Welcome to Berk

Bang! Clang! Crash!

"God damn it, Hiccup! Again! I swear, you're going to decapitate me some day!" screamed a heavy set man, who seemed to be brandishing a complex mechanical device which, on closer inspection, turned out to be his right arm.

A young teenage boy was staring at the exploded machine through his blackened welding goggles and his leather apron covered in soot.

"It's just a minor calibration issue. Too much black powder, and a lack of safety valves. Electrics could use some safety features too. I seem to have blown a circuit," said the boy, pulling out a notebook and jotting down the notes.

"Hiccup, I told you not to mess with those new technologies. Why can't you just stick to the practical mechanical functions? It works for me, see," said the larger man, brandishing his arm again, as well as his leg which was also mechanical. Tiny ticking could be heard and tiny motions could be seen within its workings. Both the arm and the leg were beautiful clockwork, dancing within itself in perfect synchronous, almost poetic in motion.

"I've been thinking about that actually. If you use some electrics, you could probably make it simpler and more organic. You would never have to rewind it mechanically," squeaked the younger boy, bringing out his notebook before the larger man motioned for him to put it away.

"I told ya, it's weird and it doesn't work. Just stick to the techniques I told ya, and get back to work," grumbled the larger man, who swiftly started tinkering with an odd machine on the table which turned out to be a mechanical toaster which had slipped a gear.

The larger man with the mechanical limbs is Gobber, a monster of a man who happens to have extremely hands, or should I say hand, and has almost a second sense for machines. He sported a thin beard, almost like he hadn't shaved in a few days, when in reality he just could never grow it out. It was a point of considerable shame for him. His sloppy mess of brown hair hid some of the scars on his face, mostly burns from the shop. He owned the mechanist's shop and served as the town's chief mechanic.

His apprentice, the younger boy furiously scribbling in his notebook, is Hiccup. He was a particularly ingenious young man, about 16, with an incredible intuition for machines. He liked to experiment, especially with the brand new area of electrics, a technique he learned from a book he purchased from a traveling salesman.

He had been a bit out of his element before Gobber took him under his wing, floundering in a bakery trying to heft around bags of flour. Being scrawny, to say the least, he did not fit in. Being of the tinkering sort, he tried to simplify the process by building a conveyor belt, and ended up blowing himself and the bakery up, starting an event that came to be known as The Hiccup Fire, which was forever synonymous with clumsiness and irrational behavior.

Hiccup grumbled about Gobber being an insufferable claptrap and got back to work. The growl of the forge fire and the hum of the clockwork tools which littered the workbench became part of the song of the workshop. Here is where Hiccup felt home. The machines were perfect extensions of his mind, humming and whirring and bringing new life into old scraps of machinery. God only knows he could never deal with real people, which were always variable and subject to change, but machines were constant, easy to predict and easy to understand.

Halfway through his shift, Hiccup was awoken by the obnoxious klaxon of the warning siren blaring through his ear drums. Gobber gave the young man a stern look before violently yanking down the protective metal shielding over the shop windows.

See, Berk was not your ordinary town. Of course it was advanced, like most of Northern Norway in the 19th century, but Berk faced a unique problem. Technology brought good things, healing machines and conveniences, but it also brought something else, something worse. They called these things dragons.

These things were of course not biological dragons, which had never existed, but their mechanical bodies resembled the mythological shapes of the dragons which the Norse vikings feared and worshiped. They were horrible, twisted, imitations of biology, and the few actually studied specimens showed strange, devilish science. No one knew why they attacked, and were so aggressive, but one thing the people of Berk knew, they had to defend themselves.

Patrols were common, with the Corp armed with the latest guns to combat these machinations. Plasma cannons were set up around the perimeter of the town, even the area side facing the sea, since these machines could also fly. The klaxon signaled an immediate shutdown of all town activity and signaled the Corp to assemble to defend the town. Most buildings had metal grating to protect windows and all doors had sturdy locks.

Hiccup quickly went back to work on his exploded machine, tinkering with the electrics especially. Gobber looked on disapprovingly.

"I told ya, stop working on that damn device. It won't work."

"I need to prove it Gobber! You know that the dragons' attacks are only getting worse, and I need to perfect this now. If we can capture one, we could study it, and maybe even..."

"Now stop that. You know dragons can't be captured. You know about the Protocol as well as I do." said Gobber. The Protocol was the self destruct system that all dragons had in place in order to protect their study. Why and who designed these machines and the Protocol was a mystery which had yet to be solved.

"I know that Gobber, which is why I'm trying to perfect the electromagnetic pulse emitter," Hiccup said, tapping the book open on his desk space, "and if you'd help me, we could get one for study."

Gobber rested his face on his palm, clearly showing his discomfort and annoyance. "Look, you're netting, EMP, capturing thing..."

"The Knock Out"

Gobber raised an eyebrow. "Whatever. It is unproven, explosive, and stupid. It. won't. work."

"It's repaired enough. I've got to test it. I'm going out," said Hiccup.

"No you're not. You're not allowed out there."

"You know who I am. I don't care, I'm going."

Hiccup grabbed the device on a wheelbarrow and dodged his disabled master and ran off into the night.

Hey I'm back. Here's a new story I came up with in a moment of epiphany, and I know that you are waiting for the Inventor, and I will try to finish it, but I've been very busy and the story has gotten kind of lost. I will do my best, but don't expect a lot. Thanks.