20 Tarsakh
Today marks two years since I arrived.
Two years since getting a new family…
The day was enjoyable though, I took a lot of it to myself. Played a bit outside with the other kids, though it’d been damp and cold much of the last few tenday. Muddy and dreary parks meant that most of us weren’t actually all that invested in being out but it was better than being cooped up for a lot of the others.
I did some time at the workshop as well. The weather wasn’t really warm enough for the bugs to actually be coming out to be collected, something I’d hopefully be able to do once it was Mirtul, but there were preparations to complete ahead of time. Ordering and installing a dozen new shelving units, getting some extra crates, and finding a new glassblower to supply us with vials to put the poison into.
Nizzlepittle is just gifted with the ability to piss me off and now I need to stop thinking about that annoying gnome shorter than I am.
Anyway, I had a nice day of relaxation, even if the weather was chilly. Last year it was warm enough to just sort of meander the streets in the northern half of the city, but there wasn’t much reason to do that when it was hard to stay outside more than maybe half an hour at a time. Instead, I decided to just sort of go shop to shop in the nicer parts of town, mostly window shopping. I did make a few purchases for myself though as a treat. Nicer hiking boots that shouldn’t give me blisters on the hours-long walk to the Rat Hills the next time I go to visit Chief Balthsvk was probably the big one.
I guess I could also ask the lizardfolk traders to carry me at least part of the way because being a small child sucks and I can’t wait to actually be able to get fit. This world didn’t allow an inactive lifestyle for most residents, barring scholars, wizards, and nobles.
Beyond the footwear purchase though, there weren't many items that I felt like buying that wouldn’t also raise suspicions from my family for where I got them. I did spend a few hours watching a play at a place called Lightsinger Theatre, one in a series about some adventuring band up north over near Neverwinter. It was sort of like jumping into a series multiple seasons in, they assumed you knew a lot of the primary cast of protagonists, though honestly, it didn’t take long to get the gist of things. Interesting story though about fighting some feral tribal elves in some forests up there, then a dragon, then some sort of hostile tree spirit druid thing.
The theatre had a few decent illusionists on hand, so the effects were quite neat. Animated dragons actually “fighting” with the heroes on stage, interesting sound effects of the wind picking up and having a bunch of branches rattling against each other, and even some mock starlight for an intimate scene with the cleric praying to Selune. The prevalence of illusions like that though for daily life would probably send my paranoia sky high if not for being able to use my bugs to distinguish them by touch. Orsik has claimed there are “physical” illusion spells as well, but they are likely quite rare and only used by masters of the field, which helps somewhat with my state of mind.
Beyond that though, I made a visit to the Hospice of St. Laupsenn again. Didn’t stay long though, not much to do inside and poor weather made it unpleasant to spend much time outside. A few of the priests there seemed more interested in me than many of the visitors, but that could have just been because I was a small child alone who was hanging about.
12 Mirtul
The weather has finally been nice for the last tenday or so, meaning that spring life is finally properly popping out of whatever holes it used to hide from the winter cold. Finally, I could start collecting more species again. Of course, for the moment, those other species tended to not have actually reached maturity, not for a good while yet.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Still, today was the first day I had been able to go collecting in any real amount. The weather had only turned for the better a little before the Plowing and Running got going, and I was busy for most of that watching events and spending time with family. The last few days were spent attending a few lessons and researching with Orsik. What time I had had spare was put towards preparations for today and the upcoming week.
Things like getting baskets and boxes for temporary storage, ensuring we had the twenty or so new shelves installed with all their various shaped drawers, and ensuring the expansion of places to store the “feed” insects that were more practical to grow en masse in house. Pulling from the local area might have been possible, but doing that long term would be likely to raise suspicion of the neighbourhood even more than it had been by the local druids. I’ve seen some seemingly suspiciously behaving animals moving about, whether that’s actually the druids or something else though is an assumption for the moment and one that I’m not in a good position to test the accuracy of. Ideally, they just leave after getting bored finding nothing.
The shelves should pay for themselves pretty soon though. I’ve been operating with two over the winter being maybe two-thirds filled, and we’ve taken what profits we had from poison sales to just reinvest in the new ones. So still technically barely any profit, but hopefully that early reinvestment will pay off far faster than if we slowly built it up.
Today was the best day for going out collecting since I had more… lizardpower? available to me. Not that Durah and Laraek wouldn’t have been helpful on their own, but the lizard trading bands were starting to visit the city again every once in a while. There wasn’t yet much to trade with in this early season so it wasn’t quite regular, but they had spent the winter making various crafts to trade to merchants like sewing needles and flutes made of bone. With the trading band visiting the city for today, I was able to borrow a half dozen of them for the task of just wandering up and down streets carrying baskets to occasionally stream insects into while I stayed a good bit behind them.
I’m sure to passersby I seemed to be stalking them, but given the general sentiment of suspicion towards the lizardfolks’ activities that actually seemed less suspicious an action for a curious child to take.
The bounty of today was quite great though, I’ll be spending the next few days getting this batch set up until the next round of trading and I can get them to help with it again. There are a lot of shelves and just two lizardfolk doesn’t allow for a lot to be carried at a time to fill them.
24 Mirtul
Apparently one of Pelsot’s friend’s parents knows someone in an adventuring group, which has presented a unique opportunity for our merry group of children. The band had done some work in the city recently, I think fighting the Zhentarim or something similar, resulting in them liberating some sort of dungeon built into the sewer system below a decent-sized house. The city apparently has some plans for dealing with that long term, but for the moment nobody was using it.
So the adventuring band decided to transform it into some demented mixture of haunted house, escape room, and those themed summer camps for children. The adventuring group (I think called Penelope’s Nose, no idea who picked that one out) was going to run a “mock” adventure that kids could sign up for, run by them and a few hired assistants. With Trolltide coming up, the adventure was to defeat some Trolls that had somehow set up in the city.
As explained to me, it would start with some sort of scavenger hunt in the neighbourhood to find designated stations to pick up “Anti-Troll tools”, followed by actually exploring the dungeon and fighting against the “trolls”. Groups would comprise six kids, paced so you could have two groups at a time performing in it, one in each phase.
Pelsot’s friend, Jesler, had been asked to invite some of his friends to help test the program a few days in advance. Were the riddles too hard, the puzzles too complex, or the trolls too scary? It would also help the staff get some proper first-hand practice in dealing with actual kids involved in things rather than mock runs of the stuff. Jesler is basically best friends with Pelsot, meaning that he was a quick invite. My name came up as a suggestion from Pelsot despite my age being basically at the minimum age that was set for the program. The justification being, and I quote, “Tayvra’s probably the smartest of us with all the books she reads all the time. She probably knows more books than people.” I am thoroughly tempted to put some bugs in his bed while he sleeps, but I doubt I actually would go through with it.
So on the 28th, there will be six of us in a group, and a different group as well, running through the program. I know Mary also expressed interest in joining up with us, so that’s four already. The last two I’ve yet to be told who they’d be.