The Exiled Duke's Lottery system

Hangar Two

The air inside Hangar Two began to beat.

At first, it was a low, mechanical thrum propagating through the concrete floor and directly into the soles of everyone’s boots. But as the main rotor gathered speed, the thrum deepened into a thundering, rhythmic roar.

Whump-whump-whump-whump.

Above the fuselage, the two thick rotor blades dissolved into a blurred, sweeping disc. A violent downdraft swept outward, sending loose schematics, wood shavings, and misplaced wrenches skittering across the floor.

"My hat!" Gandalf bellowed, grabbing the brim of his pointed blue hat with one hand while clamping his other around his staff. The artificial gale whipped his robes frantically around his legs and threatened to ruin the precise, spell-crafted levitation holding his beloved silver beard an inch off the dirty floor.

Beside him, Maerath stood firm, mana swirling around his fingers as he maintained the kinetic containment field around the test perimeter.

Inside the cockpit, Tomas tightened his white-knuckle grip on the cyclic. The machine vibrated, but it wasn’t the violent, teeth-chattering resonance of their failed prototypes. This was controlled, purposeful kinetic energy. The gauges remained rock-steady.

Rotor speed stable. Mana-core throughput nominal. Transmission pressure holding.

Tomas drew a sharp breath, a wild grin breaking across his face. "All right," he muttered into the noise. "Let’s see what you can do."

He slowly pulled upward on the collective lever at his hip.

The pitch of the rotor blades bit into the air. The airframe creaked lightly as its weight shifted off its steel skids. One inch. Six inches. A foot.

The UH-1 hovered smoothly in mid-air.

Ironbreaker instinctively took a step back, shielding his eyes from the dust. "She’s up!"

Almost immediately, the fuselage began to drift sideways as the torque of the main rotor tried to spin the body.

"She’s torque-rolling!" Ironbreaker shouted.

"Because he hasn’t touched the pedals yet, you deaf ox!" Brakka yelled back.

Tomas reacted instantly, pressing his left boot into the rudder pedal. The tiny tail fan altered its pitch, countering the main rotor’s torque. The nose snapped back to center and locked into place.

Tomas raised the collective another fraction. The helicopter rose to two feet, where the chains kept it bolted to the concrete floor and snapped taut with a sharp clack. The airframe jolted against the restraint, but instead of violently oscillating, the teetering rotor hinge absorbed the shock and settled within a fraction of a second.

Silence fell over the everyone as they watched the machine hover—two feet off the ground, rock-stable and effortlessly obedient.

Tomas nudged the cyclic forward; the nose dipped and the machine crept ahead. He pulled back; it halted in place. He eased left and right, testing the crisp response of the mechanical linkages. There were no spell-magnifiers fighting him, no complex hydraulic delays, and no sudden surges of unpredictable power.

"She’s responding!" Tomas laughed aloud through the glass windscreen. "Brakka, she flies like a dream!"

Brakka walked right up to the boundary line of the test area, completely ignoring the wind whipping his greasy leather apron.Looking fixated at the the rotor assembly.

"Look at the hub, Ironbreaker," Brakka said, pointing an oil-stained finger. "Look at how little the central mount is actually moving."

"The assembly is seesawing continuously," Ironbreaker observed, narrowing his eyes. "Every time Tomas moves the stick, the hinge rocks to equalize the lift across the disc."

"Exactly," Brakka said softly. "Our prototype failed because we tried to build a structure strong enough to brute-force its way through aerodynamic imbalance. We built thick titanium brackets and threw spell-wards at it. This machine doesn’t fight the forces acting on it—it just gets out of their way."

Maerath stepped closer, keeping his containment ward humming softly around his hands. "The operator’s manual calls it accommodating kinetic dynamics. In short: they designed the machine to yield to the air rather than forcing the air to obey the machine."

Brakka stared at the spinning hub, a fierce, satisfied grin spreading across his dwarven features. "Brilliant. Totally infuriating, but brilliant."

After ten minutes of flawless hovering, Brakka signaled for touchdown. Tomas eased the collective down, the skids settled onto the concrete, and the mana-core wound down with a long, descending whine.

"That," Tomas announced, sliding out of the cockpit and landing lightly on his boots, "was the easiest first flight of my life."

Gandalf retrieved his hat from where it had blown against a crate, dusting it off with great dignity. "I would like it officially placed on the record that I hated every single second of that chaotic racket."

"You were smiling, Gandalf," Maerath noted smoothly.

"I was grimacing with profound wizardly concern," Gandalf sniffed, adjusting his hat. "I refuse to discuss it further."

Brakka ignored them both, stepping directly up to the warm fuselage. "We aren’t done. Tomas, back in the harness."

What followed was six hours of relentless, methodical testing.

They logged engine start-up curves under varying mana-core draw, measured heat dissipation across the unlubricated gearbox housing, ran full-throttle static tests, directional authority checks, rapid altitude changes within the length of the chains, and emergency shutdown procedures.

By late afternoon, the UH-1 had executed every trial without a single mechanical glitch or core surge.

Tomas stepped down from the cockpit for the final time, rubbing his sore shoulders. "What’s on the schedule for tomorrow, Brakka?"

Brakka ran a hand along the metal skin of the fuselage. "Tomorrow, we take it apart."

Tomas blinked. "What you’re dismantling a perfectly good flying machine?"

