“Situations prompting use of incendiary explosives have been… few and far between,” Blaze said to themselves as they removed the detonator from the aforementioned device, “whilst others may not respect the artistic effort put into these devices, it may be worth deploying a new prototype.”
Whilst the rest of the party slept, being a vect meant all they needed was a four hour recharge period, Blaze was tending to their research notes and bombs, working on preparing new payloads for all sorts of different scenarios.
“If conventional fire-based methods are out of the question, then maybe…”
Copying the written formula for the incendiary bomb, they started changing different values on the flammable compounds, adjusting the strength of the detonation spark that would have ignited the previously used material but would struggle to ignite this less viscous concoction, instead needing a more direct application of heat and/or explosive force.
Pasting this new data into a simulation application on their datapad revealed the results of this breakthrough. The new bomb would disperse a light, flammable oil in the same radius that the previous bomb did, unable to cause any direct damage but enhancing any abilities or weapons that use fire as their primary damage method.
“Well, that’s the issue of direct incendiaries out of the way, but… there’s more potential in the base device, I know it.”
Switching back over to the original explosive, Blaze ran a simulation and watched carefully how the fire interacted around foes hiding in cover. Although the fire was able to eventually spread across the cover if it was flammable, the main reagent was unable to go past any obstacles.
“So, if I take the primary detonation method, and then add… pellets…”
Leaning over some alchemy supplies and reading instructions off their datapad, they were able to synthesise a large number of rubber pellets, bouncy enough to ricochet around any obstacles but still hard enough to deliver concussive force strong enough to render foes unconscious.
“Anita does always say there is no profit in murder.”
And as if on cue, Anita Grimm herself appeared. A Cabal field agent with aspirations of semi-freelance soul brokering, she was often the one needing to clean up the social messes that the others had got themselves into, using her much sharper wit to diffuse situations and work others to her advantage. “Oh, you’re still up?” she said, her tone indicating an initially restless start to her own sleep.
“If I have no need of sleep other than my recharge period, I may as well advance my research,” Blaze said in response, finishing off the simulations of the new rubber pellet bomb, “if you need a pick-me-up there’s a couple cans of Krash in my toolkit.”
The investigator stared at the vect in shock, wondering how this sociopathic demolitionist had survived so long in the universe, “you keep… energy drink… next to your bomb materials?”
“Correct, do not worry yourself though, I have only had one accident where I used Krash instead of a reagent, and all that happened was a smell of burning sugar alongside some wasted Krash.”
“But… but…” Anita said, becoming more incredulous at the situation, “you’re a Vect! You don’t need to eat or drink! Why do you drink so much Krash?”
“Remnant of a past job,” Blaze said, reaching and cracking open another can, “I used to be the sales representative to the Avia-Ra Holy Lands when the Krash company was expanding into that territory.”
There was a pause.
“It didn’t go well, and I was let go from the company. Before I left though they allowed me to take as much Krash as I wanted as part of my severance package.”
Anita sighed deeply, before asking a question she knew she was going to regret. “And how much of that Krash do you have left?”
There was another pause.
“Approximately three-hundred-thousand-and-forty-two cans in multiple safehouses and hidden caches across the ‘Verse.”
A long silence hung between the vect and the human, with the latter completely failing to process both the implications of a construct lifeform getting addicted to a mass-produced energy drink, and the logistics of storing that much energy drink across such a wide area. Blaze continued to work on their final new bomb prototype as a novel idea entered into Anita’s mind.
Consulting her grimoire of rituals she flipped pages until she reached the arcane process of protecting technology: the antivirus spell. Muttering quickly to herself the words of power and weaving sigils in the air gently until the spell was complete, a faint shroud of binary surrounding Blaze for a brief moment.
They stopped their work, staring into their toolkit for a moment, contemplating how much Krash they had drunk over the years and how unhealthy a habit it was. There was a lot for Blaze to think about…
…and they decided to mull these things over with a can of Krash.
Realising that her potential fix had backfired on her spectacularly, Anita sighed before retiring to another part of the ship to finish her infernal paperwork. Meanwhile, the moment of pause had given Blaze inspiration for a prototype.
“Krash is a container of energy, where the metabolic process dispenses this energy over a period of time. If I take this theory and apply it to this…”
Opening up a piece of design software on their datapad, Blaze began going through iterative designs of a capacitor that could be integrated into the detonation mechanism of a bomb, eventually being able to plug this new electrical explosive into the simulation program, revealing the added benefit of the electric discharge numbing the reaction times of any potential foes.
“New bomb designs complete, will fabricate two potions in case of emergency and then I shall retire with the new combat simulation running.”
Unlike the scientific process Blaze uses to develop new bombs, the process for creating potions was remarkably simple and only took about twenty minutes all told to complete the brewing.
Packing away their equipment neatly, they then sat comfortably in their chair and entered into the powered down recharge state, leaving enough power to be aware of the surroundings and to run the combat simulation program. Over the course of four hours the program ran until the in-built criteria were met, and Blaze was comfortable with the weapons training they had received.
“I may have had to temporarily retire the incendiary device… but no one has yet forbade me from using a plasma launcher…”
Inspiration
Blaze recently reached level four in the campaign they are played in (unrelated, this is why the entry number is what it is, 04 for level, 10/03/21 being the date of the session) and this unlocked a lot of great potential for the mad bomber.
Blaze is an Alchemist, which means at level 4 in addition to getting their first Ability Score Improvement they also gain access to the unique mechanic of “Discoveries”. Think of them like Eldritch Invocations for an Intelligence-based class, and you unlock two of your choice at level four.
I knew for definite I wanted to get the “Battle Training” discovery (martial weapon and shield proficiency) right away, not so much for shields, but for all the cool martial weapons that are contained within the Dark Matter book. Picking the second discovery was a bit more difficult, as I originally had my heart set on “Grenadier”, which allows for a bonus action weapon attack if your main action was throwing a bomb.
But, as I looked both through the discovery list and the bomb formulae list, I started to realise I could start to build Blaze towards being a multipurpose character for the time being, and using a greater variety of bombs would allow for this versatility. So, I ended up taking the “Ballistics Research” discovery, which grants me two additional bomb formulae, and gave me the first part of my title.
The other major aspect of this story is adding detail into why Blaze, a Vect with no need to eat or drink, has an addiction to the Dark Matter energy drink called Krash. Initially I started this as a joke with one of Blaze’s many past jobs being an energy drink sales representative, though I eventually went into it a bit more with them drinking it whenever they are idle or needing to work.
And because Blaze is where I roleplay someone a bit more ridiculous, the joke about having these caches of energy drink hidden all over the place came naturally.
Anita did indeed try to cast Antivirus on Blaze in effort to alleviate their energy drink problem, but, it is far too ingrained into the ideal that is Blaze to ever be solved so simply.
Rosalia Rambles 
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