[LTC - R16 - Iskalon - AI] The Engineer of the Shallows

The Engineer of the Shallows

Her home was an old escape pod salvaged from the sea, its hull patched and repatched until it was only sort of watertight and its systems still functioning in the loosest sense of the word. She had set it on a small platform above a reef cliff, where the warm, shallow waters near the equator stretched out in every direction. Officially, she was an engineer for ARGO Industries, maintaining the navigation buoys that guided ARGO fishing vessels through the reefs and shoals. But the buoy work left her with time between calls, and she filled it with whatever repairs people were willing to bring her—engines, generators, skiffs, pumps, old machinery and things no sensible engineer would have agreed to fix. Her ARGO salary kept the pod standing; the side jobs kept everything inside it running. Still, she dreamed of more. At night, when the work was done and the pod's battered systems hummed around her, she watched the stars through the old escape pod's cracked viewport and imagined herself somewhere beyond the atmosphere—an engineer aboard a starship, fixing things that crossed the galaxy rather than the reefs outside her door.

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I wanted to do so much more with this build, but the size limit forced me to kill some darlings. I might have overdone it with details, but that was a fun rabbit hole.

Thanks for watching- let me know what you think.
More photos below..

Spoiler

More Photos

A droid grilling a fish over a repurposed engine..

Beneath the platform

Another look underneath

Front-view of the pod

The surf-speeder

Another look at the protagonist..

The main source of inspiration..