Nyx

Wiping the soot from his face, the ink-stained gazetteer orders a pint of the deepest and darkest. A goblin, burdened with more paper than its slight build should carry, drops his load by the doors.

"Get it while you can!" bellows the goblin.

"Keep it down," groans the elf. "You managed to fix the Typ-53773r?"

"Yup," nods the goblin, handing out the pamphlets fresh from the device in question.

"Very good," sighs Yaen'gohl into his drink. "I think that it would have been easier to have a small set of priests recopy it by hand."

The goblin chuckles, "But that would have taken hours. After reaming out the rollers, recoordinating the spindles, setting the crank alignment, torquing the steam extractor/expander, loading the charge tube, reticulating the splines, tossing some dice, and quoting the Engineer's Oath over the thing; it only took 6000 minutes. Obviously the wonders of Elf/Goblin-o-matic devices is lost upon a scribbler as yourself."

With a roll of the eyes, Yaen'gohl drank more. His mind pondering what to put in the next issue...

(( Why can't people just leave the poor splines un-reticulated? ))

I, myself, have often pondered this issue, Master Melk. It does seem rather a waste of time. Since the most experienced engineer of my acquaintance is my master, Bael'spar, I had thought to pose the question to him. Alas, he was otherwise preoccupied in Raventusk Village. Mistress Sham'lin, if I correctly recall. As such, he was in no mood to answer my questions.

That forced me to turn to one of the many goblins that flit in and out of his salon in the Ghostlands. To transcribe what I was told in such a small place as this, might be nigh on impossible. As such, I will paraphrase. From what engineers have noted in their observations of splines, they loose their flexibilty over time. As they are slowly and cautiously developing behavioral pattern, it becomes necessary for the engineers to reticulate the spline so that it will be open to a new series of situations that it might not consider in its former configuration. The protectors that have gone mad in the Ruins of Silvermoon are a prime example of engineering gone awry without proper reticulation.

"Remember, it is for the splines that we reticulate," said the engineer.