look of my new linking constructs. Besides, if I get them now, I should just be able to introduce them to the ODA before they finalize the latest paperwork.

I set the spawner deep in the roots, though well away from the null spawner, and watch with interest as the first swarm of poppers comes out, as well as the scion. Unsurprisingly, it claims the first swarm, though it doesn’t take a definitive shape just yet. Instead, it seems to be getting a feel for what it and the poppers can do. Teemo pops out of a shortcut to greet it and try to help it come to grips with existing. I can feel confusion through the new bond, and I give it a gentle pat, as well as a name.

I had been thinking of the name before I even added the linking ability, but I think it’ll fit even better now. The Doppler effect is how sound changes based on how something is moving. Technically, it’s any wave, not just sound. It’s just that a car horn approaching and passing is an easy example. Sound, change, and movement. Yeah, I think Doppler will fit you just fine, my new scion.

“Thank you… Creator,” it says, with a voice that sounds like it’s a he. It sounds pretty uncanny, making me wonder if Sonny might have been more fitting, but I’m sure that’ll change with time. For now, I pat the bond again and let Teemo give him the orientation package. Life can be pretty confusing, especially around here, but that’s part of the fun. Doppler will find his place among the chaos soon, I’m sure.