5'10"
33
Woodworker
Nemus
Offline
5 Posts
Played by Adrien
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Post by lyra ashford on Jun 26, 2017 17:40:09 GMT -5
[googlefont="Amatic SC"] Home is where I want to be,
pick me up and turn me 'round It was official, Lyra hated this planet. Or, he hated it right now. He’d landed on P.E. right in the middle of an awful, cold, miserable season. No, cold wasn’t the word for it. He didn’t have a word for it, and he knew his mother would be disappointed in him for that. Freezing didn’t do this justice.
He’d lucked out, it seemed. He’d landed in the middle of the night, and had enough sense to not exit the safety of his pod until morning. When he did, he’d been on the verge of freezing to death for being underdressed with no idea where to go, and if it hadn’t been for a scavenger checking to see if anything had been abandoned at the drop point, he likely would never have made it. The man gave him a spare coat he’d found and led him to the mountains, unhelpfully pointing out the three dead, very frozen bodies along the way.
People who hadn’t made it.
The man who helped him was a nomad and uninterested in living with another person, so Lyra found himself shown to a burgeoning cave community and left there rather unceremoniously. It had too few people for him to be anonymous, and too many for him to be able to ignore them all. Socializing was hard, and he’d stumbled over his words so many times in the last several days that he felt like no one would ever let him live it down.
He’d had to build his own house, too. At first the others were going to help him out, but it turned out they didn’t appreciate his artistic sentiments as much as he did. And then there was Jordan, who he’d had to actually ask for him to go away, he kept trying to put stones into the wrong spots. In the end it was an artistic… uh. House? That’s what it was meant to be, but Lyra felt a small worry in the back of his mind that it might collapse on him one day.
To top it all off, there was no wood for him to work with here. Everything they had was needed for kindling and couldn’t be made into sculptures. He was doing his best with small stones, having made simple tools for chiseling out of metal scrap. They were all right. He’d made a fairly passable duck, and a few cool abstract bits and bobs, but he couldn’t do anything thin or it would just break. Most people were probably just going to think they were strange-looking rocks.
Nevertheless, he had placed them around the community where he hoped people would get a small smile when they saw them.
But he couldn’t just sit around making abstract sculptures, it helped no one. And it killed him to think that. Instead, he found himself wandering around, trying to find something else to do. While he walked, the tossed his hammer in the air, catching it as it fell back down. It was almost like a stupid game they played back when he was an apprentice, only back then you had to then pound down a nail with the hammer in whatever position you caught it in, until someone managed to drive their nail all the way in. And if you missed the nail, you took a shot. As a result he’d gotten pretty good at catching his hammer by the handle. His normal hammer, that is, and this was the stubby hammer he’d been able to fit into his carry-on bag. He was walking toward the kilns when he made a bad toss, the head of the hammer coming down onto his fingers before making its way to the ground as he let out a pain-filled yelp.
Yep, just like the drinking game from his apprenticeship.
