“Oh yeah, I was surprised when Aldric and Tulah asked me to join the team all those years ago,” Polnicek commented when asked about her time on the team. “But they said they couldn’t do it without me. Since we have a few knuckleheads on the team who wouldn't even know how to build a goalie net if it came preassembled, I figured that was true, so how could I say no?”

Polnicek, being the least heat-resistant member of the team, explained that in the past she had painted herself colours that would help beat the heat of Moltara, but try as she might, she never felt right as anything other than what she is now. So over the years, she has instead concocted quite a few contraptions to make sure the team can progress as a whole in even the hottest of locales.

“My brother, Tangor, and I grew up here, so we’ve built a lot of ways to deal with the heat over the years,” Polnicek said as she showed off her workshop. “I’ve got a fire-resistant tracksuit that stores water to cool me off as I run. I recently made a mostly lava-proof canoe with fans that operate as I row– Oh, and of course, the small-scale, lava-powered cooling systems I perfected to put into our training centre. They also put that in many of the homes around the city, and then Mayor Heph gave me a key for some reason.”

“She doesn’t just make things for herself,” Captain Aldric Beign explained after Vere wandered off to continue tinkering. “Vere has built all sorts of things to help those in different lands better adapt if they're not fully suited to the terrain they call home. She’s never let something as small as a thousand-degree temperature difference stop her before, and she won’t let those sorts of things stop others either.”