Setting: Griffon Village
Many griffs in the village were at constant work, however, a few sat around and observed instead. They were entirely too starved, too unmotivated or lacked jobs to fulfil, and so just left behind as all the other griffs were breaking their backs working tirelessly. Only the unmotivated didn't feel shame while looking on, as they all found the work futile, as they believed it would be all destroyed anyway, so why even bother putting in the effort and dying by exhaustion to build up a house, for it to only fall over time and time again. Franz, the village elder had attempted to motivate them to go to work, however this time, they had a valid reason; as every griff else were already at work and there weren't enough jobs to do anymore. Normally, the village never had this problem, however ever since the influx in refugees after several battles being waged around their area, their numbers had increased, therefore their labourers as well.
Cutting back to Bismarck, he was currently thinking of a way to rile up these unmotivated griffs to come work for his mysterious project. Except, that his plans had several major flaws, the first one being that they didn't even know him, second having no incentive to work, and being generally miserable in their current state, and not wanting to worsen their already dampened mood. However, Bismarck was always a clever man with his words, he had once riled up his farmers in his estate to form a peasant levy to assist the kaiser in Berlin from a liberal uprising, the same uprising which was attempting to give power to the very peasants he was commanding to quash them. Despite the memory leaving a foul taste in Bismarcks' mouth, as his plans had ended disastrously before, but he quickly recovered his confidence, as he was not departing with a levy to rescue a kaiser or to crush a rebellion, but to build a dam which would benefit the village and the griffons that would be working on it soon. So he began approaching the unmotivated griffs, who were all sprawled out on the dirt, staring blankly in front of them.
Once he was close enough to properly define their facial expressions, doubt had once more set into his mind. It would take a bloody miracle to pull this off... he evaluated, as he began lifting himself onto his hind legs to begin catching their attention. Not a single griff even flinched nor bat an eye at the rising griff. Bismarck coughed loudly into his claws to once more attract attention. Only a single griffs' eyes met his, and just as quickly disengaged to once more stare blankly forward. Bismarck simply blinked at this, not even the Austrian parliamentarians could be this stubbornly blank-minded. he thought bitterly, as he began gritting his beak in annoyance, a claw suddenly appeared on his shoulder and tapped him lightly, which prompted him to turn to see who it might be. When he turned, he saw a familiar face, however, he could not remember immediately who it was, as his mind kept reminding him that he had known him from a scavenging incident from the day before until it quickly hit him. It was Hett.
"Hmmmm?" Bismarck hummed at him whilst slowly turning around.
"What are you tryna do?" Hett questioned, quite confused about what the darkgrey griffon was trying to do.
"I was attempting to catch their attention, and by their reactions, I must ask, are they deaf?" Bismarck mockingly asked.
"Nah, they're all like that. Just lazy or no work to be done." Hett responded seriously.
Bismarck simply shook his head at this, but then suddenly realised a piece of crucial information that he had failed to ask and lacked which made him face-claw himself in his stupidity.
"Say... Hett are you aware of any rivers near the village?" Bismarck asked the stone-headed griffon.
"Yeah, there is one in the north from here, however, it's way too far away to be used. I suggest using the well instead."Hett said, whilst pointing at the well in the centre of the village.
Does this gryphon think I'm blind to not realise a well, or too dumb? Bismarck thought, quite amused as much as he was offended by Hetts' comment. He genuinely did not know if Hett was playing the fool, or was a rockheaded peasant. The new information had made Bismarck pause and think for a moment, Hett had not specified the distance to the river, but judging by the speed of flight and how quick a griff could now go, he speculated that the river was pretty damn far away from the village to be used effectively without changing its course entirely. But this would prove to be another challenge entirely, as the river could easily flood the village, or break the dam and reverse their works, be sabotaged, etc. etc. etc...
Whilst Bismarck was in deep thought, completely ignoring his surroundings, Hett was trying to tell Bismarck of more things about the village, as he seemed to be new here, however, failed repeatedly, as he seemed to be trapped in thought. Hett first waved a claw in front of his face. Failed. Then he gently tapped him on the shoulder. Failed. He poked him hard on the shoulders. Failed. He poked his face, nearing jabbing his beak. Failed. Hett flew over to the well, retrieving a bucket of water and splashing it onto Bismarcks' face. Still nothing. Hett, starting to become annoyed flew upwards and gathered up a small group of clouds and slowly lowered them down directly on top of Bismarck. Hett made sure the cloud wouldn't discharge into the ground, but back into itself and began hitting the cloud with his claws. Every hit of the cloud made a slight sparking sound until the fourth strike garnered a large CRACK which made the darkgrey griffon jolt in surprise and break his trance, which made Hett grin in success. But frowned immediately, when Bismarck seemed to focus more on the now-dark cloud instead of him.
