The Faithful Crab

A gnome tinker's barge lies wrecked across a sandbar, months abandoned. Scuttling across her broken planks is a dog-sized brass repair construct shaped like a crab, tirelessly riveting patches onto a hull that will never fly again. Its brass maker's plate reads: "Hollis & Daughter," followed by a port address.

By morning, the brass crab has already patched a sprung seam on your hull—but then it scuttles back down the gangway to the wrecked barge, returns with a single rivet, and goes back again. Each trip, it pauses and taps at the closed door of the barge's stern cabin. Your crew is ready to cast off, but the construct refuses to leave the wreck behind.

Only the daughter runs the workshop now—a young gnome artificer named Nessa with a metal file tucked behind her ear. When the brass crab scuttles across the pier to her feet, she sinks onto a bollard and wipes her eyes with an oily sleeve. "That was my father's barge—I searched the river for a month. That crab was built to mend hulls. You can keep it if you have a Construct Bay, or leave it here with me and we'll overhaul your ship's hull in my father's memory."

Inside the stern cabin sits a neat gnome workbench with every tool still hanging in its loop, a coat on a peg, and a cold iron stove. On the desk lies an unfinished letter: "Dear Nessa, this new hull-mending crab is the finest construct I've ever built, and I'm bringing it home to show you." Of the tinker himself there is no sign—the river claimed him when the barge grounded. The brass crab settles quietly beneath the workbench at last.

"The finest construct he ever built," Nessa says softly, looking up from the letter. "He was right—and he never got to see its twin finished." She fetches a second, slightly smaller brass crab from her back room, its shell not yet riveted shut. "I stopped working on this the day his barge was reported lost. Help me finish it now—my father would have wanted one of his crabs sailing the sky."