Meadow is being excessively broody about her True Art. It’s getting kind of tiresome to be perfectly honest.

“Didn’t you talk this over with Aunt Heather at any point?” I ask.

Meadow grunts. “Sure, Grandma Heather gave advice and made me keep up my studies. But she never steps in to make someone change their mind even if they’re making a terrible mistake.”

“What drew you to drawing in the first place?” I wonder.

Meadow sighs and stands up, and looks off at the gently rippling waters of Splott Lake. Darting magenta fins can be seen now and then, and the light from bioluminescent blue fungi on the ceiling casts a glimmer upon the waters. Here I am talking about glimmering like some sort of poet, but given Meadow’s poise and expression, I just have to pray to Corwen she doesn’t burst into song like a Disney princess declaring her life’s dream.

“It started off as a matter of tools, actually,” Meadow says. “Survival and Crafting are all well and good, but what if I could have any tool I needed on hand at any time? True Art is one of the few ways of actually conjuring matter, even if it’s temporary matter. I could take a sketch of a nice little camp, shove some vis into it, and poof! Tent and all appear out of thin air and I didn’t have to carry anything but art supplies.”

I nod. “That’s pretty much what I’m planning on doing with it myself. But for me it will be technical diagrams and not beautiful landscapes. I wish I were Elite already so I could play around with it myself. Alas, I suppose I will have to live vicariously in watching you play around with it instead.”

Meadow chuckles and pulls out her sketchbook and colored pencils. “Well, if you were me, what would you do?”

“You want to conjure tools?” I say. “How about start with a rock?”

“That’s not much of a tool,” Meadow says. “You can get rocks anywhere.”

“A rock is the most basic tool in existence, by which I mean basic with a lowercase B, although I’m sure there have to be Legendary rocks out there somewhere. In any case, it doesn’t matter how useful it is in a normal situation. Adventuring is all about abnormal situations, though. And sometimes you might just really need a rock to throw at something.”

“Okay, okay, I get your point. A rock, fine. I can draw a rock.”

She sketches out a gray rock, making it a bit misshapen and lumpy to give it texture. Once it’s done, she sends her vis into the picture. At first, nothing happens, but she ramps up her focus and a sketchy outline appears in the air for a moment.

“Ugh,” Meadow says, rubbing her head. “Well, I’m out of Inspiration already. But at least that almost did something. I suppose I’ll keep at it whenever I have spare Inspiration to see if I can unlock a proper skill for it. While awake, that is. I don’t understand the people who wake up multiple times a night just to dump a topped off Inspiration meter into some project that definitely isn’t worth more than a good night’s sleep.”

A good night’s sleep in a bedroll inside a tent in a cave, but still. Every day, I teach the Splotts a bit more about stacking rocks, and the Splotts teach me a bit more about building boats. Due to the difficulty of getting large quantities of rocks across the lake in kayaks, we’ve been practicing on the shore. Splott’s first stone building won’t be in Splott itself, but they’re perfectly happy with the prospect of sticking a building on the other side of the lake by the docks. We’re many months away from swarm season yet, and we’re close enough to the surface that there aren’t many wandering monsters.

Meadow’s next few attempts just result in making rocks made of whatever is in those colored pencils, which crumble to dust in under a second and vanish entirely not long after that.

While Meadow works on her True Art, I’m back to trying to learn how to build a boat. Man, forget mindlessly slaughtering monsters. I’m down here in a mysterious, beautiful cave making kayaks with goblins and having a blast.

Again, they assure me not to worry about wasted materials. It’s all part of learning, and any scraps that are no longer usable for anything at all are taken to their Hearth’s core room to be converted into essence. And I waste a lot of materials.

As nice as it is, I’m honestly utterly baffled about why the Splotts are even friendlier than the Grubwicks, although I have a deeper relationship with the Grubwicks. I suppose part of it is how we wound up meeting the Grubwicks, and only came to Splott after they’d already heard about their technological advancements and positive relations with humans. I think they’re trying very, very hard to make a good impression on their human guests.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“I unlocked True Art (Simulacrum)!” Meadow exclaims as she comes over to me to celebrate.

“Congratulations!” I say.

“Check this out,” Meadow says. “The goblins helped me mix up some paints using local materials. I only needed shades of gray, anyway.”

Her rock image is still crude, but more solid than the colored pencils.

“You think it will make a difference over the colored pencils?” I ask.

“Watch.”

