For the Infrastructural Navy's Corps of Divers the Battle of Daagsgrad marked a turning point. Most of what they'd done before that point had been tests with the odd job here and there and the occasional training run. Afterwards, there was a lot to do, from helping repair a couple of damaged drydocks to salvage. Over the last few months their numbers had more than doubled despite loosing six trainees in accidents. For Lieutenant Vadim Valcaw, the most immediate consequence of victory was that they could now go at a slower pace, which lowered the rate of mistakes and more time to get the newbies ready for sea floor work. The suits were cumbersome and heavy by design, vision was limited even with the headlamp and sometimes people panicked when they saw an Akula swim by even though the damn things were at worst a bit curious and interested in the critters that divers dug up or otherwise screwed up. You made mistakes when you were overworked and when you were new to the job and mistakes could be fatal.





He kept this in mind as they worked on their latest target. The remains of the Drow attack fleet were full of salvageable material. Cannons, shot, engines, gearing, props, anchors, chains, stoves, tools, weapons, armor and more could be salvaged for iron for the foundries. Copper, bronze and brass were also in high demand for a variety of applications from wiring to diving helmets. Runic armor, weapons and Prow Rams could be sold off to foreign runesmith guilds. Gold and silver were also gathered with special enthusiasm since the Diving Crews got a cut of what they recovered. Vadim had already put some 54 Kilocredits in his account from this work from salvaged coinage alone, more than a decade's worth of wages even with his Hazard Pay and the salvage crews had only gone over eight wrecks so far.





Two days after the singing of the Peace Treaty Vadim had been assigned to the ninth wreck which was identified as being called the Raethis . While far from the largest ship in the fleet, it was the one which the Navy was the most concerned about. The immediate reason for this was obvious as he and his team began taking off large slabs of iron armor with their crowbar axes and small blasting charges. It was not as strong as an Infrastructural Ship would be, but the pitting in it's plating showed that could take a beating. It was a sobering sobering thought. But Vadim would find something that made that vision all the worse.



On the third day working on the Raethis they broke into her gundeck, they found something unusual among On the third day working on the Raethis they broke into her gundeck, they found something unusual among the artillery pieces . Most of them were fairly typical examples of rifled Drow guns, but one of them stood out even with a layer of rust over it. As such Vadim and Ensign Mikhailov spent two hours moving it into place, cutting away the remains of it's truck and setting up a harness for collection.





On the salvage barge there were a couple of Naval Intelligence personnel looking over the Salvage, most of the time they were looking over items of salvage and in general they were bored out of their minds. When his shift was over, Vadim noticed that they were all focused on the cannon with interest. When he came up he was soon met by their leader Lieutenant Kulik and had a brief interview about the object. What he gathered from the exchange was this: this cannon was a steel breechloader of a distinctly Drow design. Something which was closer to Infrastructural artillery than anything they had here-to-fore made or used. It was an important enough find that he and Mikhailov both got an extra 500 credit bonus that day.







He'd been wondering about that since he'd found the damn thing and now his fears were confirmed. The Drow were testing not only Ironclad ships but modern cannonry and if they could make one, they could make more. After the interview he was certain that in Hellish Foundries iron was being made into plates and steel was being used to cast more of these cannons and their bigger cousins to be put together by hordes of slaves driven by cruel supervisors in nightmarish shipyards to make dozens of Ironclads that would be at least as good as the Raethis. The Dark Elves were excellent sailors and warriors and even with their obsolete fleet they did manage to destroy a few Infrastructural Navy warships at Daagsgrad. He did not sleep well that night.







