The journey to the settlement was a quiet one. The elven refugees, still shaking from their brush with death, followed Kevin as if he were a ghost given solid form. When the wooden palisades of the hidden village finally appeared through the mist, the elder of the group stopped and pressed a heavy leather pouch into Kevin's hand.
"A small token," the elder whispered, his voice thick with emotion. "We have little, but we would have even less without your... intervention. May the stars light your path, Caoimhín."
Kevin felt the weight of the pouch of crowns—gold and silver coins that represented a significant fortune in this cash-strapped wilderness. "Take care of yourselves," he replied, tipping his top hat. "And perhaps consider a few more scouts. The world is getting smaller by the day."
Kevin entered the settlement, but he didn't seek out the elders or the local warriors. Instead, he headed straight for the rhythmic clang-clang-clang of the blacksmith shop.
The smith, a broad-shouldered elf with soot-stained skin, looked up in confusion as a well-dressed gentleman in a frock coat began inspecting his inventory.
"I'll take all of it," Kevin said, gesturing to the stacks of pig iron, copper bars, and brass sheets. "The regular metals only. I have no need for your 'meteorite' or 'dark iron' superstitions. I need consistent, predictable materials for precise engineering."
The smith took the crowns, still bewildered, as Kevin hauled his loot toward a small, drafty room he had rented at the local elven inn.
As he sat on the edge of the straw mattress, the gold pocket watch ticking in his hand, Kevin's mind was a whirlwind of blueprints. He didn't just want to survive; he wanted to build. He needed a workshop with a proper lathe, a chemical station for refining gunpowder, and a furnace that could reach temperatures this world had never seen.
"A proper house," Kevin murmured to himself, his British accent echoing in the small room. "A proper laboratory. And perhaps, eventually, a decent cup of tea."
His mission was set. He was going to drag this medieval world, kicking and screaming, into the Age of Steam.
******
Construction began at the edge of the settlement, near a stream that offered the promise of hydraulic power. Kevin didn't just ask for a cabin; he handed the hired elven builders a set of technical drawings—orthographic projections with precise measurements that left them scratching their pointed ears in confusion.
"Master Kevin," one of the builders said, squinting at a blueprint for a reinforced floor. "This building... it is massive. Too large for a home, and the ventilation shafts you've designed are enough to draft a dragon. What is the purpose of this 'Great Hall'?"
Kevin adjusted his top hat, his eyes scanning the timber frames. "It isn't a hall, my friend. It's a laboratory. A place where we shall interrogate the very laws of nature until they give us their secrets. Build it sturdy; the floor needs to support the weight of a heavy-duty casting furnace."
The workers whispered among themselves. To them, Caoimhín—or Kevin, as he insisted—was a riddle wrapped in a frock coat. He didn't hunt, he didn't sing the ancient songs of the Aen Seidhe, and he seemed more interested in the tensile strength of oak than the history of the Elder Blood.
The confusion only deepened when Kevin visited the local glassblowers.
The craftsmen were used to making sturdy beer mugs and the occasional delicate vial for a healer's tinctures. Kevin, however, handed them sketches of Florence flasks, Liebig condensers, and graduated cylinders.
"I need these to be of uniform thickness," Kevin explained, tapping a drawing of a complex distillation coil. "And this piece here—it must be airtight when joined with this stopper."
The head glassblower held the sketch upside down. "It is not a bottle. It is not a cup. If it is for storing potions, why the strange neck? Why the coiled innards?"
"It's for Chemistry," Kevin replied simply. "The art of breaking the world down into its base elements and rebuilding it into something more... efficient."
The rumor mill in the settlement went into overdrive. Some said Kevin was a renegade sorcerer who had lost his mind; others claimed he was building a weapon to wipe out the Redanians in a single blast. The children whispered that the "Elf in the Hat" was capturing spirits in his glass tubes.
Kevin ignored the gossip. He spent his evenings at the inn, his gold pocket watch ticking on the bedside table as he calculated the precise ratios of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal he would need to manufacture smokeless powder.
The "Sooty Continent" didn't know it yet, but the first industrial heart was beginning to beat in the middle of a refugee camp.