“I’ll just be glad to get out of the Hearth again,” Meadow says. “You know I share a room with my older sister, Acacia, right?”
I did not, but I just nod.
“And her daughter, Clover,” Meadow says. “You probably haven’t interacted with her much yet. She was born last April and she’s just getting into the crawling and grabbing things stage. I haven’t been able to keep anything in my room without risk of a baby messing with it. She tried chewing up my colored pencils and the only consolation was that she doesn’t have teeth yet.”
“Oh dear,” I say.
“Anyway, I’ll be turning 21 at the end of May, so I want to get some more skill grinding in these next few months,” Meadow says. “I’m… still not sure that the True Art is really the path for me.”
“It seems like it could be very useful,” I say.
“I was hoping for more in my life than simply being useful. And I’m running out of time to find the right path for me. Who knows if I’ll even hit Heroic rank? I may be stuck with the class I get when I turn 21 for the rest of my life.”
She sounds very much like a college student being indecisive about their major and stressed about exams. Except a degree in art would actually be more useful here.
“Did you ever consider Divination?” I ask.
“Not really, though I suppose that might make me more useful,” Meadow says.
“I don’t mean for you being useful,” I say. “Skills are useful. Things are useful. You are a human being and we’ll still be your family no matter what you do or don’t do with your life. In any case, I’m absolutely going to learn the True Art.”
“Really? I thought for sure I had you pegged for a future Wizard.”
“I can learn both, can’t I?” I ask. “Everyone in the Hearth already learns a bit of Wizardry just to use all our magitech appliances.”
“That’s true,” Meadow says. “What sort of hybrid class would that result in?”
----------------------------------------
Anise and I head for Grubwick to meet up with Milo now that the surface isn’t being swarmed by monsters. Meadow opts to tag along to make sure our low Survival skills don’t get used into trouble traipsing about the countryside in winter. Anise isn’t terribly worried one way or another. I suppose being able to set things on fire with your brain makes a little snow seem like a non-issue.
When we get to Grubwick, we find Milo and some of the other goblins playing bone flutes and drums. They’re terrible at it, but I don’t recall hearing them do any music at all before.
“You aspiring to be a Bard, Milo?” Anise asks.
Milo shrugs. “Perhaps, perhaps not. But whether or not it is a path I ultimately take, I believe goblin culture is richer for having music than not.”
“I bet you’re getting plenty of good Deeds introducing things like this, too,” Anise says.
“I still don’t know if it will be enough to reach Heroic rank before I turn 7, though,” Milo says.
Anise shrugs. “Couldn’t tell you. It’s not like I’ve made Heroic rank yet, myself.”
“In any case, I’m glad you’re here,” Milo says. “I want to go try to contact more goblin villages.”
“It’s kind of blizzarding out there,” Anise says. “It was starting to get annoying burning Inspiration all the time to keep [Familial Warmth] up all the time.”
“That’s fine. Now that the monster swarms have gone back to the deeper layers or the Underside, wherever it is they go, we can move freely through the In-Between to reach the other villages. I don’t know the way myself, but I can ask some of the scouts to lead the way.”
“Nice! I haven’t done a lot of exploration of these caves before. What all is even down here? Are there dungeons like above?”
“What did you do in the years before I was born?” I ask.
“Ehhh… a lot of fooling around and barely making Elite before I turned 21,” Anise says with a shrug. “I wasn’t as serious about delving as the others in my party. After your father was killed, Halima told me I was pregnant, so I decided to come home while the others kept adventuring. Juniper’s birth mom. You met her once I think.”
“You haven’t mentioned my father much,” I say.
“Yeah, he was an idiot, but fun to fool around with,” Anise says. “Up until his idiocy got himself killed and the rest of us badly injured.”
We stay the night at the inn. Grubwick’s first stone building has gotten some new furnishings. The goblin carpenters have managed wooden chairs, tables, and beds in our absence. The beds are still just a fur on a wooden frame but at least there’s the wooden frame now. They don’t have access to metal for nails or screws yet, but they built furniture by slotting carved pieces of wood together like we did with the masonry, using some sort of pinkish glue in place of mortar. (I have no idea what they made the glue out of, but it’s probably something gross.)
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Drake, you’re back!” says a goblin woman I recognize as a member of my Mason crew, Klog. “Wow, you’ve gotten big! It’s a good thing we built this building big.”
The vis coming off of her feels much more energetic than I remember, and I remember that I can identify her now.
Category Person Race Goblin Gender Female Rank Heroic
“You made Heroic!” I exclaim. “Congratulations! How did you do it?”
“You put me to work on building better scaffolding, remember? I have! Also these.” Klog pats one of the chairs. “I invented a kind of wood glue and the system decided that was a Deed worthy of Heroic rank.” She grunts. “I’m sure it wasn’t just the glue but everything else leading up to that.”
“I don’t know, glue is pretty important,” I say. “If you came up with a good formula, that’s something that may help people for generations to come.”
“I also, by necessity, invented an un-gluing formula,” Klog says. “You should be glad you weren’t here up until that point. Er, I should warn you that if you get stuck to anything, please yell for help. I may have missed a few spots.”