feet on the ground, head in the sky || OPEN |
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6'1"
29
Miner
Mt. Intego
Offline
8 Posts
Played by Snide
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Post by Dowan White on Jul 6, 2017 7:23:50 GMT -5
[nospaces]
As inspiring as it was to see a community come together like their own, such growth and development never came without cost. Once you began to consider the individual's not insubstantial drain on resources that the environment was able to produce, it became all the more apparent why their mayor non-elect Levi was so strict about rationing and work routines. There were far too many individuals in town, and so the drain on resources increased exponentially with each mouth. All of which simply had to be contributing, or the whole would suffer.[break]
The little foraging their single hunter could do provided enough meat to effectively broth a communal stew but was hardly enough to feast upon. Occasionally spare meats were salted and stored in an ice-packed cooling shed while the less ideal scraps became soup filler. Whether the meat was being kept for trade or emergency was unclear; all Dowan himself knew is that Levi was quite serious about offending the community by stealing any; the single offender of this rule had been exiled after being badly beaten. But since not even he indulged in it, people had little room to complain it was an unfair practice.[break][break]
Another concern was water. Despite having a lake readily available, the algae in it made the water poisonous for cooking with or drinking, or for the other myriad day to day uses water had. It was too cold to bathe or wash clothes without risking hypothermia, but it had plenty of other uses, and every day somebody had to trek to the surface to collect ice and snow for melting down into pure water. Until they found a non-poisonous source, or a way to filter out the algae safely, such expeditions were a thrice-daily necessity due to the amount they had to use and the amount they were limited to carrying back with them. Luckily it was a brief escape from the rest of the crap going on, and so Dowan usually volunteered for that job.[break][break]
The collected ice had proven to be an excellent early-warning system against predators underground. The idea had been Georgina's, who had taken issue with wolpertingers eating her meager crops during the mild season. She had gotten the idea to surround her garden with small wind-chimes she'd tied to tripwires, which would alert her to pests sneaking upon her food. When she had told others of the idea it had sparkled two ingenious upgrades to the town of Perfection. First, the entryways were coated in water that froze over in thin sheets which cracked if anything tried entering Perfection from any direction that wasn't the front gate. This of course caused the ice to let out a loud cracking sound which echoed in the cave, letting whoever was on guard duty alert the others. Better still, chimes had been made from the bones of hunted creatures and were erected on the walls, floor and ceiling of the cavern so that vibrations from any worms or tectonic activity in the area would cause them to rattle, warning the people ahead of time to prepare. Or at least that was the theory. They hadn't had any worm troubles, yet.[break][break]
There was fungus to collect and dartworms to harvest, both of which wound up in the stew as well. Dowan often helped with those jobs, or water collection, to get out of guard duty. Guard duty was in his opinion the absolute worst; a patrol that wound around the dark caverns from gate to sluice to town and back again, over and over in a monotonous circuit. But as if walking and looking for danger in a dark cavern that played on your paranoia wasn't enough, there were no official lights in Perfection. Yet. They lacked the technology to produce electric lights, and they hadn't the wood to waste on erecting constantly burning torches. The kilns had allowed "Thrush," their neighborhood potter and mason, to created several vast clay pots which they had filled with lake water and bioluminescent algae, sprpeading the pots around the caverns to act as light sources for those going about their duties. They worked well enough, but the algae only glowed for a few hours after being agitated, and so the person on guard patrols had to constantly stop at each pot and stir it with a large stick in order to keep them all glowing bright and blue.[break]
It was brilliant. Pun intended. But it was also an inelegant solution to a serious issue, and Dowan personally couldn't wait to get some actual god-damned lights going in their lovely dank hole of a home.[break][break]
Still it wasn't all bad. The people were nice enough, if not his first choice of people. They got along out of necessity, and had ample room to avoid stepping on one another's toes if anyone needed some space to breathe. With time it would get more crowded, more stressed, but for now life was simple and honest. And there was even enough down-time that some carpenter bloke kept making stone statues to try and cheer people up. Or... something. Honestly, the miner hadn't quite figured the carpenter out yet. Doubted if he ever would. One tore the world apart in search of riches; the other found his riches in the beauty of the world. They were polar opposites, brawn against beauty. Day's work against artwork. Pick-swinger against... hammer... tosser? Lord, what the fuck was that man doing now![break][break]
You're going to break something, and we haven't found us a medic yet to mend it. Dowan criticized politely as he came within a stone's throw of Lyra and looked the man over in the pale blue light of their algae lanterns. Dowan was wearing his heavy winter clothing, comfortable in its thermal padding with only his pluming breath to hint at the cold his outfit kept out. He wondered silently if Lyra enjoyed the cold, because the man had very simple clothes despite the cold. Still... at least the cold would keep his self-mutilated hands from swelling too badly.[break][break]
Is there a reason you're doing that, or has the cold just finally gotten to you? Also, probably not the best idea near the kilns, mate."[break]
He jerked a thumb in their general direction and shook his head slightly, as if amused.[break]
"I know they look strong as all hell, and granted they're plenty sturdy... but they're also just roughly baked clay ovens which will chip or shatter if you accidentally toss that hammer on them one too many times. Soooooo... don't that whole thing."[break][break]
Excellent. Spoken like a true pissant. But he'd rather get scoffed or snarled at for being an obnoxious prick than risk one of their life-sustaining community tools being broken by somebody that was either drunk, bored, or just accidentally careless enough to make their time in winter wonderland a little less wonderful.
