Students, to your desks, open your notebooks. Prepare for one of the most important engineering lectures of your life.
*Shillandy puts his monocle in his eye and clears his throat*
As you should all know, there are two schools of Engineering. Gnomish and... that other one. Now, the key difference between these two schools is the ingenuity involved. Any lughead with a wrench and rocks can make a bomb, but Gnomish engineering focuses on altering the very fabric of the universe. It draws from magical sources different from arcane, natural and religious schools, and there are key shapes and apparati that channel these energies. Very few people know how these apparati work, they just trust that they do.
This is why I am charged with conveying my knowledge to you, and I shall begin with one of the most elementary forms used in Gnomish Engineering, the chicken.
When I was working for the engineering research committee on the Tinker's Council, I was given a small group of top scientists to study an animal alien to Gnomeregan but believed to possess nearly unfathomable magical energies. This "Chicken" seemed to be one of the most powerful and influential creatures in all of Azeroth, keeping the other sentient races completely unaware of it's genius.
We collected a few specimens at first, thinking that they lacked the ability to outsmart us, but we quickly found our cages open and our labs in disarry, with feathers everywhere. We quickly learned that these creatures were not to be taken lightly.
Next we tried keeping them in newly designed energy cages, the plans for which were lost with Gnomeregan, but the obvious control they had over mechanical magic thwarted our cages, since their feathers rendered them completely immune to the cage walls' shocks. In the end, we had Gnomeregan's top mages constantly turning the chicken into sheep until we were ready to perform our experiments. (As sheep, the chickens were no longer magical)
We studied chickens for years, and eventually derived many powerful inventions from their form, but all of our specimens seemed flawed. As we tried to adapt the prototype mechano-striders to the chickens' forms, we lost many test pilots due to loose joints in the legs, or misproper wiring of the artificial guidance system. All hoped seemed lost, until we happened upon news of the greatest chicken in all the land: El Pollo Grande, the black chicken of death.
We quickly travelled to Stranglethorn Vale, from whence the news had come. When we arrived, we learned that the Venture Co. had taken El Pollo Grande for themselves, and we were ready to storm their base, but when we got there, we found only ashes... and feathers.... and dead goblins... (the dead goblins weren't so bad) We tracked the huge footprints all the way to a remote island off the coast, where we found El Pollo Grande.
We managed to capture him (as a sheep, just like the other chickens) But we daren't bring the beast back to Gnomeregan. So, we had our entire lab airlifted to the island. We studied El Pollo Grande for weeks, and finally derived the first Prototype Mechano-striders from it. We released El Pollo Grande, realizing that he was needed to preserve the natural order of the world. We dropped him off on an island that was considered the other side of the world, what we now refer to as Azshara. Sightings of El Pollo Grande have been reported from all over Kalimdor, but we shall never cage that beast again.
So, the chickens are magical. We've created countless engineering wonders based on their forms, including pet mechanical chickens, Battle Chickens, Mechano-striders, and the security drones still Present in the ruins of Gnomeregan.
Well, that's it for the day. Class dismissed.
Posted by Shillandy at 10:16 PM 19 May 2005