"Uhh... You okay there Bismarck?" Hett asked awkwardly at the wide-mouthed griffon.
"H-how'd you do that?!" Bismarck demanded whilst pointing at the dark cloud which was looming over him.
"Uhhhhhhh... Magic I guess?" Hett couldn't believe he had to explain this to him.
Bismarck paused for a while, and Hett began to dread that he would be lost in thought once more, but thankfully quickly broke out of it to ask another confusing question.
"Can you turn it into a raincloud?" Bismarck asked with a hopeful expression.
Hett simply raised a confused eyebrow at this, and flew on top of the cloud and moved it out of the way as to not douse anygriff, and hit it thrice. It promptly began raining, and making Bismarck hum in approval.
"Wonderful..." Bismarck muttered under his beak.
This made Hett worried slightly, as he began to worry that Bismarck had been living in a cave or something for his entire life, as he seemed to be clueless about everything, especially when he asked for where the river was when a well was right in view.
"Hett... Could you point to me where the farms are?" Bismarck asked, which made Hett sign in relief, as he seemed to at least have the concept of farming.
"Sure thing! Our communal farm is to the east of the village, where the plains are." Hett replied helpfully. "But why'd you ask?" Hett asked.
"I think our griffs could use some upgrades to their tools," Bismarck responded cooly.
"But we don't use tools. We use our claws." Hett responded dumbly, ruining the mood. Bismarck simply chuckled at the stone-headed griffon in response.
Bismarck flew back towards Pauls' makeshift forge, and Hett followed him as well strangely, as he began to realise that the stone head was eyeing him more closely for some reason. But Bismarck paid it no mind, he had some tools collect. But when Bismarck walked into the shack, he noticed Paul working on a large machine which he recognised immediately.
"I thought you were a gunsmith. How are you building this?" Bismarck asked surprised, as Paul was currently constructing a steam-powered ploughing machine which he had seen in different farming estates across Germany.
"I had travelled a lot whilst selling my guns, and an inventor sometimes gets bored doing the same thing every day, so I learned to branch out my knowledge as to not let boredom consume me," Paul replied, blissfully ignorant of Hett, as he was too confused tightening and bolt on a pipe.
"This is quite impressive I must say, however, I was always quite sceptical of using these in my estates. I had plenty of workers for ploughing, and their cost seemed to always deter me." Bismarck started reminiscing, thinking about his younger years.
"Well, this is a newer model, and so should be far more efficient than the ones you had seen," Paul answered after finishing the bolt.
Hett was fascinated with the iron wagon that sat before him, as he completely ignored Bismarcks' and Pauls' conversations to marvel at its every detail, as his lens' periodically widened and shrunk to observe the object. Paul had finally finished the machine and looked towards Bismarck to only find that Hett was now staring at his creation. Paul smiled at this proudly, as he had finally begun receiving the attention which he craved, and began expecting several questions from Hett after his initial shock.
"WHAT IS THAT?!" Hett squeed whilst pointing at the machine.
Paul slapped the wheels of the tractor, "This bad boy-"
"You mean chick?" Hett chimed in,
Paul cleared his throat and began again, "This bad chick can plough an entire field in minutes!"
"Yes, but it needs coal and water to run," Bismarck muttered, eyebrows raised.
Paul rubbed the back of his head, and defended the machine, saying "It only requires a few, also coal seems to be everywhere in this place! We only gotta worry about water."
As if on queue, Bismarck flew in with a cloud which he grabbed easily, as if on instinct and beat it thrice with his claw, emulating what Hett had done before. This resulted in his desired effect, as the cloud turned dark grey and began raining, which garnered the same reaction from Paul which he had gone through before. He chuckled lightly from his reaction.
"H-how'd you do that?!" Paul shouted, whilst wearing an extremely comical confused expression. Hett simply raised a brow from this.
"Same reaction. Hett had displayed this to me beforehand, turns out it's 'magic'." Bismarck said, emphasising the word 'magic' to display his scepticism.
"Well... This solves nearly all of our problems... I suppose you can begin farming then." Paul asked relieved.