This time, when our budding Artist uses her skill, a rock made of crude gray paint appears on the ground between us. Meadow picks it up and squeezes it, and it squishes like a sports ball. She throws it at the floor, and it splatters into paint.

“Cool, paintball!” I exclaim.

Meadow laughs. “I’m making progress on getting the items to be more solid and last longer.”

The gray paint remains on the floor for about a minute before it disappears.

“As it is, this would be absolutely perfect for a game I know of from another life,” I say. “Shooting paint at each other to see who can score the most hits. We had to use paint that didn’t conveniently disappear afterward, though.”

“Seems like a waste of paint if it’s real paint, but if you have a surplus that does sound like fun,” Meadow says.

“I bet you could make, say, a sling that automatically makes rocks to throw, or a bow or crossbow, or the like.”

Meadow nods. “I’ve heard of ranged weapons that make their own ammo, but I never looked into how they do it. When I imagined being a Ranger who creates her own ammo on the fly, I thought I would be doing it myself, with a spell cast from my own Inspiration meter. But if I had an item powered by a suitable aspect stone, I wouldn’t need to burn Inspiration for it.”

“I’d offer to make one for you, but I don’t know how to make magic items yet and aren’t at Elite yet regardless,” I say. “It might need to be incorporated with sigils for control, too. I just don’t know enough yet.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Meadow says. “It’s a long-term project, anyway. I have a long way to go yet before I can make an arrow that might actually pierce instead of splatter.”

After a good deal of work, I finally manage to build a kayak that doesn’t immediately sink. And I know that I’ve been successful by the system’s praise.

Congratulations! You have crafted a Poor quality vessel. Skill acquired: Crafting (Shipbuilding) Your Dexterity has increased to 8.

It’s ridiculous that Carpentry and Woodworking are separate skills but there’s a Shipbuilding skill that encompasses anything to do with vessels. Whatever. Subskills all affect the main skill, anyway. Learning how to fish makes you a tiny bit better at starting a fire, because it just does. I’m not going to marvel at the existence of a life-size RPG magic system, but I will criticize how nonsensical its setup is sometimes.

I sit in my boat, bobbing a little on the waters of Lake Splott and marveling at the fact that my feet are still dry. I don’t immediately notice that I’m drifting away from shore.

“Dung!” I swear in Goblin, quickly plunging my hands into the water to hand-paddle back to where the goblins are laughing at me.

“Next lesson, how to make paddles!” Smop says with a wide grin on his face.

“You couldn’t have covered that first?”

“The boat came before the paddle!” Smop says. “Making the boat made us realize we needed them.”

“I didn’t think of it and I know about paddles—there’s some right there. I’m just a very smart idiot. Or stupid genius. One of those.”

“Not stupid,” Smop says. “You just don’t think forward very much. You don’t keep making the same mistakes, but you never think about consequences. Everything you do makes a ripple in the lake. The waves will swell and grow over time, like the attacks of the Epic Splottfish that once almost drowned our village. There was chaos and destruction, but our mightiest hunters brought her down at great cost. They harvested her eggs and brought them to the Hearth, and now there are always Splottfish in the lake providing resources and protecting us from invaders.”

“Wow,” I say. “That’s a nice reward for taking down a raid boss.”

“I don’t think you mean us harm,” Smop says. “There will be great change, but when the waves settle, I don’t think it will be bad change. Now, come. Let me show you what we make our paddles from.”

He shows me how to make a paddle, although I could have guessed how to make a bad one myself. My results are a bit better thanks to having someone on hand who can tell me more than the general shape I’m going for. At least this part of the boat process is just something that will be merely inefficient if done poorly, rather than leading to you swimming back to shore.

“Are you done yet?” Anise asks. “We want to see you boat!”

“You know, something I’ve come to realize about goblins is that there’s so many of them and they have no concept of privacy, literally everything you do has an audience.”

“Oh my,” Anise says.

“I’m going to mess up, probably repeatedly, and everyone’s going to laugh at me, and I will laugh back once I get back on solid ground. I’ve been getting plenty of practice with Athletics (Swimming). I might be close to a level-up.”

“Sounds like fun!” Anise says. “I’ll make some popcorn.”

“Where in the Void did you find popcorn?” I wonder.

“Talgarth. Rowan’s Hearth is known for its corn. They brought some with them as samples and I’m going to pop them with Sorcery (Spectator’s Passion).”

“What in the Void is up with your skill names?” I ask, trying to keep a straight face.

“It’s also good for hot dogs.”

“Alright, I’m done here,” I say.