"We aren’t destroying it, lad," Ironbreaker clarified, stepping up with a crate of labeled brass tags and calipers. "We’re extracting its secrets."

"The flight manual gives us the theory," Maerath added, shutting his notebook. "The teardown will give us the metallurgy and manufacturing tolerances."

Gandalf gestured toward the massive crate sitting near the depot doors. "And what of the thick manual? The one regarding precision tools?"

Brakka turned to the tall wizard, his expression deadly serious. "Keep it locked in the heavy vault under three iron deadbolts. That book isn’t just a manual, Gandalf—it’s the blueprint for an industrial revolution. If a drop of moisture gets on those pages, I’ll use your silver beard to polish my lathe."

Gandalf defensively clutched his beard to his chest. "I assure you,Little Dwarf, it is safer in my vault than your gold is in yours."

Next day,

Hangar Two was locked down under armed commando guard.

The UH-1 sat in the center of the mechanical bay, surrounded by drafting tables, measuring tools, and heavy iron racks. Every single component removed from the aircraft was assigned a catalog number, sketched, measured, and weighed.

Ironbreaker began by unbolting the outer skin. As the panels came free, he ran his rough hands over the interior ribbing in growing realization.

"It’s a monocoque(single shell) concept," Ironbreaker murmured, tracing the thin aluminum curves. "The skin isn’t just dead weight sitting on a heavy frame to keep the rain out.It is the structural support. By curving these lightweight plates and riveting them directly to the ribs, the entire shell absorbs the flight stress."

"We’ve been building heavy iron ribs and bolting thick armor plates over them," Brakka agreed, shaking his head. "We were carrying three times the weight for half the structural integrity."

"We can redesign our fuselage frames starting today," Ironbreaker said, his eyes gleaming. "Use our high-tensile light alloys, integrate the skin, and cut thirty percent of our airframe mass immediately."

Next came the main rotor hub.

Brakka spent two full hours examining the teetering hinge before allowing Ironbreaker to remove the central pin. When the assembly finally lay spread out across the wooden workbench, Brakka stared at the pile of parts in stunned silence.

Nine components. The entire primary lifting mechanism consisted of just nine precision-machined physical parts.

"Our prototype hub had forty-one parts," Ironbreaker said quietly, looking at the layout. "Three hydraulic loops, two spell-cores, and four dampening cages. And it caught fire."

"Because we didn’t understand the physics," Brakka said. He picked up a steel control rod, feeling its weight, before slamming it down onto the workbench with a heavy thud.

"Right," Ironbreaker said, reaching for a parchment pad and a drafting compass. "I’ll start drawing up templates so the foundries can begin copying these exact parts."

"No," Brakka barked.

Ironbreaker froze, looking up. "What do you mean, no?"

"Don’t copy it," Brakka ordered, his voice ringing across the quiet hangar.

Maerath looked over from his ledger. "Brakka, this design works flawlessly. Why wouldn’t we replicate it?"

"Because this is their answer for their world," Brakka said, stepping up to the main drafting table and slapping his calloused palm onto the blank paper. "The UH-1 is brilliant, but look at its flaws for our theater. Its skin is paper-thin—a single volley from an enemy heavy crossbow or a fire-bolt would shred the cabin. Its payload capacity is limited. It carries one light squad and has no heavy weapons."

He picked up a piece of charcoal and drew a thick, aggressive line across the parchment.

"We don’t need a fragile transport," Brakka continued, his eyes burning with ambition. "We understand the physical principles now. We have the Precision Tools manual to give us micro-millimeter tolerances and we have Elarion’s mana-cores and dwarf-forged alloys."

Ironbreaker leaned over the table, staring at the bold charcoal lines. "You want to design a new machine from scratch?"

"I want to design a superior machine," Brakka declared, sketching out a broad, sweeping airframe. "A heavier fuselage built with integrated alloy armor,reinforced twin mana-core drive feeding a heavy-duty planetary transmission. Greater lift capacity. Room for armored shock troops and mounted mana-cannons or maybe a aerie vulcan."

Ironbreaker took the charcoal from Brakka’s hand and added a wide stubby wing to the side of the fuselage sketch. "Hardpoints for unguided rocket pods or bomb."

"Yes!" Brakka grinned fiercely. "And what about the main rotor?"

Ironbreaker studied the sketch, rubbing his beard. "The two-blade teetering hinge is simple, but a three-blade articulated system using our high-grade steel will give us far higher top speeds, smoother flight, and better maneuverability with a heavy payload."

"Three blades," Brakka agreed, slapping the table. "With an internal dampening hub. Now that we understand how aerodynamic forces distribute through a rotor head, we can engineer a three-blade hub properly without relying on crude magical crutches."

Tomas leaned over their shoulders, looking at the rapidly developing blueprint. The drawing on the table looked nothing like the UH-1 sitting in pieces behind them. It was angular, aggressive, armored, and distinctly Elarion.

"That looks less like a dragonfly," Tomas murmured, "and more like an armored war-dragon."

"The UH-1 gave us the foundation," Brakka said, handing the drafting charcoal to Ironbreaker. "It showed us how the physics work. But we aren’t here to be copycats of another world’s engineering."

He looked back at the dismantled helicopter one last time, nodding to it with profound respect before turning his back on it to face the drafting board.

"They gave us a lesson," Brakka smiled, his voice full of dwarven pride. "Now let’s go build a legend."

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