NPC: Bertan

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You see a gnome moving in a straight line and using a strange instrument everEL-DB.comy few steps. You believe he is measuring something, but can't tell for sure.

Who are you?

Hi, traveler? Quite hot in this desert, isn't it? My name is Bertan, nice to meet you.

Job

Why, I am the chief field engineer for GIWS. My job is to make sure the system is as operational as it can be, if we have enough funds, that is. Not an easy job, it requires a lot of travel and hard work, but it is rewarding nonetheless. It is me and my team that are responsible with saving many lives, such as yours.

GIWS

Global Invasion Warning System. It is an early warning system which constantly monitors the hyperspace and tries to detect any activity related to a possible invasion. This is not as easy as you might think, simple magic is not enough. No, the hyperspace is way too noisy for magic to work. This is where we, the engineers, step in.

Field Engineer

A field engineer needs to check the detectors, make sure they are powered up and calibrated. He has to make sure the relays have a clear line of sight with each other and the antennas are clean and pointed in the right direction. Sometimes new relays or detectors must be added, or old ones replaced. This requires some telemetry, and only a trained engineer can do it.

Telemetry

The distance between relays needs to be within some very strict parameters, or else we get multipath interference which cause a tremendous decrease in accuracy. Desert Pines is a nice location for the relays and detectors, because there is a lot of open space, so working here is like a walk in the park. Last week I had to replace an antenna in White Stone and it was such a pain because of the trees.

More
Before I started my job, the measurements were done using ropes, which as you can imagine can be very tedious. But I came up with a new method, using echo location. It took me a few months to build the first prototype, and I must say I am very proud of it.

Detectors

The detectors are my favorite GIWS component, I could talk about them for days if I had the time. Most people believe that GIWS is just a satellite who senses distorsions in the hyperspace. But that's notEL-DB.com nearly enough, because of noise issues. To have a reliable system, an array of ground detectors is needed as well. I will not bore you with all the details, but the idea is to have them all syncronized.

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And when I say syncronized, I mean all the clocks must be less than 2 nanoseconds off. To get this accuracy we need radioactive minerals such as dvarium. If something happens with a detector, as it often is the case, someone has to repair it soon, or the accuracy of the whole system goes down a lot. This is mainly why we always need money. If the funding runs low, we can miss the invasion entirely.

Relays

Oh, the relays, my second favorite part of the system. You see, all the information from the detectors and satellite needs to be transmited to a central processing system, where everything is processed. One might think the relays are just some big antennas, but that's not true at all. The signal must be amplified, encrypted, and an error correction algorithm must be used. But that's not all.

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Mortos would very much like to render GIWS unoperational, and the relays are an obvious target, since there are lots of them, and they can't be guarded. To counter that, we must hide or disguise them. Some are embedded in rocks, some in trees, and some in all kind of other structures such as statues, city walls or even homes.

Hyperspace

It's that place where you go whenever you use a telport item, spell, or portal. It is somewhere outside this space, we don't know for sure where. In fact, we engineers can't normally access it, so for the time being we need to use magic to open a hyperspace door where we can put our probes. Some of us are working at a way to access the hyperspace by non magic means, but so far our success has been pretty limited.

Noisy

Each time someone teleports, or sometimes even when certain magic items are used, there are ripples in the hyperspace. We need to tune out those waves, and distinguish between Mortos opening a gateway to our world and usual hyperspace activity. Otherwise we'd get false alarms most of the time.

Goodbye

See you around!