“What’s your new class called, if I might ask?”
“I’m a [Daring Inventor] now,” Klog says. “It’s a step up from my Elite class, [Experimental Crafter], which I have you to thank for. To think I started off as a mere [Determined Stoneworker].”
I carefully examine the vis in her aura, wondering what part of that might say “daring” or “inventor”. I should be able to see people’s classes just as readily as their race or gender. Considering classes are also connected to the color system, that means I ought to be able to pick out some orange vis as well as violet vis from her. It’s just that the part of her saying “I am a crafter” is smaller than the part saying “I am a person.”
Your Clairvoyance (Vis Analysis) skill has increased to level 3.
When I identify her again, an additional line has been added.
Class Crafter
I can’t quite pick out the nuance yet, but it shouldn’t be difficult to tell at a glance whether someone is a Crafter, Warrior, or whatever. It was just a matter of picking out the correct spot in the people whose classes I knew. Which I would never be able to have put into more than a slurry of psychic energy without the assistance of the system.
If the system didn’t already exist, I would have been compelled to invent it just to make my own weird psychic powers be less annoying to use. (I may well have actually been the one to invent the system, but I really don’t need Sanity damage when I’m away from a high level Hearthkeeper who can make magic tea.)
“How are the mushrooms and maggots projects going?” I ask.
“They haven’t had quite as much progress as mine, but they’ve gotten a good start on the mushrooms at least,” Klog says. “Maggot handling has mostly been going hilariously. You should also be glad you weren’t here for that. Did I mention that I also accidentally invented glue traps?”
I am speechless for a long moment before deciding that, yes, indeed I am grateful that I decided to spend the past several months in places other than here. Goblins are fun but sometimes it’s best to be out of the blast radius.
“I’m proud of you, Klog,” I finally manage.
“Take a look at our new building stuff when you get a chance!” she says. “You probably want to eat and sleep first, though.”
I nod. “I’ll check it out in the morning. I want to do another non-deadly bridge first before we try bridging the underground river.”
“We might be able to bridge a creek without anyone getting wet now!” Klog says.
“I’ve got a good next bridge project, and it will be another source of strength for Grubwick,” I say. “There’s a dungeon not far from here called the Wisteria Garden. It’s easy and safe and good for children.”
As least, when there isn’t a random eldritch infestation. I was unable to find any information on it in the Corwen library, and even Aunt Heather can only say that she knows of it but has never had to directly deal with it.
“There’s a stream in between here and there, though, and the most direct route is annoying to cross,” I continue. “It could use a bridge so people can get to the dungeon without having to swim. We’ll just have to wait for the snow to melt before we can get started.”
“Sounds like a good idea!” Klog says. “Snow is so weird.”
“Did you ever try building with it?” I say with a grin.
“Building?” Klog looks confused. “It’s so soft and cold and melts if you take it inside.”
“Tomorrow, I will show you something amazing.”
Come morning, I go and inspect the equipment my builders have been working with. Their craftsmanship has made marked improvements since I was last here. The crew lights up (figuratively) when they see me approach.
“Hi Drake!” babble the goblins, and I’m unable to follow who is saying what. “Klog said you’d show us something amazing!” “What is it?” “What is it?” “Where is it?” “How amazing is it?”
I laugh softly and wave them off. I’m a good 20 centimeters taller than most of them now and it’s a little disorienting even if the goblins are undiscouraged.
“It’s on the surface,” I say. “You’ll have to come with me so I can show you.”
“Ooooh!” chorus the goblins.
Anise heads out with us just to make sure nothing stupid happens while we’re messing around, by which I mean she’s going to immediately forget that she was supposed to be keeping an eye out and being a responsible adult and mess around with us.
The goblins are all bundled up in warm furs and look on the wall of snow in puzzlement. The sky had dropped another meter of snow overnight on top of what had already been a thick blanket.
“We can’t go out,” Klog says. “Nasty cold snow has blocked it all up.”
I grab some snow and compact it with my hands. With the new devil-goat wool mittens I got for this past Hearth Day, I can hardly even feel the cold through them. “Snow might be cold and soft and squishy, but when you squish it enough…” I grab enough snow to make a brick shape. “…you get something you can build with.”
“Oooohhhh!” chorus a dozen goblins all at once.
“Shall we start with a staircase?” I say with a grin.
Working together, we construct a meter-wide snow staircase leading up to the surface. We set about to building a snow fort, learning as we go and getting buried in snow only a couple of times. Still, everything is perfectly peaceful until someone throws the first snowball. (It’s totally Anise.)
Some of the goblin hunters had come up to see what was going on, along with Meadow just from fear of missing out. (My [Vis Analysis] isn’t quite refined enough yet to extract the aspect of FOMO but I still get the impression.) Everyone quickly splits into two teams, and then three, with hunters and builders spontaneously hooking up. Several frosty keeps get constructed and destroyed. I focus on keeping my own fort in good repair without retaliating.
It seems like such a minor thing, and yet my efforts are rewarded all the same.
Skill acquired: Survival (Cold Resistance) Skill acquired: Crafting (Snow Building)
Laughing and joking, we all head inside to warm up and get something to eat.