The Bore

This is the page where we collect all of the information about the Bore, our home away from home. Bores or Tunnel Bores are large mechanical vehicles designed to bore holes through stone. Usually a metal body with four to eight mechanical legs and a large drill. There are multiple varieties, focused for combat, exploration, and industrial usage.

The Bore, much like a player character, has its own set of stats. These are rolled against when players want the bore to do something. The bore can be told to do things and will act automatically or it can be driven manually. When driven manually, the character’s Vehicle skill for the Bore is added to the bore’s roll. The Bore levels up through upgrades, either player made or bought.
 * Power: Connected to the furnace and boiler. Rolled against attempts to overwhelm or push through things.
 * Mobility: Connected to the Bore’s legs. Used for maneuvering and quick movement.
 * System: The mind of the machine, connected to the clockwork brain of the machine. Used for automated actions and aiming.
 * Integrity: Connected to the metal skeleton and plate of the machine. Used to prevent damage.
 * Penetration: Connected to the drill. Its ability to drill through different materials.

The bore we chose at the start of the game is the Nomad Bore. An oversized and outdated Bore formerly used by trading caravans. Its systems are outdated and its boiler isn’t the best, but its powerful drill and expertly tuned mobility systems allow it to get just about anywhere.
 * Power: 8
 * Mobility: 14
 * System: 9
 * Integrity: 10
 * Penetration: 12
 * 6/15 Open Rooms Occupied

Bore Systems

 * Hull
 * Maintence ladders that run across the bore's surface
 * Command Centre (top floor)
 * HAM Radio
 * Amplifier
 * Brain
 * Fire Control Module (Brass sphere containing a clockwork brain, added +1 System, retrieved from Balarim by AsHul)
 * Automatic map
 * Periscope cluster
 * Observation dome blast shields
 * Basic sensors (bore can read external temperature, oxygen levels, and depth)
 * Airlocks
 * Boiler (bottom)
 * spare fuel tank, holds 50 fuel, the valve connecting it to the main fuel tanks is closed as standard
 * Engine (bottom)
 * Winch and 300 feet of Rope with a harness (can be connected to the engine)
 * Legs (bottom)
 * Drill: upgraded from the one we started with, now drilling also only costs 1 fuel
 * Cannon
 * Swivel mount: allows for more freedom of movement for aiming the cannon
 * 5 standard rounds
 * 2 armor piercing rounds
 * Small freight elevator
 * Intercom system
 * General Workshop (room)
 * Chemical Workshop (room)
 * Weapons Workshop (room)
 * Crew Quarters (room)
 * Medical Room (room)
 * Equipment Storage/Lockers (room)
 * Basic crawler (seats 8)
 * Bore Piercer [1/1] (Rifle 5)
 * 10 extra rounds (Pierce 5)

The bore is already technically amphibious. Its water tight (probably) and the drill can be used as a propeller, albeit not a great one. But it is possible to modify it to be more amphibious.

Bore travel
Traveling through the overworld with the bore requires fuel. Traveling through open areas, ie areas you don't need to drill through, costs 1 fuel per space on the map. Traveling through closed areas, ie areas you need to drill, costs 2 fuel per square  due to upgrading our drill, this now also only costs 1 fuel. Fuel costs 1 fathom per unit and you can get it from any town and sometimes along the Paths at what amount to gas stations. The bore can currently store a maximum of 100 fuel. Each unit is similar to a few gallons of gasoline.

Current Bore fuel: [150/150]

Appearance
This is an old bore, before your time. Maybe before your parent's time.

The bore is set up on a multi-story layered cylindrical design, like most bores. The drill and engines make it bottom heavy so the legs are affixed at the same level as the engine, about where the center of gravity is. Thats all down almost at the very bottom, with only a half-story of sorts between the drill and the engine room. Not enough space to do much more than get in and weasel about, fixing things. Other rooms higher in the bore are larger, all shaped like horizontal arches around the central core supports and ladders.

There are a few rooms in the bore that look like they were used for cargo, judging by some hooks welded to the floor.

The crew has to be careful, because the bore may change its orientation while travelling, resulting in them finding themselves on the walls or ceiling.

The outer surface of the bore has various ladders where someone can hold on to traverse the exterior.

Command Centre Appearance
The former inhabitants of the bore seem to have hung ribbons on the legs of the ladder; most of them are gone but there are a few left that were apparently knotted too tightly or at too hard of an angle to bother with.

The command center of the bore is a glass domed room at the very top of the machine. Its got a great view of the world outside. There are controls for blast-shields that deploy to cover the dome. With the dome closed a bank of periscopes helps the driver and their assistants maintain situational awareness.

There's a map system as well, a sort of giant paper map embedded in the wall with big dials that let you scroll the view around since the map is extremely large and zoomed in. The mapping seems entirely manual, the map in the machine is all hand drawn, seemingly by several people since the quality varies. You can sync the map and the bore's movement so that it will move through known paths automatically.

The entire cockpit can rotate to align correctly and allow the command crew to travel in comfort when drilling sideways or upwards.

In the center of the room, taking up a lot of it, is a brass cylinder. It has cutout holes here and there for access to control panels; through gaps between the outer casing and these controls you can see the massive churning clockwork nightmare that is the bore's "Brain". The sound of what must be hundreds of thousands of metal gears all working at once is like the trickle of running water amplified and made metallic; countless tiny bells ringing. Its got several readouts, lots of nixie displays churning through numbers and those rotating split flap displays outputting text occasionally. Right now its outputting "STANDBY".

The actual controls of the ship are quite elaborate; at least they seem that way. There are about a billion little buttons and gauges and knobs and levers and lights and nixie readouts. Seems like controlling this thing totally manually would be a nightmare.

Startup
"You start pressing buttons, flipping switches and pulling leavers, going through the startup sequence. You can feel it as the boiler heats up, the soft thrum of pressurized fluids running out into the legs, the rattle of the engine starting up. The entire machine shifts several inches up as the legs come online. You check the displays behind you and the computer is rapidly scrolling through the split flaps, displaying things for a moment before moving on.

You double check everything before putting your hand on the drive lever. You squeeze the safety catch and take a deep breath. Then you throw the lever. There is a tremendous reverberation as everything in the drive system catches. The blast doors above you iris shut and the machine rocks back and forth, automatically synchronizing the legs. And then with a sudden lurch it begins to move, rising straight up with enough force and speed that you need to lean on the console to keep your balance. Displays, running dim and quiet on reserve power until a moment ago, flash into brilliant light and whirl with energetic life."