Wings of Fire: Dragons, Steel, and Pom-Poms

XVIII - A House of Engineers

>Within the Head Workshop of the House of Artisans, Safe Harbor_

Tarragon never thought himself much of a diplomat, if he were honest.

Though his position as the primary outward face met by those who wish to do business with Safe Harbor’s prestigious (if he did say so himself), House of Artisans may say otherwise.

‘Well, someone's gotta do it’ was what he wished he could reply when inquired; t’were it not a massive breach in etiquette.

The truth was: the biggest reason Tarragon held his high position in the House was because he was one of the only members that could reliably uphold that etiquette in official discussions between contractors and his counterparts in other Houses.

Simply put: Members of this House had a reputation for ineptitude in social circumstances. He and his fellow artisans were little more than problem-solvers by disposition.

Not solvers of big, complicated problems like…‘what is beauty?’ or ‘how to navigate the intricacies of human conversation?’ 

No. Problems like that fell under the purview of other people's specialties. Other people that belonged to other Houses.

Those who worked for the House of Artisans were concerned with more practical problems. Problems like ‘Just how sharp is too sharp for a utility knife before it becomes impractical’ or ‘How can the city’s street drainage network be made more efficient?’

Problems that could be solved with a small handful of people, some rolls of paper along with measurement and writing tools, scale models, and mathematics.

An untold many of those problems arise within the confines of a human city all the time. It was up to people like him, in his opinion, to derive solutions for them.

Of course, one could also go with the method preferred by many humans, including the Houses of Smithy and Carpenters. The ‘produce and/or continue what has already proved to work to fix what's broken’ method.

Why waste resources on unfamiliar, unproven inventions that are so liable to fail or even make things worse when all that we have is so scarce to begin with?

Despite that, Tarragon always felt himself partial to the potential of new ideas and unproven technologies to improve his kind’s lot in life. There were enough people around who shared his inclination to form their own House around it.

Then again, if only more of the proposals, projects, and inventions had actually turned to success, and not crumbled to wasteful failure. Perhaps the wider human attitude to strange innovations would be more positive, and the public reputation for his House be improved.

But that was a problem for another day. Today, Tarragon found himself standing alone in the Head Workshop- the moderately large building which serves the House of Artisans’ headquarters- reception foreroom. The room which served as a room to both meet and conduct meetings with official House guests, and one of the only rooms in the entire buildings which didn't perpetually look as if a dragon rampaged through it.

He stood within the small, tastefully furnished room wearing stuffy formal attire because he was told to. And because he was trying to solve one of the biggest problems members and officials within his House had been trying to grapple with for the past few weeks.

‘Just what do we do about these foreigners?’

Nearly an entire monolunar phase cycle ago, did a gigantic fleet of watercraft that defied every conception he had of what should be physically possible, much less practically feasible, appear in the Bay suddenly with no prior warning.