"Slight problem my friend, I'm still yet to know the quality of the soil, the nutrient yield of the produces, proper farmers or the fact that we don't know what's out there, and we must treat this as the United States' wild west, so we will need either barb wires, which I can see we don't have, or procure weapons to defend ourselves from animals that might graze on our still-sprouted plants." Bismarck evaluated the situation to Paul.
"Well... I might have the solutions to your problems right here..." Paul said as if planned and brought out two rifles from under the benchpress which Bismarck noticed just now. "One for each of us. Took shorter than expected with these two new appendages." Paul said whilst flexing his wings, which garnered a confused look from Hett. Paul then threw one of the rifles at Bismarck, which he promptly catched, and held close. "I even signed it for you, look at the safety!" Paul remarked boastfully.
Bismarck disregarded the comment, as he whistled in satisfaction with the new rifle. There were no scratches on the bolt nor the trigger, and he was able to open and close the bolt smoothly without any complications. "Where's the bullets?" Bismarck asked, briefly looking back up to see Paul fiddling with the benchpress.
"Only got two strips for now. Iron sulphide is such a torture to refine to sulphur, not to mention having to delicately mix them with charcoal to make reliable black powder." Paul answered, slightly annoyed at having to remember messing up the mixture once, as the charcoal he was first using turning out to be not pure, forcing him to start again.
"Black powder? Iron sulphide? Strips?" Hett finally broke out of his confused thoughts, as he began to hear more foreign words.
"It's nothing you should know, but the gist is, you can separate iron sulphide into just sulphide by grinding them up and using hammered down magnetite to attract the metal and separating the sulphur, and yadda, yadda, yadda." Paul blabbered, and he threw a stripper cartridge to Bismarck, who promptly loaded it into his rifle and cocked the bolt.
"Yadda?" Hett questioned once more, but before Paul could explain why an expression was, a loud BOOM sound pierced their eyes, making Paul squint and Hett duck underneath his wings.
Smoke escaped from Bismarcks' gun, as he pulled back the bolt and ejected the empty cartridge onto the ground. Another whistle could be heard from Bismarcks' beaks. "It works...." He muttered silently.
"Well of course it does! What do you take me for? A fraud?" Paul boasted proudly, expelling a huge mental sign as he was afraid as well that the gun might not work.
"W-what did you just do???" Hett pleaded whilst still covering himself with his claws and wings, as he was terrified of the sound which had come from Bismarcks' weird-shaped stick.
"Seriously...? You can stand the sound of thunder, yet you can't stand the sound of a gun?" Bismarck asked Hett sceptically with a raised brow. But he was also grinning, as he had enacted his vengeance against him for nearly rupturing his eardrums.
"Uhhh... What's a gun?" Hett asked, after lifting himself back up from the initial surprise.
"I'm not explaining that." Paul simply stated.
"Me neither," Bismarck replied in agreement.
The three griffons simply all stood there for a while until Bismarck clapped his claws together to break the silence. "Alright then, would you be so kind Hett to escort me to the farm?" He asked the confused griffon, Hett took a second to shake himself from the sheer shock of the situation which had just unfolded, and wore an amiable smile towards Bismarck to respond in his usual demeanour and manner.
"Sure thing! Just follow me!" Hett enthusiastically replied, turning around to begin leaving the shack. Bismarck meanwhile quickly checked the tractor to make sure that its engines were filled with coal, and he had some few boxes of coal as fuel on its back to ensure a return trip wouldn't be necessary at the start, and after the preparations, he filled up the engine with water and began firing up the engines. Hett, who realised that Bismarck wasn't following poked his head inside the shack to withness Bismarck starting the tractor with an ungodly roar, which made Hett flinch due to the foreign sound which was escaping from the tractors' engines. Just as Hett thought it was its only functions, the machine began to tumble forward, as the steel wheels rolled ever-so-slowly towards the shacks' exit, until it picked up a steady pace on the uneven soil. Fascination would be an understatement of what Hett was experiencing right now, as he was witnessing a lifeless object with a passenger moving forwards, albeit, in a slow pace without anyone towing it. The mighty steel beast roared puffs of black smoke, as it reached its maximum speed towards its destination, as Hett simply flew forwards, head back to stare at the tractor with curious eyes, as Bismarck tried his best to ignore his unending stares. But it wouldn't be his stares' alone that would bother him on his trip. As all the unmotivated griffs and jobless griffs would crowd around the tractor, asking ceaseless questions and staring more intensely than Hett, as he and the tractor slowly tumbled to their destination.
It's going to be a long day... Bismarck groaned internally, as he tried his best to ignore the griffons who were trying to attract this attention. How the tables have turned... He mentally cursed himself.