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5'10"
33
Woodworker
Nemus
Offline
5 Posts
Played by Adrien
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Post by lyra ashford on Jul 6, 2017 18:17:25 GMT -5
[googlefont="Amatic SC"] Home is where I want to be,
pick me up and turn me 'round The darkness in this cave was simultaneously Lyra's best friend and his worst enemy. It made it easy for him to hide himself away from others when he was feeling overwhelmed, and hid just how much he blushed when he said or did really awkward things (the facial hair was another helper there). The downside was it also gave him a false sense of security, and he'd be completely honest if he said he didn't think anyone could possibly have seen him miss that hammer toss, up until Dowan opened his mouth.
Why oh why couldn't the man have just kept his mouth shut and continued walking by? Lyra felt himself instinctively start to panic and he clamped down on that feeling hard as he turned to face Dowan, an extremely embarrassed look on his face, "Oh, uh, old habits die, uhm, hard, I guess?" He reached down and grabbed the hammer with his left, uninjured hand, sliding it nervously into the hammer hook on his carpenter's jeans, then shoved his hands into his pockets while trying not to shift from foot to foot from nerves.
He'd been introduced to everyone the evening he'd arrived, and he'd done his best to remember names. It wasn't his forte, but he wasn't abysmal at it either. He'd actually thought he'd made a decent impression upon the denizens of this little cave, up until someone had asked him what he did for work and... well, Lyra had gotten perhaps a little too enthusiastic about it.
He couldn't help it. Woodworking was literally his passion, and he got a little too animated when he talked about it. All his nerves would disappear as he spoke, probably the only time anyone would hear him not just... be awkward. Then someone had brought up the whole 'can't use wood' thing, and Lyra had gone quiet again. Even now he was wishing that someone would find a variety of tree with a burning point that was far too high to be of use for... well, burning. It was a sentiment that would never leave his head because he knew it would sound ludicrous to everyone else.
He couldn't recall if Dowan had been there for that event, but as with everyone he ran into here, he hoped not. Maybe one day it would be just a fond memory?
Yeah, he thought it was unlikely too.
He knew he should respond better to the scolding, so he took a deep breath in and did his best to steady himself before speaking again, although his voice still held a bit of a waver to it. "Sorry about that, I'll be more careful. I, sometimes I don't think ahead very well, and, and all that." Like the whole winter clothing thing. He still had none, just the light jacket he'd been wearing when he landed, and the several pairs of clothing in his bag. The man who had helped him to the settlement had taken back the coat he'd been lent (nothing for free around here, of course), and so Lyra had taken to attempting to wear all of his clothes at once, which was really just all the shirts and two pairs of pants. He hadn't even packed any winter clothes in the stuff he'd be getting dropped at some point.
To be fair he'd been thinking he'd be landing in the middle of summer, or maybe spring or fall. Or he was just sometimes stupid, which made more sense.
So instead he spent a lot of time around the kilns, appreciating the heat they gave off. When he wasn't there, he was trying to fulfill the 'menial labor' slot that was often needed in small settlements like this, because it kept him moving and burning energy to keep him warm. Sleeping was, well, miserable.
But this guy looked warm as can be, and Lyra felt himself fill up with an envy that he knew was inappropriate and entirely based in his own foolishness.
It was then that he realized he was standing there staring likely uncomfortably at the other man, and immediately he was flustered again, his hands coming out of his pockets to nervously rub the one he had just injured, "Oh! Uh, I mean... Was there anything you needed me to, uh, to do?" Lyra cleared his throat in embarrassment and squinted at the man in the dull glow before adding, "You're Dowan, right?" See, he could remember names! He hoped.
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