Rajit: Level 20: Nature's Mysteries

Rajit hated the thick gloves; they made her hands sweat and no matter how good the tailoring was they never quite seemed to fit her small hands correctly. There was something to be said about the dexterity of your own hands when it came to delicate work, but the voltage involved in this experiment was something she needed to be careful with. She tugged the gloves down as tightly as she could pull them and slotted a freshly sharpened scalpel into a wooden handle; another necessary trade-off of fine control for safety. Not long ago she wouldn’t have bothered with personal protective equipment, but…
 
Rajit grit her teeth and shrugged the thoughts off. She’d done enough harm to herself already; more than enough that she couldn’t blame anyone else for the way her life had gone at this point. She also had received more help from others than she’d really given herself as well, so she couldn’t really claim credit for how well it was going either. The halfling swivelled at her workbench, turning towards a heavy glass jar full of murky yellow liquid with an unidentified lump inside of it. The lump was fleshy and blue, with odd tendrils floating loosely in the liquid. It was the pizoelectric organ of a Behir, along with the whiskers which adorned their face.
 
“Creature was likely an ambush predator. Electric effect perhaps used to incapacitate prey. Cooperative effect with powerful jaw muscles; compression appears to discharge sudden high voltage current along mouth and across whiskers. Whiskers possibly acting as additional contact points or for closing the circuit.” Rajit mouthed the words as she wrote them in her book of Nature’s Mysteries. The book had come a long ways from her first adventures, with the first scribblings and notes being about bugbear jaws. She couldn’t even remember what she thought she’d do with that knowledge. But this Behir organ she had plans for before the previous owner had even hit the dirt. She wasn’t sure if that meant she was really better off.
 
“Creature was huge in size. Generating equivalent compressive force will be impossible if not incredibly dangerous without proper outlet.” Rajit set the pen down and turned to the jar. The entire organ was far too much to work with, but a piece of it might do the trick after all. With a squeak the lid of the jar twisted underneath her gloved hands. Rajit felt the familiar tickle of the hairs on the back of her neck rising as the familiar tension of static filled the air. With a thud she set the lid of the jar down, and then reached into the jar.
 
...
 
“First trials unsuccessful… Theory appears to be incorrect regarding pizoelectric properties.” Rajit grit her teeth. The organ was quickly being chopped up and ruined. The flesh was soft and rubbery, and barely produced a charged when she crushed it down. Had the creature been inherently magical, perhaps some kind of elemental? “Think… The creature had everything you’d expect, a long body, ambush capabilities and a dangerous bite. The discharge was local to the mouth and this organ was the only thing there, it just opened its mouth and…Ah.” She’d made a rookie mistake. There are two parts to every bite, the opening and the closing. The tissue didn’t respond to compression it responded to extension; that is why it was soft and stretchy. A quick stretching of the tissue proved the point as static sparks popped along the flesh almost as if she were separating freshly dried cloth.
 
...
 
“Preserved tissue interweave has been installed along crossbow limbs. Extension provided by normal crossbow cocking capable of activating tissue. Preservation improved the rubbery qualities of the tissue, and imparted on it a suede like texture. Total electrical conductivity decreased after drying, but the output was beyond safe levels initially regardless. Whiskers have been directly incorporated into bowstring to conduct electrical current into bolts. Projected voltage between the combined systems expected to be slightly above twice of current output using Vrock-copper plating.” Rajit’s writing had begun get smaller and more cramped along the edges of her notebook. She was running out of pages. It would be time for a new one soon, or at least new pages would need to be added.
 
…
 
“Trials were successful. Output increased slightly less than expected, only a doubling of power output.” Rajit capped her pen and glanced over at the crossbow she’d mostly built herself. It was a one of a kind thing at this point; originally just a simple wooden frame with a bit of cheap steel it was now a complex device built out of exotic materials, monstrous components and a lot of stubborn halfling elbow grease. “You and I have a lot in common, huh?” She spoke as she patted the crossbow.
 
“Both started as something small, you might even call us crude. Had our guts fiddled with, learned to borrow from others and came out the other side looking like something else entirely…” Rajit smirked at her own sentimentality. In the end things hadn’t gone how she’d imagined, and even now she wasn’t completely sure she was a different person. If you stripped her down of the things she had now, and the people she had around her, wouldn’t she still be that small insignificant unwanted girl she’d started as? If you stripped off all of the fancy metallurgy, wiring and batteries from the crossbow would it go back to being just a pile of sticks?
 
In the end it was never a story about turning lead into gold. The idea of spontaneous transformation wasn’t a true one; it was just a misleading illusion. That the dirt of the fields her parents had tilled would one day become bread was completely reliant on a journey. A time to come together with water, sunlight, air, a mill, a baker’s oven and any number of other steps in between. Things change because they combine, they come together, they shape each other. Rajit had been fortunate in who she had been shaped by, and even more fortunate in learning the lessons she had taken from it.
 
Rajit has reached the pinnacle of her power, and has reached level 20 and taking her 15th level in Beast Conclave Revised Ranger. She has become a master in battlefield combinations, capable of reacting and triggering her allies to great great results through her deep understanding of alchemy and change. She still struggles at building meaningful social connections and often finds herself lonely, but she will always have Gilbert and her family. Her adventures carry on, but Rajit is now at peace with who she is, and has realized her full potential.